Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Powered by Riverside FM.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: So as the league continues to try to combat the concussion issue that comes with this being a violent context sport, one thing we've seen this year is the league allowing players to wear guardian caps during games. Obviously, J OK comes to mind, but a lesser known technology that is available to players that is starting to gain serious traction in increased use by players at all levels is a product known as Q Collar. So although he was recently released tight end Blake Whiteheart, who scored a touchdown against the Raiders earlier this year, he actually wears one in every game. So to inform everyone of what this product is and how it can help players, please help me welcome Suzanne Williams, VP of Sports marketing, and Doctor Wayne Olin, Q 30 medical advisor. Guys, how are you? Yeah, hi there.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: Thank you for having us.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, no problem. So real quick, again, this is, this company is Q 30. The product is Q collar.
And let's start with Doctor Wayne Olin.
Doctor Olin, can you take us through exactly how Q collar works?
[00:01:21] Speaker A: Well, and Suzanne knows my opinion, this is. The brilliance really isn't a simplicity. What the device does is it gently put some pressure on the outsides of your neck, not centrally, the outsides on the muscles, the strap muscles on the outside, where your jugular veins kind of hide right behind. The amount of pressure is not much different from a necktie. So it's pretty much the same amount of pressure if you were going to church, you know, wearing your necktie. But what that does is it doesn't stop any blood from going to your brain, but it slows the blood coming out. There's really no clinical or no observatory difference in the way you act, feel or function. But the venous blood sits between your brain and your skull. In reality, it's not really inside your brain, it's in between your brain and your skull.
So that area gets slightly more full, those veins get a little bit bigger because now they're holding a tiny bit more blood and it's not much more than a teaspoon. But by doing that, it kind of locks your brain in place, almost like putting a seatbelt on it. So your brain no longer, when you accelerate and decelerate, can bang into the inside of your skull. It's held tighter. And in your brain, your skull are kind of held together as a unit.
[00:02:40] Speaker C: Okay, interesting.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: So again, and this is just my very remedial understanding here. So we have an excess of blood in the brain. Right. So is there any way that's problematic for an athlete? I guess during strenuous activity, wherever blood flow is important to go your heart, lungs, around the body in any way.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Well, remember, as we discussed, it's not really stopping blood from getting anywhere. The arterial blood or the blood that's coming from your heart that's going places with nutrigen and oxygen, it's not getting impeded at all. In fact, the blood coming out of your brain is really not getting impeded. It's just getting slowed enough that it dilates up the veins around your brain, and it's like bubble wrap on the inside. Now, it prevents brain slosh or the moving of your brain, your skull, or your brain from hitting the inner tables of your bone.
It's like putting a seatbelt on in a car. Right? This way, you're held tighter in that car. Even if the car rolls over, you're still held tightly to the seat.
[00:03:47] Speaker C: Fascinating.
I'm just trying to think, like, I'm just thinking of, like, the space between my brain, my skull. I think I can't. I don't have a concept of it's safe, even.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Say it's, you know, half, let's say half of, you know, even a centimeter. Right? Say that space, there's some wiggle room, a centimeter, but that's enough room for your brain to accelerate and decelerate with a hit, change in direction, vibration, things like that. So if you imagine it really, the seatbelt analogy is possibly the easiest one to accept. Hitting a bump in the seatbelt, you now move with the car, as opposed to you moving freely or flying around or going through the windshield, your brain is now held tighter.
[00:04:30] Speaker C: That's really what causes the concussion. At the end of the day, is the brain moving inside of the skull? Correct.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: There's a well documented entity called brain slosh. If you look it up, and that really is, you know, what causes your. It's the deceleration, the acceleration of your brain inside your skull. I mean, that's what happens when you get hit. That's what happens when you have vibration. That's what happens in a car accident. That's what happens if somebody jumps and lands awkwardly, things like that. Or when you hit a soccer ball.
