Concussions in Youth Sports

1. Empathize

There has been an unfortunate rise in concussions in youth sports over the years. The trend has been startling, and unfortunately, deadly. Concussions are serious injuries. Concussions are caused by blows to the head that can be a result of falls, impact with objects (like balls) or contact with the ground. The brain is protected by a layer of fluid that surrounds it the skull, but during a hard impact even this liquid layer and even helmets aren’t as protective as one would hope. The brain can still bounce against the skull, causing trauma as it does so.

Recently, roughly 5-10% of athletes have had a concussion. The rise in concussions has been a result of a bevy of factors such as improper training, improper technique, negligent coaches or referees or a lack of proper equipment to handle concussions. Perhaps the most wide-spread and detrimental is the “play-through-it” philosophy that has taken the sporting world by storm. Rather than encouraging their athletes to report injuries, coaches encourage their athlete to “man-up” and play through the pain. This command often results in increased injures and even the deadly Second-Impact Syndrome.

In order to combat the rise in concussions, my partner Yasmeen and I tried to think about simple changes that could positively affect athletic staff and athletes. After deciding who we wanted to affect, we came up with a prototype of a procedure that athletic departments could do to ensure that they were taking all the precautions to handle concussions properly. We wanted to make something that would be simple enough that all schools and athletes could do it, but helpful enough that it might actually make a difference. The procedure could spread awareness and aide learning, so we decided to elaborate on this concept.

Serious falls often result in concussions

Image by Hayley Grassler

2. Define

Yasmeen and I are athletes. I am a cheerleader, and I have been on Varsity since my sophomore year. In this particular sport I’ve seen many concussions from people being dropped on their heads or fallen on, and I have received two myself.

Source: Hayley Grassler

Yasmeen is also extremely active. She runs frequently and does yoga, so she knows how important proper technique is. Because we are both athletic, we were able to easily decide that teaching people how to prevent concussions would be more helpful than treating them once they were already concussed. Additionally, concussions should really only be treated by medical professionals, which we are not.

Athletes hold a lot of the power when trying to end concussions in youth sports. Helping to spread awareness to them would almost certainly decrease the statistics.

Source: Hayley Grassler

3. Ideate

Yasmeen and I drafted the “Concussion Procedure”. This is a proposed procedure that all athletic departments would take part in.

It consists of two assessments, one for members of the athletic department (adults) and one for student athletes. They are also checklists of necessary equipment and coaching philosophies, which can be printed out and used as reminders. Their purpose is to determine what within the department could be changed for the better and improved, and also to alert the athletic director of any serious issues within the program.

It is in the form of a google doc so that it can be shared quickly and with many people. The assessments are on Buzzfeed, which is free and easily accessible. The coaches could print them, have their athletes take them, gather the results and discuss them in a department meeting.

4. Prototype

Here is the prototype! 

5. Test

To test our prototype we gave it to adults that had been in the athletic community and various ages of athletes. Helpful critics came from Mr. Fischer, Patti Holt, Abi Grassler, and Amir Arami. Their critiques are as follows:

“Hello, Hayley!

First of all, I should be honest and note that concussions in our athletes were not of a high priority when I was coaching (from about the mid-70’s to the 90’s). Every now and then, a young man would come up to my office after a game and tell me he thought he got conked pretty good, but if anything we gave him ice. We didn’t pay too much attention unless they passed out on us or couldn’t look us in the eyes.

I have not heard of “Buzzfeed”, but I believe all that was required was that I take the quiz for adults.

I have unfortunately been very familiar with serious concussions as of late; a young man almost died at E.D.H, either because of a concussion or a skull fracture. I remember there was one young man I coached for about a year. He suffered a serious concussion and told the school nurse, and the next day he was rushed to the hospital. Looking at your questions, I can tell you that my athletic facilities were certainly not adequate! I only checked 7, and thats relying on my memory.That being said, however, this was roughly 20 years ago.

Coaches are busy and if you’re serious about getting every coach to take this quiz, you might get some resistance, but this quiz took me about 2 minutes, and I got Eileen to do it as well. I think it’s great that you’re thinking about this, especially considering you’re not the most athletic person around! Chin up, kid.

 

Herb Fischer”

Yasmeen gave the prototype to her brother, who plays club soccer, and is 14. He took the quiz and saw the checklist and he was not aware of many of the things on our list, which is an example of the education that could be gained from using this procedure. He felt that his coach would benefit from reading it, too. He unfortunately knows a lot of teammates who have had concussions.

