Marcella La Cioppa A new study has revealed that years and years of breakdancing and doing somersaults on your head can cause a painful bump on your skull.
Breakdancing often appears to almost mock physics, but, unfortunately, such artistic endeavors do translate into some pretty serious real-life consequences. On the count of almost twenty years of spins, one dancer began to feel something quite strange: a painful bump on the crown of his scalp that was growing in size.
This rare and odd condition has been documented by doctors, who have referred to it as a “breakdance bulge” or “head hole.” And although the breakdancers themselves have been conscious of the strange phenomenon for a number of years, it had never been indicated or underlined by the medical world. It wasn’t until recently, thanks to a current case, that it finally teased doctors’ interests .
The study
This is a rare condition resulting from chronic friction between the scalp and the floor. This professional dancer had been performing head spins for over 19 years and trained five days a week, 1.5 hours daily, with two to seven minutes of spinning on his head in each session.
The painful lump had thickened to about an inch and had become so visible that the dancer began wearing a hat in public to obscure it.
Finally, the dancer visited the doctors, and the specialists he consulted worked at Copenhagen University Hospital. This team of experts tried to find out the reason for this mysterious bump, and from an MRI, it came forward that though it thickened to more than an inch, it was benign.
Guilty party? Chronic scalp trauma from years of head spins. Physicians termed it an “overuse injury,” akin to what happens to athletes who wear out a particular part of the body through repetitive action. In this case, the damage was focused on the skin and soft tissues of the scalp, forming what the doctors called in their report the “cone-head sign.”
It is generally characterized by initial alopecia, followed by development of a mass after repeated trauma to the scalp.
A real but rare breakdancing hazard
While this kind of injury in relation to breakdancing is rare, it is not impossible. In fact, this was not the first time this problem cropped up with a dancer. However, the case throws light on the risks that might be wider and to which the break-dancers are more likely to get exposed. Dr. Christian Baastrup Sondergaard, one of the authors of the case study says, “”Early signs of the ‘breakdance bulge'” should be taken as an alarm to reduce or avoid head spins.
Source: BMJ ase Reports