Those are the things that happen. Even though it looks like from the outside, like, say, heading a soccer ball, it might have been gentle. Inside your skull, your brain's kind of going, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so that's what it minimizes. And by doing that, you minimize the movement over your brain and subsequently the injury to the brain.
[00:05:17] Speaker B: So I guess a question that I have is, you know, I mentioned, you know, not to bring up competitors, but I know that you guys, you do things differently, the one that everybody knows just because it's been so publicized as guardian caps. So obviously that's just more of. They're adding more padding, they're doing things that way. Can you speak to the, you know, how well your products produce as far as reducing the number of concussions as compared to, like, a guardian cap?
[00:05:49] Speaker A: Well, comparing them is not really, you know, sort of.
Sort of the path that I'm looking to take.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Apples and oranges is probably apples and.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Oranges preventing different issues, you know what I mean? And as you say, I'm not necessarily sure they're competitive products because they prevent different things.
[00:06:13] Speaker B: Ideally, you'd actually work in tandem, I would guess. Right? You use. Somebody could use a guardian cap and a cue collar.
So I guess with the cue collar itself. What are your guys numbers that you've seen as far as the reduction in number of concussions?
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Well, remember, let me jump in on.
[00:06:32] Speaker D: That real quick, because I just want to make sure we're really clear about the word concussion, because I know that's a really common term that people use when describing TBI, which is traumatic brain injury. But what we're really focusing on is the TBI incident, not a diagnosed concussion. Because at the end of the day, concussions are extremely subjective. So there isn't a reliable diagnostic test that can reliably diagnose a concussion. So that's why there's so much controversy about it when people talk about it. And at Q collar, what we focus on are repetitive head impacts and TBI. And so, you know, there's 25 published studies that have been done. Probably the one that gets the most attention was a clinical trial done out of Cincinnati through the children's hospital. And they looked at high school athletes, football, hockey, and women's soccer players, and they looked at their brains before their season. They MRI, DTI scanned them.
All those athletes were given accelerometers, half were given Q collars. And they went out and played their entire seasons. And at the end of the year, they re MRI'd their brains. And they actually looked at the brain scans, the structures, to see if there was changes, preseason and post season. So when they looked at these scans, they didn't take into consideration if athletes had any subjective symptoms, right. They didn't have to say if they felt dizzy or foggy or saw stars. They just looked at black and white images, data, and what they saw were the athletes that wore the cue collars. 77% showed zero changes in their white brain matter. So their brain scans look the same from the beginning of the season to the end. But the athletes not wearing cue collars, 73% saw significant changes in their white brain matter. So their brain was altered regardless of whether they felt a symptom or not. And so when people focus on only diagnosed concussions, I always mention, you know, they're looking at the tip of the iceberg and they're forgetting that there's tons of ice underneath the water. Because the issue is not just a diagnosed concussion. The issue is that you're absorbing repetitive head impacts that can cause the brain slosh, which can alter your brain matter, which can lead to injury. So we really want to attack the problem at the root of it, which is, how do we help stabilize the brain, reduce the brain slosh. And in doing that, helping to mitigate injury, helping lessen the severity of an injury if one does occur. Right. Because nothing is ever going to be proof. Right. You're not going to have 100% proof. No injury ever happening. But if we can limit the injury and limit the severity of it, you're putting that athlete in a better position of success, success on the field and success in life. So, again, we just are really cautious about using the term concussion. I know that's easy to do, but we just feel like you're missing the root of the problem.
[00:09:33] Speaker B: No. And I really appreciate everything you just said, because I, again, you know, I started this off by saying I've had a number of concussions and too many. I think I've had somewhere between six and ten diagnosed concussions, probably three or four that I've been knocked out, most of them coming from football, other sports as well. But that's to your point, that's just the tip of the iceberg, and it absolutely is, because those are the ones that got diagnosed. We just. We were actually in the studio just talking the other day about, just. Just reminiscing about high school football and some of the things that we all saw, because I happen to be lucky enough to have a show with two guys. I went to high school with one, you can't see out of the camera over here, but.
