HUNTING | Q-COLLAR CAN BE PUT TO GOOD USE BY HUNTERS
This innovative piece of tech worn by pro athletes and military elites can also protect hunters in the field.
Use this LINK to read more.
Use this LINK to read more.
Protecting the Brain | Article published 15 September 2021 — Click on the LOGO to go to the article
This FDA-approved necklace is designed to prevent brain injuries in athletes
Soccer players face one of the highest risks of sustaining traumatic brain injuries. The sport is second only to football.
Soccer players face one of the highest risks of sustaining traumatic brain injuries. The sport is second only to football.
Protecting the Brain | Cincinnati Children’s Girls’ Soccer Study…
Soccer players face one of the highest risks of sustaining traumatic brain injuries. The sport is second only to football.
Researchers at Cincinnati Children's have been studying ways to protect athletes from injuries. Boys in area high school athletics have been part of a study using an experimental neck device. Now, researchers are expanding the study to include girls who play soccer.
Greg Meyer, PhD, director Sports Medicine Research: “Girls soccer was chosen because we know they have one of the highest rates of injury, in particular concussion injury.”
Seton High School on Cincinnati’s west side was the first soccer team chosen to wear a device called a Q-collar.
Kelly Byrne, Seton soccer player: “We were a little nervous at first because we didn’t know what they were going to look like or how they felt but now we are completely used to them and don’t really notice them at all.”
Greg Myer: “So what the collar is designed to do is to put a specific pressure on the jugular vein. And what that’s doing is putting a small kink in the hose, you might say, of the blood leaving the brain. So the carotid keeps pushing the blood up at the same rate, we are slowing it down as it leaves, and what that does is create immediate back fill in the brain or filling up that free expandable space so the brain is less likely to move when exposed to a head impact.”
The particular study focused heavily on sub-concussive impacts, or smaller blows to the head.
Greg Myer: “We really focused on that total load, or how much the brain is exposed to, head movement or sloshing inside.”
The study also included players from a different girls’ soccer team who did not wear the collar.
Players from both teams wore an accelerometer, a computer chip behind the ear, which tracked every hit sustained during practice and games. Girls from both teams also participated in neuro-imaging so researchers could then analyze the data.
Greg Myer: “What we look at is does that structure change from a pre to post type season situation.
After reviewing data from a 9 months, the results for players wearing the collar were promising.
Greg Myer: “When the athletes were exposed to head impacts of playing sport, we saw that the collar prevented those micro-structural changes in the brain from pre to post season."
This animation shows the changes in the brain from the two different soccer teams. On the left, the gold color reflects all the changes in brain structure for the team that didn’t wear the collar. As you can see, there’s a considerable difference compared to the team on the right who wore the Q-collar and saw very little change.
Greg Myer: “The good news is what we are measuring is tracking back to normal. So after a three-month period of no head impact exposure the girls' brains tracked back to normal."
More research is already under way with studies continuing in both boys' and girls' sports. These female soccer players were glad to help get the ball rolling.
Caroline Klug, Seton player: “It’s nice to be able to be be a part of such a big study that could make such a huge impact with both girls and boys."
Taylor Pitchford, Seton soccer player: “To be able to say, 'Hey, I was part of the study that helped with that.”'
Greg Myer: "Kids' brains are never as safe as they’ve been, so we need to keep kids in sports and that’s the big message we have to take away from this.”
Researchers at Cincinnati Children's have been studying ways to protect athletes from injuries. Boys in area high school athletics have been part of a study using an experimental neck device. Now, researchers are expanding the study to include girls who play soccer.
Greg Meyer, PhD, director Sports Medicine Research: “Girls soccer was chosen because we know they have one of the highest rates of injury, in particular concussion injury.”
Seton High School on Cincinnati’s west side was the first soccer team chosen to wear a device called a Q-collar.
Kelly Byrne, Seton soccer player: “We were a little nervous at first because we didn’t know what they were going to look like or how they felt but now we are completely used to them and don’t really notice them at all.”
Greg Myer: “So what the collar is designed to do is to put a specific pressure on the jugular vein. And what that’s doing is putting a small kink in the hose, you might say, of the blood leaving the brain. So the carotid keeps pushing the blood up at the same rate, we are slowing it down as it leaves, and what that does is create immediate back fill in the brain or filling up that free expandable space so the brain is less likely to move when exposed to a head impact.”
The particular study focused heavily on sub-concussive impacts, or smaller blows to the head.
Greg Myer: “We really focused on that total load, or how much the brain is exposed to, head movement or sloshing inside.”
The study also included players from a different girls’ soccer team who did not wear the collar.
