Why Women Need to Care About Concussions

The female brain is more susceptible to lasting damage from a head injury. The science explains why—and we’ve got the latest info on how to protect yourself.

- MEGHAN RABBITT

It was the middle of the night when Karen Murray's 10-year-old daughter called out for her and she jumped out of bed to see if everything was OK. The next thing she remembers, her legs gave out from under her and she fell, hitting her head on the nightstand on her way down. "I blacked out," says the 45-year-old from Philadelphia. "A few seconds later, I came to and got up, but I felt wobbly and nauseous." Her husband went to check on their daughter, and Karen spent the next 20 minutes feeling as if she was going to throw up. When the nausea passed, she drifted back to sleep.

But the next morning, the mom of two woke up with a pounding headache. Throughout the rest of that day and the next, she had bouts of nausea and dizziness. While waiting for her son's soccer practice to finish, Karen called her mom, a nurse, explaining what had happened the night before and how she still felt "off." Her mother urged her to go to the emergency room, worried that her daughter had suffered a concussion. "I wasn't thinking I had a concussion," says Karen. "I'd always thought that happened only to football players or after a serious accident like a car crash." Yet when she went to the hospital, the ER doc ordered a CT scan, and sure enough, Karen was diagnosed with a mild concussion.