Editorials

So As it Turns Out, Banging Your Head a Bunch Can Be Bad for Your Brain

  • Axl Rosenberg
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Who would ever guessed that headbanging could be bad for your brain? Okay, sure, so the brain is, like, delicate and way important and stuff, but if your skull isn’t there to keep it safe while you rock out to Slayer, then what the fuck is it good for?

So this new study by The Lancet, which is titled — I swear to Christ — “Chronic subdural haematoma secondary to headbanging,” is SHOCKING. SHOCKING, I SAY!!!

The study is centered on an anonymous fifty-year-old man who went to the doctor complaining of severe headaches. So they gave him a CT scan and found that his goddamn brain was bleeding (that’s the whole “chronic subdural haematoma” bit). Initially, Doctors couldn’t discern the source of the man’s malady — until he revealed that he had recently spent time headbanging at a Motörhead concert, at which point the pieces started coming together.

The study, as summed up by The Daily Beast, asserts that “headbanging, with its brisk forward and backward acceleration and deceleration forces, led to rupturing of bridging veins causing haemorrhage.” Which is bad. Still, the medical experts who authored it managed to work in a compliment to the band: “[This] serves as evidence in support of Motörhead’s reputation as one of the most hardcore rock’n’roll acts on earth, if nothing else because of their contagious speed drive and the hazardous potential for headbanging fans to suffer brain injury.” So that’s something about which Lemmy can be proud.

Not that this revelation will discourage metal fans from headbanging in the future anyway*, but the doctors who wrote the study also say that this risk of this happening to someone is “very, very low.” So you should feel safe knowing you can headbang at that show tonight and still be able to type enough to leave moronic comments on MetalSucks tomorrow morning.

*I mean, there really are riffs out there which just seem to induce involuntary banging of the noggin. Also, stage diving and moshing already have their own safety risks. If we don’t headbang, fuck are we gonna do at shows? Sit down and applaud politely like fuckin’ Ben Folds fans? Pfffffffttt, fuck that noise, right?

[via Lambgoat]

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