True Patriot Love - September 13, 2026


8 Concussions Changed His Life Forever ft. Ryan Sutton & Seth Mendelsohn


Episode Stats


Length

23 minutes

Words per minute

200.07

Word count

4,770

Sentence count

7


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 in 2017 co-founders ryan sutton and seth mendelson started something called heads
00:00:10.640 up concussion advocacy network heads up can and ryan and seth created a special purpose brand
00:00:15.920 donating 15 of all sales to the canadian concussion center and ryan seth join me in studio
00:00:21.680 gentlemen how are you good how are you good um this is actually something near and dear to my
00:00:26.240 heart i've done some charity work with bay crest and brain injuries i've had some friends of a
00:00:31.600 head injury so i know in your bio you talk about the number of concussions you've had ryan so walk
00:00:37.600 us through it what sport and when did you have these concussions yeah so i've had eight total
00:00:42.960 concussions so far in my life hopefully i don't have any more but majority of them came from
00:00:48.080 playing hockey as a kid um i sustained four concussions before the end of my high school
00:00:53.680 career right um and then was eventually told that i probably shouldn't play hockey anymore and i was
00:00:59.680 playing at a a decently high level um and so that changed my life quite a bit and then after that
00:01:06.960 i sustained three more and doing those ones in various ways i'd say one was also in hockey and
00:01:13.040 then another one was working just out in the yard and then another one was just a freak accident so
00:01:18.000 they just kind of kept happening and um that's when i started talking to seth about my experiences
00:01:23.520 and he also shared with uh with me some about his and we started to kind of say maybe uh maybe there's
00:01:30.080 something more we could do here i think there's people that need some help and seth for you was
00:01:34.240 football it was football so i had one diagnosed concussion i think that's an important distinction
00:01:38.880 because played eight years of football and a lot of times you know you get your bell rung and you
00:01:42.800 kind of shake it off and you know especially in football plays are eight seconds and you have some
00:01:46.960 time off so you kind of like try and reorient yourself to get back into the play and so for me
00:01:52.720 uh got a concussion right before grade 12. it was a week before the season was starting and
00:01:58.000 i just remember a lot of my symptoms came more on the mental health emotional spectrum and i
00:02:03.600 didn't know that that was a sign or a symptom of a concussion at the time and i was told yeah
00:02:08.880 you'll be back in one to two weeks end up being like a two-month recovery took a while for me to
00:02:13.680 come back and a lot of what i went through there was really hard to navigate and like ryan mentioned
00:02:18.400 it wasn't until we met each other at brock university going to sport management and we
00:02:22.400 started talking about our experiences i was like oh like this was a really impactful experience that
00:02:27.760 i didn't understand and what about other people that are going through it and even today high
00:02:32.160 school students that still don't fully understand and it became a huge passion for us well i've
00:02:36.720 dealt with a lot of nhl players over the years and alumni and they still talk about because of
00:02:40.800 head injuries they get vertigo sometimes and that's still an issue and ryan you talked about
00:02:46.400 even to this day even though it was years ago you had concussions you still have symptoms what are
00:02:50.800 are the symptoms yeah so definitely deal with some of the emotional stuff like a little bit
00:02:55.560 of anxiety previous to my concussions i never had any type of anxiety i was pretty pretty calm cool
00:03:01.640 and collected and um essentially uh yeah that's the one that definitely keeps coming back and then
00:03:08.040 sometimes uh headaches or migraines especially if i get a bad sleep or something like that
00:03:12.700 um will kind of put me back into that state of uh what i experienced when i was going through the
00:03:18.060 the concussions so when you guys talk about anxiety and mental health with the concussions
00:03:24.180 is it the anxiety of the injury and not sure how your body's dealing with it what is it exactly
00:03:30.420 yeah that's a really good question so uh yeah so i've actually looked into this with my masters a
00:03:36.140 little bit as well and some of the anxiety that is felt can be dealt with uh say you're returning to
00:03:41.960 sport a lot of fear right injury a lot of fear of maybe your your um your abilities right like
00:03:49.220 you're going back you have a fundamentally changed brain you're also removed from the sport so your
00:03:54.420 confidence may be a little bit different and there's social factors that play into it too
00:03:58.980 and the perceptions of your peers so that's more i guess when you're returning back to sport but
00:04:04.500 then outside of sport there's definitely anxiety that can be felt just from um just kind of injury
00:04:10.680 just in general right so you could be worried about say hitting your head or if you did hit
00:04:17.660 your head and then you're worried about symptoms coming back when you have that experience of like
00:04:23.000 having that onset of symptoms there's a especially eight times for me there's a lot of fear that can
00:04:28.540 go into like oh i just hit my head i really hope that all of this other stuff doesn't come along
00:04:34.420 with this i hope i'm okay and i can kind of go from there for seth you noticed a lot of your
00:04:39.920 teammates as you say didn't handle their concussions properly what what do you mean by that
00:04:45.060 I think it's you know the lack of resources and communication that we have surrounding the topic
00:04:51.080 so I think there was just a lot of us that especially in a culture like football like you