Players from both teams wore an accelerometer, a computer chip behind the ear, which tracked every hit sustained during practice and games. Girls from both teams also participated in neuro-imaging so researchers could then analyze the data.
Greg Myer: “What we look at is does that structure change from a pre to post type season situation.
After reviewing data from a 9 months, the results for players wearing the collar were promising.
Greg Myer: “When the athletes were exposed to head impacts of playing sport, we saw that the collar prevented those micro-structural changes in the brain from pre to post season."
This animation shows the changes in the brain from the two different soccer teams. On the left, the gold color reflects all the changes in brain structure for the team that didn’t wear the collar. As you can see, there’s a considerable difference compared to the team on the right who wore the Q-collar and saw very little change.
Greg Myer: “The good news is what we are measuring is tracking back to normal. So after a three-month period of no head impact exposure the girls' brains tracked back to normal."
More research is already under way with studies continuing in both boys' and girls' sports. These female soccer players were glad to help get the ball rolling.
Caroline Klug, Seton player: “It’s nice to be able to be be a part of such a big study that could make such a huge impact with both girls and boys."
Taylor Pitchford, Seton soccer player: “To be able to say, 'Hey, I was part of the study that helped with that.”'
Greg Myer: "Kids' brains are never as safe as they’ve been, so we need to keep kids in sports and that’s the big message we have to take away from this.”
Brain SLOSH Theory in Action…
"A physician kept emailing me and said he had been studying woodpeckers and figured out a way to prevent concussions," says Greg Myer, Ph.D., FACSM, certified strength and conditioning specialist, director of research and the Human Performance Laboratory at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's Division of Sports Medicine.
His curiosity piqued, Myer agreed to meet with the physician behind the emails. It was David Smith, M.D., a clinician and inventor with a novel idea: What if we replicate the physiology of woodpeckers to protect people from brain trauma?
That was nearly four years ago. Today, Smith is a visiting research scientist at Cincinnati Children's, working with Myer on traumatic brain injury projects.
Myer has long been aware of the dangers of brain trauma for children in sports. He says while helmets are critical, they can't fully protect children from brain injuries. This is because helmets protect the skull but are unable to keep the brain from moving around inside the skull, otherwise known as "brain slosh." This is the culprit for traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI impacts the brain's white matter and results in symptoms ranging from headaches to sleep disruption to cognitive impairment.
Facts about brain trauma
Overall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that up to nearly 4 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur every year in the United States, and children are the most affected.
However, this number underestimates the total occurrences of TBI, since concussions represent only a subset of these brain injuries. The CDC says many individuals suffering from mild or moderate TBI do not seek medical attention.
While relatively little is known about the long-term effects of these brain injuries, the World Health Organization projects that TBI will be the third-leading cause of global disease by 2020.
Inspiration from an unlikely source
So why look to the woodpecker when working for a solution to prevent brain injury? It's all in the physiology.
The bird has a long tongue that wraps around its head, compressing the jugular vein and restricting blood flow out of the skull. As a result, the brain has less room to "slosh." So Smith and his partners developed a collar that replicated this effect on humans. The collar mildly compresses the human jugular vein in a similar fashion, increasing blood volume—effectively creating an "airbag" for the brain in the skull. The collar tested well in animal studies, so Smith was eager to enlist Myer's help in testing it on humans. For Myer, this was a turning point.
"That was the ah-ha moment to say, 'Well, maybe we can mimic this approach in humans and go forward,'" he says.
Putting the collar to the test
Before testing the collar on athletes in competition, Myer conducted several safety trials at the Human Performance Lab at Cincinnati Children's. There, a team tracked a litany of metrics, including neurocognitive measures, oxygen outputs and bloodwork values—as well as reflex time, strength and power measurements. They found no adverse effects on young athletes wearing the collar.
Next, it was onto the field of play. Myer began with an initial test group of 15 high school hockey players, followed by a study of 42 varsity football players, comparing their pre-season, mid-season and post-season MRI brain scans. The findings: the groups that wore the collar throughout the season had experienced significantly less impact on brain tissue than the groups that did not wear the collar.
The quest for prevention
There's been a heightened awareness around concussions across the sports landscape in recent years, placing much of the focus on diagnosis and treatment. But Myer is quick to point out that repetitive impacts over time—without concussion—could actually be more serious than getting a concussion.
So he stresses that more research and funding should be funneled into prevention. "What I would love to see is more people coming up with solutions that are preventive and help our kids play safer," Myer says.
