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Local Man Develops Headband To Reduce Head Trauma

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Peters High School junior Rachel Corrigan loves playing basketball, but now she wears a special head band designed to protect her.

"I took an elbow to the head during practice, and I didn't feel good after that," Corrigan told KDKA money editor Jon Delano.

She suffered a concussion last December, and it wasn't her first.

"That one I got from a ball being thrown to the back of my head, and I just remember feeling dizzy and sick," Corrigan added.

Now Rachel wears a head band developed by Pittsburgh entrepreneur Federico Olivares.

"I felt a lot safer on the court with it. It gave me my confidence back on the court to play without feeling 'I'm going to be hit again, I'll be out for another month.'"

More than 300,000 sports-related concussions occur in the United States every year in almost every sport from football to soccer to basketball to hockey to skiing.

But while parents worry about concussions, more suffer other non-concussive injuries to the head.

The National Institute of Health says 2 million people each year sustain head injuries, one every 15 seconds.

A bike fall got Olivares, a Cranberry resident, involved.

"I saw my son fall down and hit his head on the concrete. He was wearing a bicycle helmet and, unfortunately, the bicycle helmet didn't protect him a lot," said Olivares.

He wanted something that would protect his son's head.

"I was really looking for one product that could really protect my kids -- and any kids -- throughout the year, so if there was one product that I could give them that they could use in multiple sports, what would it look like -- and that's really the birth of 2nd Skull."

Olivares couldn't find that one product, so he developed his own -- a head band and a skull cap for under a helmet that, he says, adds from 35 to 60 percent more impact protection.

Delano: "What's the material?"

Olivares: "It's a soft urethane called XRD and basically the material hardens upon impact. So the great thing about this material is that it is very soft, flexible, but at sudden impact it hardens and that's how we add the protection."

To test this impact absorption, Olivares showed me regular foam found in helmets and his patented material in his products.

Delano: "That just bounces right off."

Olivares: "Yes, so, big bounce means big impact. When an athlete is playing a sport in a helmet environment or head gear environment, that is not adding a lot of protection. Now I am going to show you the impact absorption protection of 2nd Skull."

The head band is a very comfortable, light weight product, but local company officials have to be very careful about claiming how much protection it really provides.

Dr. Micky Collins is the director of UPMC's Sports Concussion Program.

When it comes to concussions, Dr. Collins says, "There is no technology that we're aware of that will mitigate that from happening if we get hit hard enough."

But Collins says it's important to experiment and to reduce other skull trauma, too.

"I encourage companies, scientists to create things that they feel theoretically can play a role."

2nd Skull makes no claims about concussions, but, says Olivares, "We know that even non-concussive head injuries also lead to long-term health effects -- that's where we really want to play."

2nd Skull bands and caps are available online and should be available in major retailers later this spring.

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