Speaker 1: It's night Side with Dan Ray on w b Z,
Speaker 1: Boston's new radio.
Speaker 2: Well, it's been an interesting day, that's for sure. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much to call. My name's Dan Ray. We
Speaker 2: have an interesting four hours ahead of us tonight. Rob
Speaker 2: Brooks is back in the control room and we do
Speaker 2: have lots to talk about. We have four very interesting
Speaker 2: guests coming up this hour. We're going to deal with
Speaker 2: the projection for the new England ski season. I'm going
Speaker 2: to talk about signs of concussion. I'm going to talk
Speaker 2: about a mass lottery toy drive that's upcoming, as well
Speaker 2: as a new Celtics lottery ticket. But first we're going
Speaker 2: to talk with doctor Kyro Bobinette. She's a physician and
Speaker 2: public health leader. And doctor Bobinette, welcome to Nightside. You
Speaker 2: are going to explain to us something called habanula. I
Speaker 2: have never heard of. How what's that? How we pronounce
Speaker 2: it habenula?
Speaker 3: How could I missla?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Language?
Speaker 5: Is that Spanish exactly?
Speaker 3: I think it's foreign language?
Speaker 2: And what does it mean? What does it mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: So it's basically a tiny area of our brain that
Speaker 5: is controlling everything that we do or don't do, and
Speaker 5: it's new information that is you know, really important to
Speaker 5: our lives.
Speaker 2: So so so the word itself is a means a
Speaker 2: tiny portion of our brain. It's not a word that
Speaker 2: we have lifted from another language. It is actually right
Speaker 2: Spanish origin, uh and it and it talks to us
Speaker 2: as a haben hula. Habenula is that thela okay ben,
Speaker 2: how been you? I got it?
Speaker 3: Now you get it?
Speaker 2: A biological response fueling stress and motivation loss. So this
Speaker 2: doesn't sound like a good thing because it fuels stress
Speaker 2: and motivation loss. Yeah, apparently is being evidenced at this
Speaker 2: point because of post election symptoms.
Speaker 5: That's yeah, that's that's the that's the sort of like
Speaker 5: practical application that we can see in our lives.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I suppose that our motivation. I assume which
Speaker 2: side of the political spectrum. I assume that most Republicans
Speaker 2: are not feeling stress and motivation loss. They're probably feeling
Speaker 2: enlightened or enlivened at this point from as a result
Speaker 2: of all levels.
Speaker 5: Yeah, on some levels, certainly, you know, forty nine point
Speaker 5: two percent of the country is feeling a really heavy
Speaker 5: have anilla hit and loss of motivation. It also controls depression, anxiety,
Speaker 5: drives addictions. I mean, this is a very powerful, little
Speaker 5: tiny spot in your brain and it's just coming to
Speaker 5: light now how powerful this area is over our behavior?
Speaker 2: Okay, how we feel? Why is it coming to light now?
Speaker 2: Is it because of this election which which occurred eight
Speaker 2: days ago, or is this something that that the scientific
Speaker 2: community of which you are apart has finally located and
Speaker 2: identified this lootle portion of the brain.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's it's very rapidly being studied in both.
Speaker 3: Animals and humans, and about.
Speaker 5: Ten years ago had a burst onto the scene with
Speaker 5: association with depression loss. It is triggered by all kinds
Speaker 5: of forms of failure, frustration, disappointment in our modern world.
Speaker 5: If you doom scroll, this turns this part of your
Speaker 5: brain on. And if this goes on, if it's triggered on,
Speaker 5: your motivation is turned off, your dopamine is turned off,
Speaker 5: You start to seal withdraw symptoms from an addictive habit that.
Speaker 3: You might have.
Speaker 5: All of that is like pain and suffering.
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's not we were joking about it being
Speaker 2: connected to the election, although there may be some people
Speaker 2: who are impacted by it. So this is a can
Speaker 2: addition putting a section election issues aside, what percentage of
Speaker 2: the population at any given times feels this biological response
Speaker 2: that feels stress and motivation loss.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we don't know yet because even though there's a
Speaker 5: stacking level of evidence, there's.
Speaker 3: Not a lot of studies on you know, being able.
Speaker 5: To show the brain in real life. And so we
Speaker 5: stick people inside of and rhyme machines and we measure
Speaker 5: the habenula hits and the habenula activity and associate that
Speaker 5: with their life condition. And so it's really just about
Speaker 5: you know, it's it's more trigger happy and people who
Speaker 5: have had difficult lives, who have had trauma in their lives,
Speaker 5: who are impulsive, who are addicts, like those kinds of
Speaker 5: life circumstances, and then those who have, you know, maybe
Speaker 5: a healthy self image and healthy self confiden is will
Speaker 5: have more control over that and not be prone to depression, anxiety, disempowerment, motivation.
Speaker 3: Loss, that kind of thing. So it's a really important
Speaker 3: trigger in our brain.
