Protective Hat/Helmet to Prevent PCS Recurrence
 

It seems like a lot of people complain that minor head bumps bring back their symptoms or wipe out their progress, myself included. For me each head bump sets me back about a year and then by the time a year passes by I bump my head again and that's why my pcs has been going on 6 years now.

I think the best solution is to protect the head with a helmet or protective hat or bump cap. Here are a few of the more stylish ones.

Ribcap The best adaptive fashion helmet for people with special needs

LINERZ INSERTS

https://crasche.com/

I have to the second and third one. The Linerz insert is great because you can put it in any hat. The Crashe hat has a 6-piece hard shell but the rubber is really thin. Neither fits as well as I would like so I plan on purchasing the Ribcap soon. It has the thickest padding and comes in different sizes so it should work best.

I suggest getting several hats so you have a variety to wear for different times of the day or various activities. Given the devastating consequences of a head bump or repeat concussion it would be wise to wear a helmet at all times.

Does anyone else have experience with these? Do you wish you were wearing one when you bumped your head?

Drew, It is very distressing to see what you have gone through. Your experience is an extreme outlier to all of the PCS sufferers I have ever known.

While I don't deny your experience, I don't believe anybody should be taking the extreme steps you do without first seriously considering any and all other remedies.

The practical value of the helmet systems you note is minimal at anything but very low level impacts. Reducing a 10 G impact to an 8 G impact may be noticeable but reducing a 50 G impact to a 45 G impact is not going to make much of a difference.

Walking down steps can generate 4 G vertical impacts. Those helmets do not help with that.

Keep in mind that each successive head bump is harder to recover from and the symptoms get worse, and if you get another concussion before the first one heals, that's bad news. If you can get through your concussion without banging your head, then great, ignore this thread. But if you've already had one or two setbacks from head bumps then you should consider head protection because the longer your PCS drags on, the higher the risk of another head bump. And if that happens then you will sink deeper into the pit that is PCS and then it will be harder to climb out than it ever was at the beginning, before the first head bump.

By the way, the Ribcap was impact tested by the British Standards Institute and it meets the rugby headgear standard, so don't write it off is useless. The others may not be as good, so that's why I added a thicker shock-absorbing material, cork, to the Crashe hat.

Bench testing helmets is quite different than practical use. The data is still being collected about the changes in concussions and sub-concussive impacts.

The bigger indicator of prolonged recovery from a concussion is not additional bumps. It is a pre-existing condition of anxiety or depression. A pre-existing anxiety and depression condition exists in something like 80% of prolonged PCS. They can use pre-existing anxiety to predict a prolonged recovery.

Wearing a helmet can enable the OCD/anxiety behaviors of such a person.

Encouraging others to become just as anxious and obsessive by using a helmet can be counter productive.