ThermaHelm wants to save your life by cooling your brain
When someone receives a head injury in most sports, a cold pack is immediately applied to reduce brain swelling. Brain swelling is bad because your skull doesn't give the brain much room to expand, subjecting it to undue pressure which can lead to death. So it makes sense that creating a system capable of immediately cooling your brain upon impact could reduce the chances of injury or death should you land on your head. That's the thinking behind ThermaHelm, the company has created a retrofittable chemical cold pack designed to activate upon impact and capable of fitting into existing helmets.How does it work? Simple, a very slim plastic packet contains separate compartments for gel or water and ammonium nitrate is inserted into the helmet lining, surrounding your head. "Triggers" or tiny spikes calibrated to pierce the internal compartments at a given force activate in a crash, mixing the ammonium nitrate with the gel or water and an endothermic reaction makes the pack very cold. It can be stored for long periods at a wide range of temperatures.
Still in prototype stage, ThermaHelm expects its cold packs to add around $250 to the price of a helmet, a price that would likely reduce significantly should a helmet manufacturer adopt the technology and integrate it in production. ThermaHelm also envisions including an LED indicator to warn of premature activation, tiny cameras capable of recording a crash, integrated Bluetooth headphones and fog-free visors, but that all seems to be merely icing on the cake for a new technology that could help reduce the chances of brain injury in motorcycle accidents.
Thermahelm
Wes Siler. November 25, 2009 — Permalink
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This is an intriguing idea that appears to have scientific validity. I hope HFL will post an update when the results of the clinical trials are published.
I'm thankful that we've got people thinking about ways to keep riders alive.
big results are sometimes achieved through small steps..sounds simple and good..i bet they have a g sensor to trigger it which could make it pretty reliable and simple
Wow. Very clever indeed. I'm sure many riders will overlook the benefits of this to get the latest "tribal" silly paint scheme though...
Either that guy has a pea head or they've modeled it after Dark Helmet from Space Balls.
Simply brilliant....
hope it fixes my new slightly loose fitting shark!?
Sounds f'in brilliant.
I want this.
(Slightly scared of a premature brainfreeze).
And the fog-free visors.
And while they're at it visorwipers?
It still strikes me that you're not allowed to use your car when your windscreenwipers don't work, when we don't even have any.
(Trying to find the right speed and right angle to hold your head so most of it rolls off your visor...)
Badical.
I'm a paramedic in an EMS system where we use active cooling to save brain function in post-cardiac arrest patients who we manage to resuscitate. In the field we use very cold saline administered IV and usually six or eight of the little cold packs placed around the neck , in the groin, and anywhere else convenient. It takes a great deal of cooling to make even a small change in tympanic (eardrum) temperature, and our treatment injects the person with two liters of nearly frozen saltwater. The idea isn't fundamentally flawed, but to make it work you'd have to ride around with a five pound ice pack in your helmet. The increased velocity of your now heavier head inside a rock-hard SNELL rated helment may well add to the problem by increasing the G-load. just my 2 cents.
Will it work on hot summer days if the rider shakes his head a little bit? 'cause if it does it's a great achievement!
Will it work with no helmet? Harley guys mught be interested...
ThermaHelm does not use heavy "ice" as proposed above; it uses light weight chemicals. Intravenous cooling is different technology to ThermaHelm and is intended to cool the whole body. ThermaHelm targets only the bruised brain tissue and does not aim to create a whole-body hypothermic state - only to maintain a 37 degree brain temp to stave-off oxygen loss (ischemia) due to flattened capillaries.
We ride bikes and just want to save lives of our fellow brothers on wheels.
See www.thermahelm.com for more information.
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