Speaker 2: So then the other I have a million questions here,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to to a couple because obviously this
Speaker 2: is an emerging field. Has there been any study done
Speaker 2: as to whether or not Americans more I guess potentially
Speaker 2: victims of this set of circumstances. Are there are we
Speaker 2: as a culture? Does that indicate that our culture is
Speaker 2: less happy than other cultures? I mean, is this same
Speaker 2: biological response found in I don't know the minds of
Speaker 2: you know, Japanese people, or Italians or people who live
Speaker 2: sub sahara? Is there is there any or is it
Speaker 2: just too early to tell.
Speaker 5: I don't think any cultural studies have been done in
Speaker 5: that way, but I will say that it is present
Speaker 5: in everything from like a little primitive fish to a human.
Speaker 5: And so it is a mechanism by which we need
Speaker 5: to lose our motivation to keep touching the hot stove.
Speaker 5: We need to lose our motivation if something's gonna maybe
Speaker 5: threaten our life, you know, and we need to stand
Speaker 5: down or or take an evasive action, you know. So
Speaker 5: it saves our lives. But at the same time, when
Speaker 5: we want to be empowered, we want to do something,
Speaker 5: this is a thing that gets in our way when
Speaker 5: we find that we want to do something but we
Speaker 5: don't do it. This is the part of our brain
Speaker 5: that is accidentally turned on. So the main thing is
Speaker 5: that we want to know about, like the election and
Speaker 5: all of the social media, and all these things that
Speaker 5: might be triggering our habenula to feel dis empowered, to
Speaker 5: feel like I can't feel like I'm a failure, to
Speaker 5: feel like I'm frustrated, to feel like I'm disappointed, all
Speaker 5: those things, because if we just leave it burning, if
Speaker 5: we leave it on, then we don't have motivation to
Speaker 5: live our lives.
Speaker 2: Is this in any way, shape or form you talk
Speaker 2: about touching a hot stove. Is this in any way,
Speaker 2: shape or form related to a portion of the brain
Speaker 2: where fight or flight occurs when we're in danger.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it is. It is the part of
Speaker 5: the brain that basically encodes being averted to something like
Speaker 5: like aversion, running from something, hating something, avoiding something, avoiding conflict,
Speaker 5: just you know, running through all of that is very
Speaker 5: primitive stuff. And it's that's why it's in fish, That's
Speaker 5: why it's in us.
Speaker 2: It's a it's amazing to me that you folks in
Speaker 2: the medical and public health community can can figure this
Speaker 2: stuff out. I mean, you know, it's it's it's we
Speaker 2: know so much and yet I guess we know so little.
Speaker 2: That's that's that's my takeaway. Is that a bad takeaway?
Speaker 5: No, I think the most empowering thing to me is
Speaker 5: that once we know how our brain works in you know,
Speaker 5: like there was a time when we didn't know about
Speaker 5: our long term memory, or our fight or flight like
Speaker 5: you mentioned, or our fear centers or our love centers
Speaker 5: like just even you don't have to know brain science
Speaker 5: to understand how your brain works. And so knowing how
Speaker 5: the engine runs and what stops it helps you as
Speaker 5: a person to live and not blame yourself for areas
Speaker 5: where you might feel stuck, where you might lose motivation
Speaker 5: because you accidentally maybe you doom scrolled last night, you
Speaker 5: woke up this morning not feeling super motivated to do
Speaker 5: something good for yourself or something that you wanted to
Speaker 5: do with your life.
Speaker 3: So it's it's.
Speaker 5: Really liberating for us all to know that, hey, it's
Speaker 5: not me, it's my heabenulus on I got activated. How
Speaker 5: can I just turn it off? And there is there
Speaker 5: is a way out of the suffering that it can cause?
Speaker 2: Can you explain that to us, because yeah, suffering this
Speaker 2: we may have buried the lead here go ahead.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So in my in my research on people who
Speaker 5: faced all kinds of life struggles, you know, single parenthood
Speaker 5: two jobs, you know, just really hard assault to the earth.
Speaker 3: People.
Speaker 5: Some of them changed their behavior, changed their health, behavior,
Speaker 5: and their lives for the better, got off medications, did
Speaker 5: all kinds of amazing things. And I was super interested.
Speaker 5: What do they all have in common? And I looked
Speaker 5: for everything. I looked at, you know, do the same thing?
Speaker 5: Are they trying the same thing? And the only thing
Speaker 5: they had in common is that they would practical iterate,
Speaker 5: like practice like a sport until they got good at it.
Speaker 5: And iterate means to tweak, tinker, adjust what you're trying
Speaker 5: in order to get the practice to keep going. Versus
Speaker 5: everybody else who got you know, sidelined, who got stuck,
Speaker 5: who'se habnula got hit? Who lost motivation to keep going?
Speaker 5: Those people used you know, very strict goals and tracking
Speaker 5: mechanisms that for the most part eventually failed them, and
Speaker 5: so then they felt like a failure.
Speaker 3: So the people who succeeded.
Speaker 5: Were iterating and adjusting as they went. And it seems
Speaker 5: so natural and so so silly, but it is so
Speaker 5: powerful and so important to focus on that instead.
Speaker 2: Last question, how can folks get more information? And it
Speaker 2: sounds to me like you must have a book or
Speaker 2: at least some articles written on this subject. You spent
Speaker 2: a lot of time here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a website, doctor kayro Bobinet dot com.
