Emily Kwong

It's your brain stem, which connects your brain to your spinal cord.

That's kind of important for your whole nervous system.

So all these impacts, they add up.

Well, think about the fact that these athletes, when they are training, they are doing these runs multiple times a day.

They're competitive.

They want to get as good as possible.

They want to practice.

And if they have a high G-force run, which by the way, the sport wouldn't be monitoring for.

No one's tracking G-forces on the track.

So they're getting exposure to these forces.

Maybe they don't know.

Maybe they have some sled head, but they're like, I'm going to keep going.

If their coaches don't pull them and they're not recovering from those races, the concern for scientists is that the accumulated trauma can create long-term effects.

And this is creating a real conversation in the sliding sports because over the last 15 years, there have been a number of high-profile suicides and drug overdoses from retired athletes, some of whom have had brain health issues.

So the question is, how can we make the sport maybe safer when the federations that oversee it, they're looking out for concussions for sure, but are they monitoring sled head in the same way?

Yes.

Okay.

This was the number one mystery for me working on this story.

I found a neuropsychologist named Aaliyah Snyder who used to be a skeleton athlete.

And she's made it her mission to work with athletes on issues like this.