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Print7 Healthcast: Safety on the slopes
Archived Reports:
You may have noticed during the Olympics that the skiers and snowboarders wear helmets. But in the United States only about one-third of skiers or snowboarders wear helmets. Now, that may change because of a new study out of Norway. It comes right in the middle of ski season and the findings shouldn't come as a surprise; helmets dramatically reduce head injuries.
Do you wear a helmet on the slopes? Skier Trond Engebretsen doesn’t. "I've been doing this for such a long time without the helmet and I still do without."
A new study about helmets may just change his mind. Researchers at The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, in Oslo, studied head injury rates in thousands of skiers and snowboarders.
Dr. Roald Bahr says, "First of all, the study showed that head injuries are very common. One in every six injuries in the study was a head injury."
And snowboarding head injuries were twice as common as skiing head injuries. "Wearing a helmet, if you're a skier or snowboarder, reduces your risk of having a head injury by 60 percent," explains Dr. Bahr.
Researchers found that whether you’re young or old, beginner or experienced on the slopes, helmets protect from injury. So Dr. Bahr says, "It seems like it is a smart thing to wear a helmet if you ski or snowboard. Even if you're not going for Olympic gold, but you are skiing or snowboarding just for fun or pleasure."
Some on the slopes already take that advice. Skier Trude Strom Solberg says, "I have two small children and they have to wear a helmet when skiing and they started to ask me, why are you not wearing a helmet Mommy? And also I feel safer and it's quite comfortable to wear."
The findings appear in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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