He said that we could improve it by making another list about how to treat concussions immediately after they occur.

We also showed the prototype to my sister, who has been on the cheer team all four years of high school. She’s been afraid of getting a concussion since she joined because she had heard horror stories of girls dying hours after they got one. She felt that the most important part of the prototype was the part about coaches not encouraging athletes to play through injuries, because that is definitely not something that most coaches observe. She was a bit concerned that it might offend coaches that had been coaching the same way for a long time.

Source: Hayley Grassler

The Relationship between the Immune and Digestive Systems

I’ve always connected my immune system to what I eat, probably because from a very young age my father told me that eating oranges would keep colds away. As I’ve grown and become involved in athletics in high school, I’ve also learned that this relationship has an important effect on athletes.

 Source: Ben Aguillon

As humans we eat a variety of different things, and unfortunately some of these things contain bacterias or contaminants that can be harmful. It should be noted that most of the bacteria we eat is good bacteria that is needed for various functions of the immune and digestive systems, but certain bacterias cause illness. Bacteria is on literally everything, and because of this the digestive systems takes in quite a bit of it. In order to prevent illness, the immune system has proteins and chemicals that kill off the bad bacterias. The immune system has cells, organs and chemicals that help differentiate between the two types of bacteria, and then based on that judgement, the immune system can eliminate it. When bad bacteria is detected, the immune system protects the rest of the body from being infected by it and then kills the harmful bacteria.

Source: NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center

The digestive system and immune system further work together in preventing the spread of bacteria. The linings of the stomach and intestines act as a corral to keep bacteria from spreading to other more susceptible parts of the body. The body also naturally builds up an immunity to bacterias that are encountered often, which helps prevent illness as well.

The two systems are tied so closely together because (almost) everything that enters the body enters through the mouth. Therefore, athletes need to be aware of the nutrition they are receiving. Let’s say that there is an athlete who constantly eats only McDonalds and Red Bull, and another who eats plenty of fruits and vegetables and lots of lean protein. The latter athlete will perform better because they are receiving nutrients that can better serve their body when they perform. If an athlete habitually eats things like raw meat from sketchy restaurants or gas station sushi, their body has to spend more time and energy on fighting harmful bacterias which robs them of energy that would improve their performance.

 vs. 

Everyone should be aware of what they’re eating, but especially athletes. Eating a diet rich in nutrients will increase performance and ultimately aid them. 

Relationship with Nutrition

When I think of the word “nutrition”, the image of a small, somewhat bird-like middle aged woman who practices holistic medicine in New York pops up in my mind. This is probably because the first time I had heard that word was when it came out of my kindergarten teacher’s mouth, and she looked like she belonged in the ’70s. When she mentioned “nutrition” she was handing out snack and talking about the benefits of echinacea tea instead of cough syrup.

Source

Especially when I was younger, I thought of nutrition as lots of vegetables, teas and vitamins. I thought of stores like GMC and The Vitamin Store. It was never really mentioned in my house. It almost seemed like nutrition was an embarrassing subject, which was possibly because at the time my mother was severely overweight after having twins.
When I was 12, my view of nutrition changed. My mother decided to cut sugar entirely out of her diet, and she lost over 70 pounds in 4 months. I started to think of nutrition as some sort of complex magic. It also confused me (and still does) because my dad has been able to eat enough for 7 men and eat enough sugar to turn them all diabetic, but he has never had any weight issues and has a remarkably healthy heart.
Now, my view of nutrition is once again changing. Now I think of nutrition as the labels on the backs of packages of food. After loosing so much weight so quickly, my mother is now extremely health conscious, and always makes me look on the label of whatever I’m eating to see if it has an inordinate amount of any one thing, like sodium or calories. I think of nutrition as the practice of trying to balance your diet and eat healthily in order to help your body perform as best as it can.

Source

My relationship with nutrition could be better simply because I know that I often don’t choose the option that is the best for me and I sometimes feel slightly guilty. However, I really like to learn about how nutrition affects the body and how things like dehydration can affect organs.

