Heavy Metal Headbanging is a Health Hazard, can result in Brain Bleed

An article in the British medical journal The Lancet on Thursday reports that violently shaking your head to heavy-metal songs can cause head bleeding to such extent that doctors have to drill a hole in your head to relieve the pain.

“Some fans might be endangered by indulging in excessive headbanging,” says the article by three researchers from the Department of Neurosurgery of Hannover Medical School, in Germany.

The medical sources suggests that music may not destroy your soul, but heavy metal music specifically can be hazardous to your brain. At least in some rare cases.

German doctors reportedly revealed that they treated a Motorhead fan whose headbanging habit caused a brain injury. The patient was a 50 year old man who was admitted to hospital in January, 2013, a month after attending a concert by the British band Motörhead.

“We are not against headbanging,” said Dr Ariyan Pirayesh Islamian, one of the doctors who treated the man. “The risk of injury is very, very low. But I think if [our patient] had [gone] to a classical concert, this would not have happened.”

Doctors discovered their patient had a brain bleed. The patient’s headaches soon disappeared after he “underwent burr hole evacuation.”In a follow-up scan, the doctors noticed a benign cyst which might have made the metal buff more prone to a brain injury.

Motorhead is a British metal band known for helping create the “speed metal” genre, which inspires extremely fast headbanging. Islamian described the band as “one of the most hard-core rock ‘n’ roll acts on earth.”

Headbanging is linked with problems that include whiplash, damage to the walls of the carotid artery, cracked vertebras and chest pains caused by air leaking into the connective tissue around the lungs.

Dr. Colin Shieff, a neurosurgeon of Headway, the British brain injury advocacy group, was of the view, “There are probably other higher risk events going on at rock concerts than headbanging”.

Islamian supported and quoted, “Rock ‘n’ roll will never die,” he said. “Heavy metal fans should rock on.”

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Alan O’Leary

Alan is a happily-married, New York-based writer with over 5 years of experience in journalism. He mainly focuses on subjects such as international politics, arts culture, social media and national news.