What's next
Testing will continue on the collar before it's approved for use in the United States. For Myer, it's a step in the right direction, one that keeps kids active and engaged in sports—not on the sidelines for fear of injury. "I'm most passionate about keeping kids playing sports and trying to reduce the risk of them playing sports," Myer says.
His curiosity piqued, Myer agreed to meet with the physician behind the emails. It was David Smith, M.D., a clinician and inventor with a novel idea: What if we replicate the physiology of woodpeckers to protect people from brain trauma?
That was nearly four years ago. Today, Smith is a visiting research scientist at Cincinnati Children's, working with Myer on traumatic brain injury projects.
Myer has long been aware of the dangers of brain trauma for children in sports. He says while helmets are critical, they can't fully protect children from brain injuries. This is because helmets protect the skull but are unable to keep the brain from moving around inside the skull, otherwise known as "brain slosh." This is the culprit for traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI impacts the brain's white matter and results in symptoms ranging from headaches to sleep disruption to cognitive impairment.
Facts about brain trauma
Overall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that up to nearly 4 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur every year in the United States, and children are the most affected.
However, this number underestimates the total occurrences of TBI, since concussions represent only a subset of these brain injuries. The CDC says many individuals suffering from mild or moderate TBI do not seek medical attention.
While relatively little is known about the long-term effects of these brain injuries, the World Health Organization projects that TBI will be the third-leading cause of global disease by 2020.
Inspiration from an unlikely source
So why look to the woodpecker when working for a solution to prevent brain injury? It's all in the physiology.
The bird has a long tongue that wraps around its head, compressing the jugular vein and restricting blood flow out of the skull. As a result, the brain has less room to "slosh." So Smith and his partners developed a collar that replicated this effect on humans. The collar mildly compresses the human jugular vein in a similar fashion, increasing blood volume—effectively creating an "airbag" for the brain in the skull. The collar tested well in animal studies, so Smith was eager to enlist Myer's help in testing it on humans. For Myer, this was a turning point.
"That was the ah-ha moment to say, 'Well, maybe we can mimic this approach in humans and go forward,'" he says.
Putting the collar to the test
Before testing the collar on athletes in competition, Myer conducted several safety trials at the Human Performance Lab at Cincinnati Children's. There, a team tracked a litany of metrics, including neurocognitive measures, oxygen outputs and bloodwork values—as well as reflex time, strength and power measurements. They found no adverse effects on young athletes wearing the collar.
Next, it was onto the field of play. Myer began with an initial test group of 15 high school hockey players, followed by a study of 42 varsity football players, comparing their pre-season, mid-season and post-season MRI brain scans. The findings: the groups that wore the collar throughout the season had experienced significantly less impact on brain tissue than the groups that did not wear the collar.
The quest for prevention
There's been a heightened awareness around concussions across the sports landscape in recent years, placing much of the focus on diagnosis and treatment. But Myer is quick to point out that repetitive impacts over time—without concussion—could actually be more serious than getting a concussion.
So he stresses that more research and funding should be funneled into prevention. "What I would love to see is more people coming up with solutions that are preventive and help our kids play safer," Myer says.
What's next
Testing will continue on the collar before it's approved for use in the United States. For Myer, it's a step in the right direction, one that keeps kids active and engaged in sports—not on the sidelines for fear of injury. "I'm most passionate about keeping kids playing sports and trying to reduce the risk of them playing sports," Myer says.
Award from Industrial Designers Society of America…
Awarded in 2017. The Q-Collar is the world’s first technology to use the body’s natural physiology to protect against mild traumatic brain injury caused by concussive events. A revolutionary approach to protecting the brain, Q-Collar addresses the problem from the inside out by mimicking the natural defense used by woodpeckers. The collar applies slight pressure to the neck to mildly increase blood volume in the brain. This creates a cushion that reduces slosh. Initial research on the collar has shown significant reduction in changes to the brain caused by concussive impacts. Q-Collar is a breakthrough for athletics, the military and industry.
Click HERE for the AWARD SITE
Click HERE for the PRIORITY WEBPAGE for the collar
Click HERE for the AWARD SITE
Click HERE for the PRIORITY WEBPAGE for the collar
Major Media Reports…
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Article of November 15, 2016
Why Woodpeckers Don't get Concussions and What it Means for Children's Health
A new approach to preventing brain injuries could reduce dangerous trauma in children who participate in contact sports.
"A physician kept emailing me and said he had been studying woodpeckers and figured out a way to prevent concussions," says Greg Myer, Ph.D., FACSM, certified strength and conditioning specialist, director of research and the Human Performance Laboratory at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center's Division of Sports Medicine.
