If you don’t mind I’d like to slip into Medical mode for all you
cyclists out here, here’s a discussion that I have with my injured
cyclists clients and the parents of young cyclists.
The human brain
weighs approximately 3.0/1.5k pounds. It is sitting in a semi-opaque
fluid called cerebral spinal fluid. It is inside your skull surrounded
by seven layers of protective tissue and you’re a custom-fitted housing,
the cranium (bone). That skull (which may sound über bullet proof) is
only (think really carefully about this number) one-ten of an inch
(2.945-2.972mm, male/female) thick. That's it. And your brain is
attached to the human body only at its base (with the various veins that
flow into nourishing and enriching and taking away the brain activity
by-products). That's it! The attachment, in its basest analysis,
makes the brain like a neural punching bag wobbling back and forth on
your brain stem.
The human body has been essentially unchanged for
the last 200,000 years. Two hundred thousand years ago there was no
pavement, sidewalks, trucks, trailers, helmets, wheels, houses,
buildings, gas tanks, steel, plastic, glass, wire or anything that
humans invented in the last 10,000 years. The human body at that time,
as it is today, can run, walk approximately 3.1mph/5.0kph miles per
hour. The average human can run 12-15 mph/19.3-24.1kph. Those folks ran
faster would have exceeded their body design tolerances and injured
themselves with any type of fall. Look at it another way and you can see
why people who ran faster than 12 mph are not in our genetic pool. So
the human body, specifically to our discussion the skull, evolved to
tolerate speeds less than the fastest the body could run. You run
faster you are going to get hurt. Your body isn’t designed to go that
fast.
One alarming thing about our bodies’ design: if you were
standing completely upright and were to lose all motor control and
collapse to the ground from an average height, let’s say 5'9
inches/.5'4" [average man/woman], you would injure yourself, including
your brain pretty seriously. So humans that pass out spontaneously, are
also not in our genetic pool.
Look at where all the cool stuff is that you do is located:
Let’s
talk about hurting the brain. Back to the “coup-contrecoup.” When the
brain wobbles, it collides with the inside of your skull. There’s name
for the injury to the brain from this internal trauma of the punching
bag: “coup-contrecoup.” This is a bad thing. Trauma front, back or
sides is going to cause your brain to experience trauma with
coup-contrecoup, and will damage the neural cells bodies, the sheath
coating the connections between the cells, or the connection or cause
blood vessels to burst also resulting in brain damage. And this is
without fracturing your skull. So if you were not genetically designed
to not pass out, you’d fall and chances are, sooner or later, injure
your brain, maybe pretty bad.
So, you are designed to no pass out
and not run faster than your body can tolerate. All of this leads can
lead us to the following conclusion: if you are riding a bicycle taller
than your body and you are proceeding faster than the human body is
designed to withstand you have all the necessary forces for, in
engineering speak: exceeding your design tolerance specs. Which means
you can end up breaking your cranium, your skull, should your cranium
come in contact with the objects that were not around 200,000 years ago
at a speed your one-tenth of an inch skull isn’t designed to handle.
From my clients over the past 26 years of doing personal injury I know
breaking your cranium can result in cerebral spinal fluid leaking out of
your ear, leaking out of any cracks in your skull. But, that’s not all
that would be leaking out. Once the tissue is damaged, it’s ripped, so
blood would also “leaks” out too. Or the blood might even stay in your
brain, which is actually a bad thing, a very bad thing. Blood, as
neurosurgeons will tell you, is a toxic substance to neural tissue,
especially brain cells, all brain cells. Sufficient blood leakage on
the brain as we know from stroke victims (where blood vessels break in
the brain), results in loss of function, palsy, memory, sensory (think
-loss of sight, smell, hearing).
Why I am I discussing this? I’ll
tell you, but first, answer this for me please: Where do you think your
sense of humor is located? Where do you think memories of learning to
ride a bike are? your significant other’s phone number is stored, the
combination to your bike lock, your underwear size, how much milk you
have in the refrigerator is? Where do you thing your preference for
your color, style of clothes, favorite food, your personality, decision
making skills, your language skills, your memories, your hearing
abilities, your visual abilities, your ability to walk, your ability to
not defecate or urinate on yourself, to move your eyes, to keep your
eyes open, to hear. Where’s that located? Your brain.
Look where all the stuff you do is located:
As a back
drop to this discussion, keep in mind (pun not intended) your brain is
where all this sits. “But that is not all” said the cat in the hat, that
is not all: Everything that makes you you, your personality, your
accent, your self control, your vocabulary, your likes and dislikes,
favorite movie, favorite sights, sounds and feels, are housed in that
very delicate tissue and that very delicate structure on essentially
punching bag design. That very structure which you are propelling along
at more than the speed than your human body was designed to
tolerate......
This all brings me to my point: wear your helmet
properly. “Ah,” you say, “I wear my helmet!” Really? Ask yourself this
$25,000 question: is it properly worn? Here’s story that happened four
weeks ago. A riding buddy companion relayed to me the case of a cyclist
who went off pavement and reentered trail incorrectly falling over onto
the pavement’s shoulder. He had a helmet on, however. His injuries?
Well, according to my friend, there was a pool of blood which occupied
half of the trail of about 10 feet's width. The cyclist was unconscious
and did not know who he was other than a guy in intense pain.
Paramedics, not just EMTs were called and drove the big truck onto the
trail some three miles in to pick him up and rush him to the emergency
department. Three weeks later, when I saw this very same cyclist after
the incident. He said he had sustained three fracture sites in the
orbital bones just above his left eye, (right where his helmet was
supposed to have been) a mild TBI (traumatic brain injury). What he
didn't know (that I did because I see the bills for these types of
injuries) was what his hospital bill was like: on the average $25,000 to
50,000 for a brain injury. What struck me was that he had had his
helmet on, however when I saw he had an inch and a half gap from the
bottom of his chin to where the strap was: the strap was not tight
enough to have kept his helmet in place. It didn't keep the helmet where
it could so it could have protected him. I pointed this out to him and
told him he’d get to repeat that experience again if he didn’t tighten
up.
Keep all this in mind next time you put on your helmet: “Do the
tighten up” Like Archie Bell and the Dells of Houston Texas. If it’s
not tightened, it’s not going to work; it will move out of the way as
you fall. If it doesn’t work, your brain is at risk. If your brain is at
risk, your personality, your memories and the ability to keep yourself
from defecating on yourself are at risk. Have a nice day!