Speaker 3: I also have a book called.
Speaker 5: Unstoppable Brain, which is, you know, the anthology of all
Speaker 5: this science and how this all works, and hopefully it
Speaker 5: liberates people from whatever they are suffering from and also
Speaker 5: freeze up their motivation to going and shield their lives.
Speaker 2: Give us the title of the book one more time.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's Unstoppable Brain, perfect.
Speaker 2: And available I'm sure Amazon and a fine bookstores in
Speaker 2: our neighborhoods. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I've learned a lot,
Speaker 2: and it's a challenging discussion for me because I feel
Speaker 2: that you know so much more about it. I hope
Speaker 2: my questions elicited some information that helped the listeners on
Speaker 2: this one, and if not Unstoppable Brain, your book will
Speaker 2: give them more information. Thanks so much, doctor Bubbinett.
Speaker 3: You were great, Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: Great night. When we get back on to talk about
Speaker 2: something that I guess all of us can relate to
Speaker 2: here in New England, and that is what's going to
Speaker 2: be like this winter for the skiers and the snowboard
Speaker 2: is going to be talking with Matt Peppe of the
Speaker 2: Boston Globe Sports editor right after this on Nightside. My
Speaker 2: name is Dan Ray.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World
Speaker 1: Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a little colder in New England today, which
Speaker 2: means that winter is coming a little slower than normal.
Speaker 2: With us is Matt pep and Boston Globe Sports Editor. Hey, Matt,
Speaker 2: welcome to Nightside. How are you?
Speaker 6: I'm doing well, Thank you, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: I know you're not a meteorologist, but you follow a
Speaker 2: lot of the winter sports. So the question that a
Speaker 2: lot of skiers and snowboarders are having, I'm sure is
Speaker 2: when is winter going to arrive and what's in store
Speaker 2: for New England skiers and snowboarders. I think you've taken
Speaker 2: a look at that, correct.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's right. We had a story that I wrote,
Speaker 6: the published today and it was all born over. I'm
Speaker 6: born from my uncertainty about what to expect. You know,
Speaker 6: I really can't answer your question about when winter's going
Speaker 6: to come, because, like a lot of people, I think
Speaker 6: I'm sitting with fingers crossed and hoping and praying that
Speaker 6: it's better than last year. But it was just you know, look,
Speaker 6: I've been through I've lived in New England all my life,
Speaker 6: and I've seen warm winters before, but this pattern lately
Speaker 6: has become really concerning. And that was, you know, that
Speaker 6: was the gist of what I was trying to get
Speaker 6: at my real life experiences, and I added in some
Speaker 6: you know, some reporting from data and meteorologists and other
Speaker 6: sourcing to kind of round it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that all of us know that in
Speaker 2: New England that sometimes we've had, you know, I think
Speaker 2: of the winter of twenty fourteen fifteen when it didn't
Speaker 2: snow all, you know, throughout the entire month of November,
Speaker 2: December and half of January, and then it just didn't
Speaker 2: stop snowing. You remember that winter. I'm sure I remember
Speaker 2: the winter the Halloween snowstorm, which was a big snowstorm
Speaker 2: on Halloween. This has got to be probably twelve or
Speaker 2: fourteen years ago, and then we didn't have any snow
Speaker 2: for the rest of the winter. So New England is
Speaker 2: not predictable, but we like to think of it as
Speaker 2: a courier or inn ives a sort of winter that
Speaker 2: we get a little dusting in February, then we get
Speaker 2: a couple of pretty good sized ones, and in December
Speaker 2: everything looks nice for the holidays, and boom, here's January winches.
Speaker 2: Just not that traditional anymore. Again, I don't want to
Speaker 2: get into the whole question about climate change, but we've
Speaker 2: had these winters. Now, I guess how many days has
Speaker 2: it been since we've had a big snowstorm here according
Speaker 2: to the article that you wrote.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like seven hundred days in Boston.
Speaker 2: And how do you describe I mean, we did have
Speaker 2: some snow last winter, yeah, a little bit, but we
Speaker 2: didn't have a blizzard. Is that? I mean, what was
Speaker 2: the biggest snow we had last winter? Six seven inches?
Speaker 6: I mean I don't even think it was that because
Speaker 6: the measurement gauge is four inches, Like a measurable snow
Speaker 6: of four inches is what counts as a storm. So yeah,
Speaker 6: I didn't include that little detail, but I know I
Speaker 6: looked it up prior to the writing, and it just
Speaker 6: feels like, yeah, like I don't recall anything. You know,
Speaker 6: certainly up north I went through, uh, you know, some
Speaker 6: some pretty decent snowfall. But again, that's you got to
Speaker 6: you gotta drive. You gotta be willing to, oh the
Speaker 6: distance to kind of pursue this passion that is skiing,
Speaker 6: and you know, for those of us who have the
Speaker 6: bug for it, it's hard to uh, hard to ignore.