His curiosity piqued, Myer agreed to meet with the physician behind the emails. It was David Smith, M.D., a clinician and inventor with a novel idea: What if we replicate the physiology of woodpeckers to protect people from brain trauma?
That was nearly four years ago. Today, Smith is a visiting research scientist at Cincinnati Children's, working with Myer on traumatic brain injury projects.
Myer has long been aware of the dangers of brain trauma for children in sports. He says while helmets are critical, they can't fully protect children from brain injuries. This is because helmets protect the skull but are unable to keep the brain from moving around inside the skull, otherwise known as "brain slosh." This is the culprit for traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI impacts the brain's white matter and results in symptoms ranging from headaches to sleep disruption to cognitive impairment.
Facts about brain trauma
Overall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that up to nearly 4 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur every year in the United States, and children are the most affected.
However, this number underestimates the total occurrences of TBI, since concussions represent only a subset of these brain injuries. The CDC says many individuals suffering from mild or moderate TBI do not seek medical attention.
While relatively little is known about the long-term effects of these brain injuries, the World Health Organization projects that TBI will be the third-leading cause of global disease by 2020.
Inspiration from an unlikely source
So why look to the woodpecker when working for a solution to prevent brain injury? It's all in the physiology.
The bird has a long tongue that wraps around its head, compressing the jugular vein and restricting blood flow out of the skull. As a result, the brain has less room to "slosh." So Smith and his partners developed a collar that replicated this effect on humans. The collar mildly compresses the human jugular vein in a similar fashion, increasing blood volume—effectively creating an "airbag" for the brain in the skull. The collar tested well in animal studies, so Smith was eager to enlist Myer's help in testing it on humans. For Myer, this was a turning point.
"That was the ah-ha moment to say, 'Well, maybe we can mimic this approach in humans and go forward,'" he says.
Putting the collar to the test
Before testing the collar on athletes in competition, Myer conducted several safety trials at the Human Performance Lab at Cincinnati Children's. There, a team tracked a litany of metrics, including neurocognitive measures, oxygen outputs and bloodwork values—as well as reflex time, strength and power measurements. They found no adverse effects on young athletes wearing the collar.
Next, it was onto the field of play. Myer began with an initial test group of 15 high school hockey players, followed by a study of 42 varsity football players, comparing their pre-season, mid-season and post-season MRI brain scans. The findings: the groups that wore the collar throughout the season had experienced significantly less impact on brain tissue than the groups that did not wear the collar.
The quest for prevention
There's been a heightened awareness around concussions across the sports landscape in recent years, placing much of the focus on diagnosis and treatment. But Myer is quick to point out that repetitive impacts over time—without concussion—could actually be more serious than getting a concussion.
So he stresses that more research and funding should be funneled into prevention. "What I would love to see is more people coming up with solutions that are preventive and help our kids play safer," Myer says.
What's next
Testing will continue on the collar before it's approved for use in the United States. For Myer, it's a step in the right direction, one that keeps kids active and engaged in sports—not on the sidelines for fear of injury. "I'm most passionate about keeping kids playing sports and trying to reduce the risk of them playing sports," Myer says.
His curiosity piqued, Myer agreed to meet with the physician behind the emails. It was David Smith, M.D., a clinician and inventor with a novel idea: What if we replicate the physiology of woodpeckers to protect people from brain trauma?
That was nearly four years ago. Today, Smith is a visiting research scientist at Cincinnati Children's, working with Myer on traumatic brain injury projects.
Myer has long been aware of the dangers of brain trauma for children in sports. He says while helmets are critical, they can't fully protect children from brain injuries. This is because helmets protect the skull but are unable to keep the brain from moving around inside the skull, otherwise known as "brain slosh." This is the culprit for traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI impacts the brain's white matter and results in symptoms ranging from headaches to sleep disruption to cognitive impairment.
Facts about brain trauma
Overall, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that up to nearly 4 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur every year in the United States, and children are the most affected.
However, this number underestimates the total occurrences of TBI, since concussions represent only a subset of these brain injuries. The CDC says many individuals suffering from mild or moderate TBI do not seek medical attention.
While relatively little is known about the long-term effects of these brain injuries, the World Health Organization projects that TBI will be the third-leading cause of global disease by 2020.
Inspiration from an unlikely source
So why look to the woodpecker when working for a solution to prevent brain injury? It's all in the physiology.