And we were talking and I said, you know, those are the number that got diagnosed. There's at least, and I'm not exaggerating at least 30 other times where I was like, I probably should not continue playing football at this moment, but I'm going to do it anyways because. Because that's just what you do and not that that's a good thing. But to your point, like preventing TBI in general and that any sort of impact and helping to lessen the effects of that and help the athlete, and you nailed it. And not just football, but in life, not just any, you know, they're given sport, but in life is huge. I mean, that it's just crazy to hear somebody put it so concisely and so, you know, eloquently. As far as, you know, that's not enough. Just talking about concussions is not enough. We need to be talking about all of it.
[00:11:10] Speaker D: It's really not. And, you know, we are advocates of all sports, and so, you know, people want to pin this TBI issue on football, and we're here to tell you it's not a football problem. Right. This happens and isn't part of athletes lives, period. It's in hockey, it's in lacrosse, it's in soccer, it's in football, it's in bobsled, it's in skeleton, it's in skiing, snowboarding, equestrian athletes, rodeo. I mean, the baseball catchers, softball catchers, volleyball players. I can't tell you how many basketball athletes we get coming to us. I mean, this is a real problem. And we want to take, you know, this bullseye, all football, and just really be a product that's for all athletes and really for war fighters. The Q itself wasn't. Was actually designed. And the general genesis of the products came about because there was a massive TBI issue in warfighters in Afghanistan.
[00:12:06] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:12:07] Speaker D: And a group of generals went to doctors and said, look, we need better helmets. And one of the doctors said, if it was a helmet, we'd have a solution already. It's not the helmet. It's the fact that we're not stabilizing the brain within the skull. And he came up with a concept. If we can use jugular vein compression, we can help stabilize the brain within the body, within the skull. And it's a simple inside out solution.
Spent decades being studied. Over 25 independent peer reviewed studies have been done. The one, the clinical trial I mentioned out of Cincinnati Children's hospital, was the biggest clinical trial. And what they found were, you know, first off, jugular vein compression is safe, 100% safe. And they also found it to be effective. And the FDA came in after analyzing the data independently and taking over five years to do so because they never looked at a product like this before, and they deemed it, number one, safe for athletes to wear for sports. And number two, they deemed it effective. And it is the only class two FDA cleared medical device on the market. And it's because it's safe and effective. And I get a lot of folks asking me, why isn't it approved? FDA approved. And we have to remind folks that it's a class two device, it's very low risk and it's uninvasive. And so the best thing it can get is cleared because approval is saved for class three devices, which are highly invasive and highly risky. So it's a low risk device. It's easy to wear, and it's the science and the data has proven that it can help stabilize your brain. And the thing that we can add some color to for you guys is we work with athletes across all different sports at all different levels, and warfighters and armed forces, men and women, and the feedback is all consistent. Right. They feel better after practices and games and training sessions. They don't have the headaches, that dizziness, that fogginess that you as a high school football player probably came home from practice and felt a little foggy sometimes, and it was hard to do your homework. We get so many football players that tell us, I come home, I can do my homework, I can go to class, I'm clear headed. I don't feel headachy. I don't have that heavy, foggy, lethargic feeling. I didn't feel like I got my bell rung. We have MLS players that tell us they sleep better at night after a match, right? They can actually go to bed and sleep and wake up and feel refreshed. We have race car drivers who tell us after a four hour race, they don't have double vision, they don't have the headaches from the vibration, the micro vibration that is happening consistently.
Think of the swift boat guys right, in the armed forces chopping on water for hours at a time. Think of secret service and seals, Rangers, marshals, swats, artillery guys deploying weapons for hours and hours in the kickback they're absorbing. All those guys come out with headaches and double vision and fatigue. And using the cue collar helps middle those feelings. And we're super proud of that, of that work that, you know, all the science and research has gone into this device.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Listen, Suzanne, everything that you just said, like, I'm just really disappointed that my athletic days are behind me because I just want to try it. I just. All the things that you talked about that you said about going home from school, having trouble doing your homework, those types of things, you know, we both, all of us here, got decent grades and made our way through school and did well, but at the same time, I know exactly the feeling you're talking about with everything you just said. And that followed me all the way through college, through everything. And, yeah, I mean, to this day, I say I probably have recurring migraines and headaches like I do, most likely because of having a lot of brain injuries.