Speaker 2: Well, there's some there's some nice ski areas here in Massachusetts. Uh,
Speaker 2: you know, we think of the Shover and even you
Speaker 2: got the Blue Hills ski Uh but but but people
Speaker 2: obviously want to get up north. So is this a
Speaker 2: problem that's affecting Massachusetts more than it is New Hampshire
Speaker 2: and Vermont with the ski seasons and the snowboards boarding
Speaker 2: last winter in New Hampshire and Vermont less adversely impacted.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I think especially around the city and uh
Speaker 6: and sort of like the you know, from Worcester east
Speaker 6: to Boston. I think those ski areas didn't do anywhere
Speaker 6: near as well. You know, on the Berkshires was pretty
Speaker 6: good and what choose it out west of Worcester. You know,
Speaker 6: I had a pretty good season, but the days were
Speaker 6: just so inconsistent. You know, you'd have time to make
Speaker 6: snow and then and they'd bulk up, but then it
Speaker 6: would rain and it would all freeze and would be
Speaker 6: like boiler plate ice, which is no fun. I know,
Speaker 6: I canceled at least two trips knowing that, you know,
Speaker 6: if I got there, it would just be I would
Speaker 6: bring my ice skates for would be better, more useful
Speaker 6: than skis, you know.
Speaker 2: So what, I'm sure that in the article you must
Speaker 2: have talked to some of the the ski operators, you know,
Speaker 2: in the big the big ski areas for mont in
Speaker 2: New Hampshire. Are they as concerned or are they looking
Speaker 2: at it and saying, hey, this actually news to our benefit.
Speaker 2: We're going to get more folks from Massachusetts to come north.
Speaker 2: Is there a young and a yang here? I guess
Speaker 2: is what I'm fun to ask.
Speaker 6: You know, I did not actually talk to did not
Speaker 6: actually talk to ski area operators. This was mostly written
Speaker 6: from personal experience. From that standpoint. It was a travel
Speaker 6: piece that the Travel section asked me to do. But coincidentally,
Speaker 6: this weekend is the big Snow Expo in Boston, which
Speaker 6: I'm really eager to go to. And uh and I
Speaker 6: do plan to talk to a lot of the op
Speaker 6: raiders about, you know, their outlook for winter and how
Speaker 6: they how they are planning, you know, to meet the
Speaker 6: challenges that are ahead. I mean, it's it's pretty real.
Speaker 6: It's pretty obvious. A lot of people agree on that,
Speaker 6: and uh, you know, we're just blessed that technology has,
Speaker 6: uh has given us really amazing snowmaking because I think
Speaker 6: without snowmaking in the East, I can't even imagine what
Speaker 6: would happen. You know, I can't imagine many of the
Speaker 6: Massachusetts areas would open, and you know, certainly not the
Speaker 6: Connecticut or Rhode Island area. Up north. You know, a
Speaker 6: place like Jay which has its own little micro climate,
Speaker 6: and it's this great little environment that is affectionately known
Speaker 6: as the j Cloud, which dumps all kinds of snow
Speaker 6: up there. You know, I feel like I feel like
Speaker 6: that place is going to outlast me for sure in
Speaker 6: this world. But uh, others, others I have my doubts about.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, my last question, since you mentioned the East,
Speaker 2: is this a problem out west in Colorado? When in
Speaker 2: Utah and places like that as well, or they had
Speaker 2: fairly consistent snowfalls if you know they have.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I follow skiing all over the world. I'm really
Speaker 6: interested in, uh, you know, the big places, and I
Speaker 6: can see that they're that they're good. The people I
Speaker 6: know who have been to Utah and Colorado and places
Speaker 6: like that. Are you know, they come back raving and
Speaker 6: you know, always saying that, you know, they're reluctant to
Speaker 6: ski again in the Northeast because of the experiences they've
Speaker 6: had elsewhere. But you know, but Europe has had its
Speaker 6: challenges too, so it's not it's not only a New
Speaker 6: England problem, but it feels acute. You know.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm suspect I suspect that we're gonna we're going
Speaker 2: to get a follow up piece from Matt Peppin of
Speaker 2: the Boston Globe after the Snow Expo coming up, so
Speaker 2: we'll keep our eyes peeled for an update. Matt. I
Speaker 2: appreciate sharing your anks with us tonight and and I
Speaker 2: hope that that it turns around for everyone in New England. Hey,
Speaker 2: you know, nobody likes, uh, you know, having a shovel
Speaker 2: snow and nobody likes having a drive in it. But
Speaker 2: it's part of life, and it also is really important
Speaker 2: to the quality of life for people who are skiers
Speaker 2: and want to get out there on the trails. So
Speaker 2: we're rooting for you, and I'll look forward to the
Speaker 2: follow up. I'm sure you're going to have a follow
Speaker 2: up and I'd love to maybe talk to you in
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks after the snow Expo and see
Speaker 2: if you're a little more optimistic fair enough.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's great, that sounds great. I can remember going
Speaker 6: one year on November twenty ninth was the earliest I went,
Speaker 6: and I doubt that's going to happen this year, but
Speaker 6: definitely let's catch up again.