Source

Heart Disease PSA Project

Heart Disease PSA ~ Project

1. Empathize

Heart disease is a terrifying reality for many people around the world. Anyone can amass risk factors; even if you don’t smoke, and lead a healthy life, a family history can still add to your risk of contracting Heart Disease. Unfortunately, a striking number of these people are women. Heart Disease kills more women per year breast cancer or cervical cancer. In fact, Heart Disease kills more women per year than all cancers combined. With nearly 1 in 4 people dying of Heart Disease per year, it’s no surprise that people are looking to find anything they can do to stop the crusade of this disease. Thus, for this project, my group and I were responsible for creating a prototype that would help people stop heart disease.

 Image by Hayley Grassler

2. Define

One of the leading causes of heart disease is smoking. Smoking definitively and significantly raises a person’s risks for contracting heart disease. People who smoke are 2 to 4 times more likely to contract heart disease than someone who does not. Smoking causes heart disease because the nicotine that is found in cigarettes and makes them incredibly addictive also has further negative side-effects. Nicotine hardens the blood vessels in and around the heart making it harder for blood to flow, raises blood pressure and heart rate, makes blood more prone to clotting and increases the buildup of plaque within arteries. All of these are things that steeply increase the likely-hood of getting a heart attack or a stroke. Both of these can, and often do, kill people. Smoking is so detrimental that every single cigarette that is smoked puts the smoker closer to a heart attack. On the bright side, the risk for heart disease decreases by two times only 1 year after the smoker has stopped smoking.

So, obviously it is important to help smokers stop smoking. Smoking is a highly addictive habit, so any resources that are available to help keep  someone on track should be used.

 Images by Hayley Grassler

3. Ideate

In order to help people stay on track, Yasmeen and I created a system that will remind smokers daily to stay on the right track, working towards their goal of being independent from nicotine. We were brainstorming and realized that a calendar with daily reminders to stay strong could be motivational for many people. Also on this calendar are suggestion to help distract the participant from picking up the habit again. This calendar is downloadable, so anyone with a Google account can download it and use it.

The second product we created was a lighthearted yet informational quiz. This quiz was designed to help people who were thinking about quitting cross over the commitment line and stop smoking for good. It provides information like how long it takes to break a habit and what the benefits are to stopping smoking. The quiz is very brief so that it can be taken quickly to provide a quick motivation boost.

4. Prototype

We condensed our prototypes onto a separate WordPress site so that it can be updated, and so that the products can we found and used together. We titled the site “Heart Disease Help”. It can be found here. On this page, we uploaded a little quiz about how it can be beneficial to stop smoking, and that we were hoping would serve to be a little tool to remind people who are trying to stop smoking throughout their day to not smoke. The online and technological aspects of this product would be helpful to young women, because younger women are highly likely to turn to the internet for help. The American Lung Association shows that although smoking in women has been on the decline for the past 2 decades, smoking in young women from about 18-25 is increasing slightly. This could be a result of current celebrities, like Lana Del Ray, glorifying smoking, or certain social-media outlets, like Tumblr, posting pictures that make smoking seem elegant, cool and edgy.

5. Test

In order to test the prototype, we needed people. Luckily for us, my mother had been an emergency room nurse for 15 years and had dealt with many people who were either heavy chain-smokers and people who had smoked for years and were trying to quit. I was also lucky enough to have my neighbor, Jay, who just recently quit smoking after smoking 2 packs per day for 25 years. Both of them very kindly took the time to look over and evaluate the products. My mother said that part of her responsibilities as a nurse were to ensure that she was reminding her patients daily not to smoke, and to check up on them to make sure they had not fallen off the wagon. She said that she felt it would be very effective to have something online so that it is easily available to people. She also liked that the calendar gave alternate options to smoking, and that the quiz was “quick yet poignant”.

Jay was very helpful as well. He said that since he had just gone through the process, he could tell us that online sites were very helpful for him because he generally has 9 hour workdays, which didn’t leave much time to talk to an actual person or make appointments to go to a help group. He took the quiz, and he said that it would be a “witty reminder of a difficult truth”. Jay said that the calendar was a great idea because reminders could be timed to go off in the morning, which was when he and many others felt the greatest craving for a cigarette, and it could have been the little blip of motivation that some people need to continue onwards with their goal.

 Image by Hayley Grassler

We found our informations from the linked paged of these sites:

The CDC

The American Heart Association

WebMD

Medline Plus – Heart Disease in Women

Change is possible! 