And I just, you know, I wish something like this was around, because I would try this instantly. I'd be like, yeah, this sounds good. I'm gonna give it a shot.
[00:16:07] Speaker C: I was gonna say, I feel like I need to wear one right now.
[00:16:09] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Maybe it'll help reduce my brain fog.
[00:16:12] Speaker D: Yeah, we'll get you one to wear on set. But, Ronnie, I can't tell you how many parents, how many kids we get in the high school level that will send us notes, and the mom will go, you know what? My son's been wearing it for a week. And he said this is the first week he's ever come home and not had headaches. And the mom will pause and say, but I never knew he was having headaches. He never told me he felt bad after practice. And for me, personally, just my story. I got involved because I have sons that play high school football, and you know what? I wasn't sure I wanted them to. And I felt really bad about that because I was a collegiate athlete, and my job at the time, before Q collar, I was a part of a really high end college, you know, pro football company. I love football. I've been around it my whole life. Yet when it was time to sign my own children up, I was doing the whole, like, what about baseball and basketball? And what about Steph Curry and Jordan Spieth? And, you know, I was trying to dance them away from the sport that I have an incredible love for. And I felt bad about that. And at the same time, q 30 popped up on my radar, and I was like, man, I need to tell more parents. I need to tell more athletes about this. This is affecting so many more people. You know, it's not just the guys on tv and the talking heads talking about concussions. Like, this is happening to people every day. And we have an incredible passion to help youth football. Right. I don't want people to not sign their kids up. Right. We want to help the game. So, this is a mission for us as a company. We are extremely passionate about education because we just believe there's a lack of education right now in people understanding RHI, repetitive head impacts and TBI. And we want to help bridge that gap, and we want to educate athletes, parents, agents, physicians, trainers, you know, administrators at schools, you know, this is just another way you can protect these athletes that you love and care so much about.
[00:18:14] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:18:14] Speaker A: Without changing the game.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's the biggest thing is we talk, we've had a number of segments on our show talking about, like, we understand trying to protect, protect the players, but it's also, it's, it's this game that we love and nobody wants it to change too much. And, and so having a product like this that, you know, obviously there's no end all, be all. There's. It's still going to be a combat sport. You're still going to have injuries. Things are going to happen. But to lower, you know, you said 73%. That's a huge number. That's. It's not like we're just messing around here. That's big. And even if it. I'll be honest with you, even if it's half that number, if you tell me 30, 35% to 40% of people can, you know, come, come, come out of football or come out of whatever sport they're playing and have a high quality of life afterwards and retain most of their brain function instead of it dwindling away over time because of the repetitive brain or the repetitive head trauma. You know, that's amazing.
[00:19:17] Speaker C: I mean, I just keep going back to the idea of, like, the trickle down effect, too, of, like, those headaches. Like, I can. I can. I can feel the pain that I have. And the thing was, though, is that the outcome of that was I lived on ibuprofen during all sports that I.
[00:19:35] Speaker B: Played nsaids and other over the counter drugs and can't be good for an adolescent growing up.
[00:19:41] Speaker C: But not for your stomach, not for.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: Other parts of your body. Right. I mean, it all trickles down. It's not for other things. And then it also is masking a problem.
[00:19:49] Speaker C: Right.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Yeah. And by no means was I ever, like, a top tier athlete or anything like that. I did play college football, but it wasn't. I wasn't on your level, Suzanne. I wasn't one of the premier programs in the nation.
For division three, maybe, but not for division one. But it just. It's followed me. And it's funny that we're having this conversation right now because I've had a migraine for six days in a row and that's not good.
[00:20:18] Speaker C: No, this has been.