Speaker 2: Sounds great, Matt Peppin and the Boston Globe, Boston Globe
Speaker 2: Sports editor appreciate it. Matt. I'm sure our skiers were
Speaker 2: very interested in your analysis, and let I really would
Speaker 2: like to follow up. Thanks again. Are you welcome?
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 2: We're at the bottom of the hour here. We get
Speaker 2: the newscast coming up at eight thirty. We're about a
Speaker 2: minute or so late, and we'll come back. We're going
Speaker 2: to talk about an indication of concussion. I've heard about this.
Speaker 2: We're going to talk with the Mass General Hospital, Brigham
Speaker 2: Mass General Brigham Hospital brain injury specialist and senior author
Speaker 2: of a study that basically says shaking the head could
Speaker 2: indicate a possible concussion. You've seen it with some of
Speaker 2: the football quarterbacks who have been concussed, and I suspect
Speaker 2: that that is where most of us. We're going to
Speaker 2: talk with the real expert right after the break here
Speaker 2: on Nightside this WBZ in Boston ten thirty and your
Speaker 2: am Don. My name is Dan Ray. You can always
Speaker 2: get us on the iHeart app. All you have to
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Speaker 2: Right here on WBZ Boston.
Speaker 1: It's night Side with Dan Ray, Boston's news Radio.
Speaker 2: Okay, now we're going to talk about something that if
Speaker 2: you're a football fan, you know a lot about, but
Speaker 2: you don't know as much as my guest, next guest,
Speaker 2: and that is concussions. My guest joining us is doctor
Speaker 2: Dan Doctor Daniel Denishfah. He's a Mass General Brigham and
Speaker 2: Women's Hospital brain injury specialist and senior author of the study.
Speaker 2: I've heard a little bit about this, doctor Dan Ashfhar,
Speaker 2: but tell us about it. I think when the quoterback
Speaker 2: for the Dolphins was concussed recently, he had some head
Speaker 2: movements that were commented upon, I assume those are the
Speaker 2: head movements that you have been studying for some time now. Correct.
Speaker 2: Welcome to night side.
Speaker 4: Welcome, were glad to be here, So you're exactly right.
Speaker 4: So two times of Yola, and he had a concussion
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago. It wasn't diagnosed, and since
Speaker 4: then he's been on this path of getting concussion after concussion.
Speaker 4: And we know that when you don't have a diagnosed concussion,
Speaker 4: if not treated properly, and that means that you're at
Speaker 4: risk for more injuries. And so that led us down
Speaker 4: this path to better understand how we can diagnose concussions,
Speaker 4: and that's what we did in this study.
Speaker 2: So what we're talking about here, for those who don't
Speaker 2: recall the play, he gets hit pretty hard and as
Speaker 2: he comes up, what is the movement in his head
Speaker 2: that maybe someone should have begun seeing thirty years ago
Speaker 2: because football players were an cussed for a long time.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So when that hit happened, so this concussion wasn't diagnosed.
Speaker 4: He gets up and then he stumbled and he falls
Speaker 4: and then he gets back up again and he told
Speaker 4: the guy that the doctor on the sideline that it
Speaker 4: was a backspasm that caused him to stumble. But when
Speaker 4: we looked back at it, you know, it didn't sit
Speaker 4: right with most of the concussion docks that watched the video,
Speaker 4: and it's because he did this is what we're calling
Speaker 4: a spontaneous headshake after a kinematic event or a shake.
Speaker 4: He had a shake of his head where we all
Speaker 4: know what this headshake looks like. Right, you can picture
Speaker 4: bugs Bunny getting hit in the head with a mallet
Speaker 4: and afterward he sees those birds for us scrolling around
Speaker 4: his head and then what does he do. He shakes
Speaker 4: his head and the birds go away. And so we've
Speaker 4: known in the lay literature, and we found hundreds of
Speaker 4: examples of this in the lay media of people doing that,
Speaker 4: but that's never been published before in the scientific literature,
Speaker 4: and no one's ever evaluated the accuracy with which that
Speaker 4: predicts concussions. And so what we found is three quarters
Speaker 4: of the time when somebody does that head motion, that
Speaker 4: meant they had a concussion, and so there was over
Speaker 4: ninety percent among them players.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. Anyone who's played sports in high school
Speaker 2: or college, oftentimes a coach who will tell you or
Speaker 2: someone else that hey, shake it off. So maybe it's
Speaker 2: the derivation of shake it off.
Speaker 7: That's absolutely right.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's something that we all understood as part
Speaker 4: of a concussion. And when Tua got hit and he
Speaker 4: stumbles to the ground, it's entirely possible the backspasm could
Speaker 4: have caused him to stumble. That happens, but a backspasm
Speaker 4: wouldn't have caused him to shake his head like that.
