Dr. Danan lends perspective to the benefits and broad adoption of equipment’s use in reducing concussions.
Article Links: Will Guardian Caps solve football’s concussion problem? The NFL is trying. (yahoo.com)
A Guardian Cap is a soft-shell helmet cover that fits over a football helmet. These caps are “engineered for impact reduction,” Erin Hanson, founder and CEO of Guardian Innovations, which makes Guardian caps, tells Yahoo Life. “It brings a padded, soft-shell layer to the outside of the decades-old hard-shell helmet and reduces impact up to 33%,” Hanson adds.
These caps are one-size-fits-all and move separately from the helmet. That allows for shifting at impact, which redirects energy, Hanson explains.
A huge issue for the NFL and football in general over the past few years is concerns about head injuries, specifically chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) and concussions. CTE is a neurodegenerative disease linked to repeated trauma to the head that causes symptoms that are similar to those of Alzheimer’s disease, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In a recent study of 152 brains that were donated to a brain bank, researchers discovered that ¾ of those with CTE played football. Those players with CTE typically had longer playing careers than people without CTE. Other people diagnosed with CTE played ice hockey, soccer, wrestling or rugby.
Concussions, which are mild traumatic brain injuries that can impact brain function, are somewhat common in football, with the NFL reporting 219 concussions and 422 evaluations for concussions during the 2023-2024 season.
Over the past few years, there has been increasing pressure on the league to reduce head injuries.
Still, some doctors are hopeful that Guardian Caps will do something. “The expectation and the hope is that they reduce the brain’s exposure to concussive events,” Dr. Ilan Danan, a sports neurologist at the Center for Sports Neurology and Pain Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles, and neurology consultant for the Los Angeles Angels, Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks, tells Yahoo Life.
Danan says that there’s no data right now on whether these caps will help to lower the risk of developing CTE. “Primarily, the focus right now is on reducing acute injury,” he says. “If the Guardian Cap is doing what we’re hoping, it will reduce those concussive events. The belief is that, if we’re reducing those, it would translate to a lower risk of developing CTE later in life.”
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