Do Now Project-Based Learning

Project-based learning is a fairly recent education philosophy that has proven to be controversial. When applied, curriculum and teaching styles are adapted to incorporate much more group work and projects in order to work towards an answer to a complex question or challenge.

This method has been thought to increase children’s creativity and critical-thinking skills, and this hypothesis has been backed up by test results. However, there are major drawbacks to implementing this method of education style. Teachers have to switch to an entirely new way of thinking and teaching, and it is difficult to test children effectively while following this philosophy. Additionally, there are many children who would simply struggle with this style of learning. As mentioned, project-based learning requires group work. As many students find out, there is often one student within the group who ends up doing the majority of the work on a project. If this were to happen, it would mean that some students would fall dramatically behind while only some were able to grow from the project; it should also be noted that the students who learn are also probably stressed out and resentful as they have been required to bare the brunt of the work. Group projects simply don’t work, because, unfortunately, groups often look more like this:

 

than this (the intended result and work distribution):

 

For these reasons, schools should not make curriculum that centers around project based learning. It adds unnecessary stress on teachers and students, and cannot be consistently and effectively tested. It’s an excellent idea, and hypothetically it could produce some nice results, but there is just too much room for human error to risk the education of the posterity.

Do Now Ebola

Ebola has been around for quite a while, with smaller outbreaks occurring every few years since its discovery. However, the most recent outbreak has been making headlines as it’s quickly become the largest and most deadly outbreak of the disease ever recorded.

Initially, the disease broke out in Ghana, a country in Africa, but it quickly spread to the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone. The disease has continued to spread at an alarming rate, infecting well over 3,000 and killing over 2,500 people.

The disease has spread so quickly for a variety of reasons. Chief amongst them are cultural burial practices, social stigmas and the highly infective nature of the disease. Ebola is spread through bodily fluids, including blood, saliva, sweat and semen. Burial rituals require physical contact with the dead, through which bodily fluids are often inadvertently exchanged. These practices are a very important part of African culture, which means that people, especially in rural areas, have been understandably resistant to stop.

It is important for other nations to help to come up with preventative measures and a vaccine for Ebola. When more countries contribute to the quest to end Ebola, the process will go more quickly and the economic burden will be more spread out.

 

The spread of Ebola has affected how I think of medicine. It worries me that it’s taking so long to make a vaccine, because I’ve always held the unreasonable expectation that medicine can cure any disease. With a 90% fatality rate, Ebola obviously proves my ideal wrong. It also bothers me that there hasn’t been as significant of a push to eradicate Ebola as there would have been had it been in a “First World” country like France or England. Luckily, awareness has been spreading as the reputation of the disease has grown more sinister. No one wants to die after 7 days of constant hiccups, vomiting, rectal bleeding and fever.

For more information, here are some nice links.

WHO: Ebola Virus Facts

Center for Disease Control: Ebola Hemorrahagic Fever

History of Ebola

Pictures of Ebola Outbreak

Potential Occupation Related to Sports Medicine

I’ve always been interested in people’s injuries, especially since my mother is a medical-malpractice lawyer. There were times when I would come downstairs and sneak into her office to see the pictures that were laid out on her desk of the mistakes that doctors had made. On rare occasions, she was called upon to investigate cases of athletes who’s team physicians had not properly treated their injuries, and had permanent damage as a result. I think I would like to be a defense attorney when I grow up, and although it’s not exactly the same this as a medical-malpractice lawyer, I’m interested in all different types of law.

Medical-malpractice lawyers and personal-injury attorneys have to investigate all aspects of their cases. They also have to ensure that they are helping their clients move on with their lives and achieve the best possible result. These investigation require them to have knowledge of anatomic structures, and how trauma impacts the body. I think it would be interesting to have to combine knowledge of both medicine and the human body with law. I would also really like to help people move on with their lives.

In order to pursue this career, I would need to go to college and then apply to and attend law school. After law school, I would need to sit in on some cases in court and hopefully get hired by a law firm, where I would learn more procedure and tactics. I would also need to further my knowledge of anatomy and injuries, because this job requires both fields to be combined. If I didn’t go to a law firm, I would probably need to find a more experienced lawyer who could help me learn the things about law that aren’t covered in law school and to further develop my knowledge and perception of law. Personal injury lawyers often have a bad reputation, but if I were to be one I would make sure that I was always honest and only represent people who had actually been injured and who needed their life back.