Speaker 4: And so when you stack on more and more of
Speaker 4: these possible signs of a concussion, that means that the
Speaker 4: only thing that could have caused it was a brain injury,
Speaker 4: and that makes go ahead.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you talked to the quarterback in question,
Speaker 2: but I'm wondering if when he was asked that question
Speaker 2: by the sideline doctor that he wanted to just yeah,
Speaker 2: it was a backspasm, and maybe he was concerned he
Speaker 2: didn't want to get taken out of the game.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're absolutely right in that. It's the athletes themselves
Speaker 4: have different incentives for reporting their health in the short
Speaker 4: term versus prioritizing their long term health, and those can
Speaker 4: be not wanting to let down teammates, those can be
Speaker 4: wanting to make sure that you're impressed people around you,
Speaker 4: and those can be you know, at the professional level,
Speaker 4: financial interests. And so I've never spoken with mister Tuna viola,
Speaker 4: but I know from my experience working and treating NFL players,
Speaker 4: NHL players, and players throughout the entire gamut from youth
Speaker 4: all the way to the pros, that you know, oftentimes
Speaker 4: it's difficult to for an athlete to speak up on
Speaker 4: their own behalf for their own best interests. And add
Speaker 4: on top of that that you're talking to oftentimes someone
Speaker 4: who has a brain injury and asking him to make
Speaker 4: a good decision. It all ends up being really complicated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the other the other thing is that obviously
Speaker 2: I call it the Wally Pips syndrome. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you know who Wally Pip was, but Wally, do
Speaker 2: you know the name Wally Pip?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna you're gonna, you're gonna remember this name forever.
Speaker 2: He was the Yankee first baseman who wanted to take
Speaker 2: a day off one day because I can see in
Speaker 2: an upset stomach, and the Yankee manager, Joe McCarthy said, yeah,
Speaker 2: we got a young kid here who's going to play
Speaker 2: first base today Louke Garrick, Wally Pip playing first base.
Speaker 2: So I'm serious. So you know a lot of pro athletes,
Speaker 2: there's a guy sitting on the bench, maybe a backup quarterback,
Speaker 2: who is maybe just as good. You know, you want
Speaker 2: to keep your you want to keep your starting position,
Speaker 2: you want to keep your salary, you want to keep
Speaker 2: your career goaling this big incentive there to be thinking
Speaker 2: in the short term as opposed to the long term tone.
Speaker 2: Would you agree?
Speaker 4: You're absolutely right, And that's why it's so important for
Speaker 4: us to realize and recognize more objective signs of a
Speaker 4: concussion because largely concussions are based on symptoms, so those
Speaker 4: are things you can't observe. Like so for example, I
Speaker 4: could have a raging headache right now. You can be
Speaker 4: looking at me and you have no idea. I could
Speaker 4: have some glory vasion and you wouldn't know for sure
Speaker 4: unless I spoke up. But signs are things you can observe.
Speaker 4: There are things like stumbling or throwing up, or getting
Speaker 4: knocked out or having like a seizure. Those are all signs.
Speaker 4: And in this case, a shake that the headshake that
Speaker 4: we're characterizing is a very reliable sign of a concussion.
Speaker 2: Last question, doctor, and that is, I want to make
Speaker 2: sure that I am stand this. I'm told that you
Speaker 2: get a concussion when your brain actually smashes up against
Speaker 2: the interior of your skull. There has to be an
Speaker 2: impact on the brain physically for a concussion to occur.
Speaker 2: Is that, you know some sort of an incorrect legend
Speaker 2: or is that an accurate characterization of essentially what happens
Speaker 2: when someone gets hit and they suffer a concussion.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we used to think that was what was
Speaker 4: going on, but now we realize you don't even need
Speaker 4: a hit to the head to get a concussion. So
Speaker 4: what a concussion is is it's a hit that some
Speaker 4: way gets transmitted to the brain, so some forces go
Speaker 4: into the brain, and then that impact causes stretching of
Speaker 4: the brain tissue. So the brain doesn't even need to
Speaker 4: hit the skull. It can just stretch in space, and
Speaker 4: that stretch causes damage to the brain neurons. And the
Speaker 4: difference between a concussion and an injury to the rest
Speaker 4: your body is that you know, if you if you say,
Speaker 4: get an injury your ankle, you feel pain when you
Speaker 4: put weight on that ankle. You know it's injured. But
Speaker 4: your brain doesn't have the same kind of nerve endings
Speaker 4: that the rest of your body has that your ankle has.
Speaker 4: It doesn't have the ability to feel pain. So that's
Speaker 4: why when Neuve surgeons do Neuve surgery, they don't need
Speaker 4: to numb the brain itself. You can cut directly into it.
Speaker 4: There's no pain.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: So the brain doesn't have Yeah, so the brain doesn't
Speaker 4: have that same ability to tell you that it's injured.
Speaker 4: And that's why no understanding how brain injuries look is
Speaker 4: so critically important because the difference is I mean, we
Speaker 4: all know, if you've got a bum ankle and you
Speaker 4: try to run on it, it requires less running and
Speaker 4: less force to make that ankle take longer recover to
Speaker 4: reinjure that ankle. Our brain is the same. If it's
Speaker 4: injured and it gets hit again, it takes less force
Speaker 4: and it takes a less injury to prolong the recovery
Speaker 4: for those symptoms.
