If you’ve ever seen a breakdancer spinning on their heads and thought that can’t be too good for them, you were right. A breakdancer in his early 30s who had been spinning on his head for nearly two decades of breakdancing was diagnosed with a “breakdance bulge” or a “headspin hole” that needed to be surgically removed, according to a first-of-a-kind research paper on the heretofore underexplored phenomenon of headspin holes in breakdancers.
X-rays revealed that the man had a benign tumor that resulted from several years of repetitive trauma to the scalp caused by spinning on his head in a way that made him look very cool. The informal term for this condition is a “headspin hole.” It turns out that constantly spinning rapidly on your head with body all of your weight coming down on your skull is not good for your skull.
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The unnamed breakdancing man trained five times a week, spinning on his head for a total of 2 to 7 minutes per session. If we just stick to the low end of that total, that means this dancer was spinning on their head for 10 minutes a week, or 520 minutes a year. He’d been doing that for around 19 years, meaning he’s been applying all of his body weight to the top of his head and spinning rapidly for at least 9,888 minutes, roughly equal to 6.8 days.
Spending nearly one full week of your life drilling your head into the ground does seem like it would have some kind of ill effect.
The dancer felt the bump on his head for quite some time but ignored it, continuing to do head spins for the love of the game. He eventually sought medical treatment, at which point surgeons at Copenhagen University Hospital were able to successfully remove a 1-inch thick lump from his skull. The mass was sandwiched between his skull and skin, an indication of chronic inflammation and minor bleeding leading to thickened skin and scar tissue. The guy had basically developed a horn, like a unicorn or a narwhal.
The breakdancer has since expressed relief, stating that people now compliment him on his lack of disturbing head bulge. “Many say that they no longer notice that I have a bump and that my head looks completely normal.”