The bird has a long tongue that wraps around its head, compressing the jugular vein and restricting blood flow out of the skull. As a result, the brain has less room to "slosh." So Smith and his partners developed a collar that replicated this effect on humans. The collar mildly compresses the human jugular vein in a similar fashion, increasing blood volume—effectively creating an "airbag" for the brain in the skull. The collar tested well in animal studies, so Smith was eager to enlist Myer's help in testing it on humans. For Myer, this was a turning point.
"That was the ah-ha moment to say, 'Well, maybe we can mimic this approach in humans and go forward,'" he says.
Putting the collar to the test
Before testing the collar on athletes in competition, Myer conducted several safety trials at the Human Performance Lab at Cincinnati Children's. There, a team tracked a litany of metrics, including neurocognitive measures, oxygen outputs and bloodwork values—as well as reflex time, strength and power measurements. They found no adverse effects on young athletes wearing the collar.
Next, it was onto the field of play. Myer began with an initial test group of 15 high school hockey players, followed by a study of 42 varsity football players, comparing their pre-season, mid-season and post-season MRI brain scans. The findings: the groups that wore the collar throughout the season had experienced significantly less impact on brain tissue than the groups that did not wear the collar.
The quest for prevention
There's been a heightened awareness around concussions across the sports landscape in recent years, placing much of the focus on diagnosis and treatment. But Myer is quick to point out that repetitive impacts over time—without concussion—could actually be more serious than getting a concussion.
So he stresses that more research and funding should be funneled into prevention. "What I would love to see is more people coming up with solutions that are preventive and help our kids play safer," Myer says.
What's next
Testing will continue on the collar before it's approved for use in the United States. For Myer, it's a step in the right direction, one that keeps kids active and engaged in sports—not on the sidelines for fear of injury. "I'm most passionate about keeping kids playing sports and trying to reduce the risk of them playing sports," Myer says.
Are Young Athletes Risking BrainDamage?
Sports leagues should do more to protect children from the long-term problems that stem from hits to the head.
- by Amanda Schaffer December 14, 2015
In the new movie Concussion, Will Smith plays a neuropathologist who performed a game-changing autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster in 2002. After a career in which Webster earned four Super Bowl rings and a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he suffered from memory loss, depression, and dementia, was homeless at times, and died at age 50. (The movie is based on a GQ article that describes Webster’s psychiatric symptoms, including “pissing in his oven and squirting Super Glue on his rotting teeth.”) When the neuropathologist, Bennet Omalu, analyzed Webster’s brain tissue, he discovered clumps of tau proteins, generally associated with neurodegeneration. In 2005, he published a paper arguing that Webster had suffered from what he recognized as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, brought on by more than two decades of brain battering on the field.
As Omalu and others studied the brains of dozens of former players who had died, they continued to discover signs of CTE. Not surprisingly, the National Football League fought to discredit the work, possibly hoping to avoid expensive disability payments to ex-players. “You’re going to war with a corporation that owns a day of the week,” an associate warns Omalu in Concussion. Yet despite the NFL’s obstructionism, the connection between repetitive head injury and neurodegenerative disease has only grown stronger with time. While many athletes who suffer concussions do not go on to develop CTE, every time it crops up in an autopsy it’s in someone who “had a history of repetitive hits to the head,” says Robert Stern, director of the clinical core of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the Boston University School of Medicine.
The issue now extends far beyond the NFL to children who play football, soccer, hockey, and other sports, especially because new research is revealing the pervasiveness of head injury in young athletes. Neuroscientists are finding that concussion can affect brain function in subtle ways, and that kids may have a special vulnerability. It’s possible that better helmets and other equipment could play some role in reducing the risk, but they are unlikely to solve the problem. It’s time to change the rules of the games.
As Omalu and others studied the brains of dozens of former players who had died, they continued to discover signs of CTE. Not surprisingly, the National Football League fought to discredit the work, possibly hoping to avoid expensive disability payments to ex-players. “You’re going to war with a corporation that owns a day of the week,” an associate warns Omalu in Concussion. Yet despite the NFL’s obstructionism, the connection between repetitive head injury and neurodegenerative disease has only grown stronger with time. While many athletes who suffer concussions do not go on to develop CTE, every time it crops up in an autopsy it’s in someone who “had a history of repetitive hits to the head,” says Robert Stern, director of the clinical core of the Alzheimer’s Disease Center at the Boston University School of Medicine.
The issue now extends far beyond the NFL to children who play football, soccer, hockey, and other sports, especially because new research is revealing the pervasiveness of head injury in young athletes. Neuroscientists are finding that concussion can affect brain function in subtle ways, and that kids may have a special vulnerability. It’s possible that better helmets and other equipment could play some role in reducing the risk, but they are unlikely to solve the problem. It’s time to change the rules of the games.