Speaker 2: Doctor, thank you very much for your time tonight, and
Speaker 2: thank you for the work you do. And I hope
Speaker 2: you look up Wally Pips so you know I wasn't
Speaker 2: pulling your leg. There really was a Wally Pip and
Speaker 2: of course Gark never got out of the lineup for
Speaker 2: about two three hundred games. I love it all right,
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, doctor Daniel Dennis Shaw. Thank you
Speaker 2: so much, doctor. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned
Speaker 2: a lot from it. Thanks so much. Love to have
Speaker 2: me back. Thank you again, Bye bye. All right we
Speaker 2: get back. We're going to talk about a holiday toy drive,
Speaker 2: which I think is really important. We're going to talk
Speaker 2: about a new Massachusetts Lottery Celtics ticket coming out next week.
Speaker 2: Maybe you can ask them Santa Claus for some lots
Speaker 2: from Celtics lottery tickets. Obviously the Celtics won it all
Speaker 2: last year. We'll be talking with a representative of the
Speaker 2: Massachusetts Lottery for all of you out there right after
Speaker 2: this break on Nightside.
Speaker 1: Now back to Dan Way live from the Window World
Speaker 1: nights Side Studios. I'm WBZ News Radio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, everybody. Let me reintroduce you to Christian Teazer.
Speaker 2: He is the director of Communications for the Massachusetts State
Speaker 2: Lottery Commission. Christian, welcome back to Nightside. How are you.
Speaker 7: I'm good, Thanks Dan, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 2: Let's we have a two pieces of information. We want
Speaker 2: to talk about here. You got a holiday toy drive
Speaker 2: coming up, and you also have a Celtics lottery ticket
Speaker 2: coming out next week. Let's start with the holiday toy
Speaker 2: Christmas drive. Tell us about it.
Speaker 7: Sure, this is a ninth year we've been doing it now.
Speaker 7: So it's set up at all of our regional offices
Speaker 7: and our headquarters at Dorchester, Lawrence to Bedford, Western West
Speaker 7: Springfield and the Lawrence that I mentioned, Lawrence got them all, yeah, okay,
Speaker 7: so yeah, So it's something we it's it's part of
Speaker 7: an overall initiative that lotteries across north of marya Erica
Speaker 7: participate in. It's kind of it started with just to
Speaker 7: try to first to make people aware that lottery gifts
Speaker 7: lottery tickets are not suitable gifts for anyone under the
Speaker 7: age of eighteen. And while we're getting that message out there,
Speaker 7: we say, well, what better way to help communities than
Speaker 7: to actually have people bring suitable gifts for kids, so toys,
Speaker 7: sporting equipment, books, what have you. And we've had a
Speaker 7: great response from our customers over the last several years,
Speaker 7: and our employees also are involved, very generous, and it's
Speaker 7: it's another way that the lottery likes to give back
Speaker 7: to the communities and is there.
Speaker 2: I assume these having been involved in some of these
Speaker 2: gift drives, you want new unwrapped gifts or should they
Speaker 2: be wrapped?
Speaker 7: That is correct, new unwrapped toys. And we do partner
Speaker 7: with our we're affiliated with Toys for Tots, so there's
Speaker 7: Toys for Tots that throughout the state and so in
Speaker 7: each region the toys will be donated to to the
Speaker 7: Toys for Tots affiliates in those regions, with the exception
Speaker 7: of New Bedford, there's a long standing drive in New
Speaker 7: Bedford in conjunction with the Firefighters Union down there in
Speaker 7: New Bedford has been a great partner as well. So
Speaker 7: that's where that's Those are our partners for this.
Speaker 2: So tell us about the new Celtics lottery ticket coming out. Obviously,
Speaker 2: banner number eighteen was raised to the rafters just a
Speaker 2: few weeks ago with the home opener and which they
Speaker 2: secured that last spring. What's the deal on the Celtics
Speaker 2: lottery ticket.
Speaker 7: Yes, very excited about that. We've done sports tickets for
Speaker 7: many years, but we haven't had one for a few
Speaker 7: years now. But what better opportunity another Championship banner eighteen.
Speaker 7: So that's the name of a Celtics banner eighteen. It's
Speaker 7: a ten dollars ticket, the top instant prize, you went
Speaker 7: up to one million dollars, the six of those prizes,
Speaker 7: and then really cool thing, the second Chance drawings. This
Speaker 7: is where you can enter non winning tickets. There's going
Speaker 7: to be five second chance drawings and in each of
Speaker 7: those drawings, we're going to select one winner. And then
Speaker 7: after all those drawings, those five winners will be at
Speaker 7: a Celtics game at halftime on the court and one
Speaker 7: of them is guaranteed to win a one million dollar
Speaker 7: prize and the other well, the other four will walk
Speaker 7: away with ten thousand. So that's going to be a
Speaker 7: really cool, cool thing.
Speaker 2: And none of this is going to involve I assume
Speaker 2: free throw shooting.
Speaker 5: From the line, right, Nope.
Speaker 7: As you know, the the lottery has to be a
Speaker 7: game of chance and not not.
