Get Your Head In The Game

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This past summer new information was released by the Journal of Radiology about the difference between male and females in brain damage from heading soccer balls. This study revealed that women experience greater brain damage than men do. Research also revealed that women experience symptoms and suffering for longer than men do. This research, that was just done in the past year, is looking at something no one has considered until now. This means that up until recently, doctors assumed that males and females were experiencing damage to their brain from heading soccer balls in the exact same way. This assumption could be potentially dangerous to the women getting diagnosed with concussions because doctors truly do not know enough about how this condition is affecting them.  This is just one example of a lack of knowledge and understanding regarding crucial health concerns for women.

            It is now common knowledge for most Americans about the dangers of sports like football because of injuries such as concussions. There is even a movie, starring Will Smith, dedicated to talking about the discovery of the dangers of concussions in football players. The narrative that is being created about concussions is shaped around the idea that it is a man's injury because football is held as the main focus. Concussions are associated with being rough and tough. Females are inherently not considered in danger of getting hurt because they do not “typically” participate in such aggressive activities. With all this talk and focus on football and males, we are neglecting to learn more about females who are suffering from concussions.

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            Research presented in 2017 by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons revealed that high school girls have a significantly higher concussion rate than boys. This startling new information about concussions challenges what we previously thought about concussions. It is not just a male-dominated injury; it is even more prominent in females. Female soccer players are at the greatest risk for concussions. Soccer, a sport that does not contain the similar roughness of football, is an equal if not greater contributor to concussions. And women are the ones who are mostly affected by this. The women getting concussions from soccer are just as important as the men who get concussions from football.  And yet, no one started talking about women and concussions until just now. That says a lot about the lack of concern the medical field has for female health overall.

            An explanation for why research is only now starting to emerge about concussions involving women is the ignorance of the medical society that has a limited scope and awareness for women's health. This comes from the fact that the people running studies, giving out grants and publishing are typically men (Dusenbery 32). These men are looking at things that are relevant to them. Long lasting trauma from male-dominated sports, for example, is a great example of what scares men. Therefore, they focus on one narrow aspect of the problem and that alone. They fail to broaden their view and think about who else is being affected by this problem.  Because of this lack of curiosity about females, women suffer by not receiving all the possible knowledge they can about their health.

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An argument could be made with the fact that women are more likely than men to report concussion symptoms. This information could skew the data to why women have higher concussion rates. Though this is a valid point, we do not know why women are more likely to report their symptoms. It could be that they are reporting them more because the different damage in their brain makes symptoms more prominent. Doctors were aware that women were reporting more serious symptoms following concussions, but brushed that information aside and chalked it up to women simply speaking up more about their problems. This is an extremely bold assumption for doctors to make about all females suffering from concussions. 

Instead of actually taking action and figuring out a potential cause for why women are reporting severe symptoms, they ignored and discredited them. Not believing or listening to females when it comes to their health is invalidating their knowledge of how their body works and feels. Doctors should try to understand these concerns and work with female concussion patients to further understand what is going on within their bodies.

It is clear that the medical field needs to start putting time, money and interest into this cause if we ever want to see more information come to light. We do not have all the answers to this issue because no one has cared to look into it until now. This is the beginning of a new era of understanding how male and female bodies function differently at times. It is time doctors stop disregarding women's experiences and symptoms from concussions and putting them at risk because of this. It is ignorant to naturally assume that how a male's brain works is exactly how a female brain works, too. If doctors had actually cared and listened earlier they might have realized something was going on with females and concussions a long time ago.
Sources
Fox, Maggie. “Heading a Soccer Ball Affects Women's Brains More than Men's, Study Finds.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 31 July 2018, www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/heading-soccer-ball-harms-women-more-men-study-finds-n896236.
“AAOS.” American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, 10 Mar. 2017, aaos-annualmeeting-presskit.org/2017/research-news/concussions_hsu/.
DUSENBERY, MAYA. DOING HARM: the Truth about How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed,... Misdiagnosed, and Sick. HARPERONE, 2018.