[00:20:20] Speaker D: Here's what we also battle. And again, we're just trying to get the word out. You know, people want to talk in absolutes. They want to say, well, is it 100% effective? Is it 100% stop every injury you could have? And the answer to that is, of course. Of course it's no, it's not. You know, but we still put a seatbelt on every time we get in a car, because, you know, in the chance of an accident, that seatbelt's your best option to help reduce as much injury as possible. Just because that seat belt's not 100%, do you not put it on anymore? Do you get on the car and go, you know what? This isn't 100% gonna keep me safe in an accident, so I'm not gonna wear it. You know, that's where we try to get people to understand, you know, there's nothing out there that you're gonna put on that's gonna say, you know, where I this. And you're never gonna have an injury. You're gonna be totally fine, and, you know, nothing bad's gonna happen.
But if you can put something on that can limit your exposure, limit your risk, help mitigate the chance of an injury, or it can help reduce the severity of it, you're gonna do it. And, you know, we get a lot of people that go, well, oh, you can't tell me this 100% prevents concussion, so it's not worth my time. And again, we go back to being like, concussions are subjective. There is no reliable diagnostic test. You had one, so the FDA does not recognize it with any product. And then two, you know, just because it's not 100%, does that mean you're not going to put your seatbelt on? Right. You still are. It's your best shot. Same with airbags. It's the best shot you got. So you got to take it. And so that's what, you know, you guys reference Blake and the NFL. That's the discussions we have with these guys. Right? Especially these guys at this level where they eat, right? They train, right, they recover, right, they sleep right. They do all these little things to have 1% of an advantage over their competition. So we talk to them like, you know, wearing this device can get you that much of a better percentage of staying healthy. Right. The best ability is availability. And then, number two, don't you want to be sharp and focused, have a free mind while you're playing? And if you can be as sharp and as focused in the fourth quarter as the first quarter, isn't that a performance advantage for you over your competition? So you have to think about it like, what am I doing to put myself in the best possible position to be the best teammate, to be the best I can be to help my team achieve our goals. And what you'll find are the guys that really adopt it and start wearing it, which is what we call early adopters right now. These are the guys that have incredible leadership mentality, right? They are leaders on the field. They're leaders in the locker room.
They have a lot of convictions, meaning they believe in things when they believe in something. You know, they. They follow through with it. And then at the end of the day, there are guys that are really passionate about their families, really passionate about whether that family is their team or that family is their wife and their children or their girlfriend or their parents. We get a lot of moms calling us. You know, these athletes want to make sure they're there for their families.
And so we've got a great group of guys that are passionate about it, that believe in it, and we just feel really lucky that we get to work with them because they're wonderful people.
[00:23:38] Speaker C: This has been, I mean, fascinating.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: This is awesome. Listen, we could have this conversation all.
[00:23:42] Speaker C: Day, I was gonna say, so, yeah, I have a couple more quick questions here. I just wonder why we have you. So, obviously, the crux of this is, like, we want adoption, right? I mean, we talked a little bit about alluded to parents maybe not wanting their children to play certain sports. What has adoption looked like for you guys in terms of getting this out in, like, youth sports and other amateur sports? And what kind of plans do you have to kind of get this thing moving along in the pro ranks as well?
[00:24:10] Speaker D: Yeah, it's been really fascinating. You know, we've been on the market since September 2021, so we're still dealing a new product.
But I will tell you, in the world of, and I don't know how much you guys are educated on lacrosse, but in the world of lacrosse, you know, there is a really high adoption rate, particularly men's, but also women's. Football has been wonderful for us. Soccer is getting there. You know, soccer is not an equipment sport, really. So there's a little bit more of a learning curve with soccer athletes understanding, you know, this is a little piece of equipment you have to put on. But, you know, it's been really fascinating. And what we see, and we see this, whether it's a pro team or college team or a youth team, is, it's by word of mouth. So what happens is one athlete gets it and they start wearing it, and their locker room buddy turns to them and goes, what is that? And the athlete goes, well, it's a cue collar, and what does it do? And they explain it and then they say, well, how do you like it? And when the athlete goes, I love it. I don't have headaches. I feel better. It helps me play better. I feel better about myself. Then you see the second athlete get it and then the third. And so what we've noticed are these pods that are popping up, and they're pods on teams or pods within the state.