Speaker 2: A game of Still I understand, I understand. So so
Speaker 2: how will that That will be pretty dramatic. They'll they'll
Speaker 2: be there standing with four other winners, will be they're
Speaker 2: standing with the second chance winners, will be with four
Speaker 2: other second chance winners and how is that gonna.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so we still we haven't worked out all details
Speaker 7: on that just yet. That will be well, there's a
Speaker 7: chance it could happen at the end of this season.
Speaker 7: If not, it would be probably at some point near
Speaker 7: the beginning of next season. So we're still going to
Speaker 7: figure out the details. We have done some things like
Speaker 7: this in the past with the for example, at the
Speaker 7: Patriots or Red Sox games, where there was like oversized tickets,
Speaker 7: a series of oversized tickets and each behind them was
Speaker 7: each a different prize amount, and so it could.
Speaker 4: Be something like that.
Speaker 7: But we have actually had a million dollar winter at
Speaker 7: Jillet's Datium one year.
Speaker 2: So, now, how's the lottery doing these days? Obviously the
Speaker 2: economy has been a little tough for people. Has the
Speaker 2: lottery suffered or are you guys still doing the very
Speaker 2: successful job you've been doing now for over fifty years.
Speaker 7: We're still doing pretty well.
Speaker 4: Be creative.
Speaker 7: We had the first fifty dollars ticket two years ago
Speaker 7: and then followed it up with the second one. But
Speaker 7: a Kino was very strong. So our fiscal year that
Speaker 7: ended at the end of June, we were just ahead
Speaker 7: of last year, but we were ahead our sales.
Speaker 4: It was all time.
Speaker 7: Record of over six point one billion. We continued to
Speaker 7: deliver the cities in towns who was over one point
Speaker 7: one billion. This year was just behind last year, which
Speaker 7: was an all time record. This was the second but
Speaker 7: doing Yeah, still still doing very well. And then as
Speaker 7: you probably know, I can't remember if we've talked about
Speaker 7: it just yet, but we do have eye lottery on
Speaker 7: the horizon in the future.
Speaker 2: Well, remind me of what type of lottery coming up.
Speaker 7: Oh, yeah, so I lottery. So the online lottery, as
Speaker 7: you know online number of years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the audio dropped out there for a second. So
Speaker 2: the online lottery is going to make it more convenient.
Speaker 2: People won't have to physically go to a lottery outlets
Speaker 2: or to their local stores whatever to play the lottery.
Speaker 2: They'll be able to do it online.
Speaker 4: That is true.
Speaker 7: But the one thing we do want to stress and
Speaker 7: make clear to, especially the retailers out there, there were
Speaker 7: some concerns in states where I Lottery online lottery has
Speaker 7: been introduced. There has been no drop off in the
Speaker 7: sales at the at the brock and mortar retail locations.
Speaker 7: In fact, most places that they've they've gone off because
Speaker 7: what you can do is you can do offers play
Speaker 7: online and then send people to the stores with with
Speaker 7: offers that have to be redeemed at stores. And obviously
Speaker 7: when they're at stores, not only are they buying tickets,
Speaker 7: but they're buying other products or shopping or you know,
Speaker 7: buying food at the restaurant.
Speaker 2: One of the side benefits of the online lottery will
Speaker 2: that introduce younger players, not people under age obviously, but
Speaker 2: younger players who might not have the time during the
Speaker 2: day to take a stroll down to the local midi mart,
Speaker 2: pick up the newspaper and a couple of lottery tickets.
Speaker 7: Is that yeah, that's be a part of it. It's
Speaker 7: just yeah, I mean, it's it's where the consumers are.
Speaker 7: I mean, you obviously we've seen the popularity of first
Speaker 7: the daily fantasy sports and now the mobile sports betting.
Speaker 7: But they've obviously had the opportunity to offer their products
Speaker 7: on mobile devices from basically from from the outset. So
Speaker 7: it's really as as Treasure and Goldberg has made the
Speaker 7: case for many years, is about being you know, having
Speaker 7: a fair competition. We're not averse to competition. We just
Speaker 7: wanted to be fair to offer got it.
Speaker 2: I totally here. It has been a very successful, one
Speaker 2: of the most successful lottery in the United States of America.
Speaker 2: Founded by former State Treasurer Robert Crane many many years ago,
Speaker 2: and I remember it well when it came on, it
Speaker 2: was it was very exciting, and it's maintained its level
Speaker 2: of enthusiasm and excitement for now fifty over fifty years.
Speaker 2: Kristen is always great to see you. Hope you have
Speaker 2: a great holiday season, enjoyed Thanksgiving, and please say hi
Speaker 2: to the treasure for me when you see her.
Speaker 7: Okay, absolutely as well, Dan, thank you, Thanks Christin.
Speaker 2: Okay, when we get back, we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: a situation down in Brockton homelessness. Public homelessness has caused
Speaker 2: some concern in the city of Brockton. We'll be talking
Speaker 2: with Brockton City Council Shirley Asak about what the city
Speaker 2: council has now decided to do and it hopefully will
Speaker 2: improve the lives of the residents but also maybe even
Speaker 2: the homeless people that find themselves in that situation Brocton.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about it coming back right after the nine
Speaker 2: o'clock news on a Wednesday night edition of Nightside