I'm from the Maryland area, and so the DMV, you know, is the place I know well. And, you know, what it looks like in the DMV is incredible. It's that lacrosse world. We are an official sponsor of the PLL, which is the premier lacrosse League, and they are absolutely fabulous. They're our first sponsorship with a league. They're incredibly progressive. The athletes in the league have the opportunity to wear it, and they've been wonderful for us. So adoption is coming, but it really comes the old fashioned grassroots way, players talking to players. And honestly, we wouldn't want it any other way. It's incredibly authentic. And as a medical device, you know, it should be that way because we're not going to be unauthentic, you know, we're not going to put stuff out there that people can't experience for themselves. So I would tell you the old game of telephone is really how word has been spreading.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: We also. We're also seeing. We had a player buy it for his entire high school. A pro football player outfitted his whole high school.
[00:26:33] Speaker D: We had two. We had Jayden Hicks, who is with the Chiefs. He wore it when he was at Washington State and loves it. And so Jayden donated collars to Bishop Borman, which was incredibly charitable of him. And then Logan Wilson with the Bengals just did it with his high school in natrona in Wyoming. So these players get it, they love it, and then they go back to their high school programs and go, I wish I had had this when I was your age.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: It's interesting you see the adoption kind of spreading that way. I mean, frankly, that's kind of how we came across it.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: Right?
[00:27:05] Speaker C: It's like I saw an ad for this. I kind of looked at it, and then all of a sudden I'm noticing, oh, hey, there's a guy that's got one on. Oh, hey, there's a guy that's got one on. I'm sending pictures to the guys in the group chat, like, hey, these guys are wearing cute collars. We got to get these guys on and talk about this thing because this is very organic, the same way we even just found out about it ourselves.
[00:27:23] Speaker D: We could actually, I could almost pinpoint exactly how guys get it in the league because I can tell you, you know, who they played with in college, then who their teammates are, and it just goes like, great, fine. So, you know, you wore it and it goes by position. Position groups look out for each other. So you'll see there's a lot of safeties in corners. There's a lot of tight ends, a lot of running backs. So once one guy in the position starts wearing it, it kind of starts spreading. Tony Pollard started in running backs for us. Taylor Rat really started it in the safeties for us. Drew Tranquil started and the linebackers for us. And then it just spreads.
[00:28:01] Speaker C: It's awesome.
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah. Listen, Suzanne, Doctor Olin, we would love to sit here and discuss this with you all day long because I'm absolutely fascinated. Like, I'm going to take you up on your offer. I want to get these for the studio. I want to see how this works.
[00:28:19] Speaker A: There's an empty spot on the desk. You can put it right up there.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: But no, I appreciate all of the insight that you've both provided throughout this entire interview.
Again, fascinating, fascinating product. We definitely, at some point in the future, want to have you guys back on to talk more about it, especially because after talking with you guys, I'm pretty confident that we're going to start seeing this more and more in the NFL.
And it's a great thing.
[00:28:47] Speaker C: I mean, it's something that I'm going to start talking about just in my own circles with parents and things that have kids in sports.
[00:28:52] Speaker B: Yeah, we're at that age where, you know, you talked about youth sports and those types of things, and we all have young kids and they're getting, you know, they're going to be getting into youth sports and those types of things. And this is definitely on my radar, and I'm going to be pushing this to every team that, that my daughter ever plays for, so. Awesome.
[00:29:09] Speaker D: There you go, guys. Well, thanks for having us. It's a thank you for us to be able to talk about it. So any questions, hit us up. We're around.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Thank you so much.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: Appreciate the opportunity to spread the word.
[00:29:21] Speaker C: Awesome. Thank you so much.