00:04:57.220 expect pain there isn't this inherent element to playing football and most contact sports where
00:05:02.980 you kind of want to endure pain and there is that toughest kind of survive and um I think for us
00:05:09.520 it was a lot of you know and especially when i was on the sideline i was seeing it people just
00:05:14.800 shaking things off and like not really knowing where they were but still playing and going back
00:05:19.360 and going back in the field and again it's that there's a stigma around it there's also maybe the
00:05:24.720 fear of i don't want to admit that i have this too because you know for me i felt like my coaches
00:05:29.520 looked at me differently after i had the injury and when i'm on the sideline laughing and looking
00:05:34.560 fine because again this is an invisible injury right you don't look at someone with a concussion
00:05:38.320 and know that they have a concussion whereas if i sprained my ankle if i broke my arm and i have a
00:05:42.400 cast it's a whole different story so i think there is that element of because as i mentioned that
00:05:47.840 culture when you're looking at someone on the sideline who is by all appearances looks normal
00:05:53.200 laughing whatever um it seems like they're just not wanting to be a part of the team in some
00:05:57.760 regards and that was a really hard thing to navigate it's heads up can dot c is the website
00:06:02.240 you can find them on facebook instagram x and youtube providing concussion education personal
00:06:07.360 journeys awareness and resources across canada and and ryan i bring that up because i know eric
00:06:12.560 lindros has been at the forefront of rowan's law to try to bring resources to help with everyone
00:06:19.440 in the country with concussions where are we now in 2026 for the resources for people who've
00:06:24.500 suffered a concussion in some kind of sport yeah i think the first place that i would tell people
00:06:29.220 to go to would be parachute canada um so they're the leader for the return to play return to learn
00:06:34.700 protocols okay and so that's exactly go to their website i'm pretty sure it's just parachute.ca
00:06:40.700 and right there they have really comprehensive guidelines that are really easy to follow
00:06:44.940 they can outline all the different things that you need to know for return to learn
00:06:48.620 and also the return to play process and also general concussion guidelines as well
00:06:53.740 on top of that there's the living brain injury guidelines that are updated on an annual basis
00:06:59.020 um that there is also a good resource for practitioners but also a fantastic resource
00:07:04.660 for people like us who maybe aren't as medically inclined to look into all those details or help
00:07:10.200 people um so yeah that those are the two resources I would definitely point people towards
00:07:15.300 Seth are we getting um to a point where kids guys and girls and young people playing sports
00:07:22.100 are more apt to say I just hit my head I don't feel right are we getting better at that
00:07:26.040 I think to an extent I mean leaps and bounds since when we were in high school I would say I
00:07:31.300 think there's also a lot of parents who have this fear too of maybe wanting to put their kids into
00:07:37.040 sports to which I always say I would go back and do and play football again like what you learn
00:07:41.700 from life skills I think are really important discipline teamwork leadership all those things
00:07:47.080 that are part of sport are really important I think for us you know working with high school
00:07:53.020 students and doing um education programs we still see that there are gaps there's still a lot of
00:07:59.020 students that don't know that concussions and mental health have this direct link right like
00:08:02.620 we have bell let's talk and we have rowan's law day but we very rarely combine the two as a
00:08:08.300 conversation and this is a brain injury right like we need to understand that a concussion is
00:08:13.500 a traumatic brain injury um and i think there is more ground that we've made with the younger
00:08:21.100 demographic and they are a lot more mindful of their friends which i think we've noticed too
00:08:25.980 the support that they have is like they really want to be there for them and i think that's been
00:08:30.140 a great change but again because this is invisible because of how complex this injury is and you know
00:08:35.980 ryan mentioned he's had eight i've had one but our concussions were very different each of his eight
00:08:39.980 concussions were very different because they present differently so it's really hard for
00:08:43.980 these students still to navigate and understand what they're going through even if they maybe
00:08:48.860 have experienced a concussion in the past or know someone who has so that's where there is still
00:08:52.540 these barriers because he had eight but the one could be enough to cause you to not be able to
00:08:58.300 play the sport anymore right absolutely yeah 100 yeah because i've ever speaking to a neurologist
00:09:04.220 and he pointed out that you get a concussion that's the hit the next time you get hit it could
00:09:10.300 be half as hard and you can get another concussion yeah more susceptible yes yeah yeah yeah and then
00:09:17.100 that one could also be worse not it doesn't depend on how hard you get hit right it depends on how
00:09:22.140 your brain reacts to the injury i know part of your mission statement is your ambition to be a
00:09:26.140 national leader of concussion awareness and education how has the response been to coaches
00:09:31.980 to athletes organizations across the country to your goal your ambition i think it's been generally
00:09:37.500 quite positive i think the one thing that we love about working in the concussion space is that
00:09:41.980 people are so friendly and so willing to help one another but in terms of the response i think
00:09:47.820 everybody appreciates our approach to education as well and our approach to awareness we try and
00:09:55.260 really highlight the stories with like people with lived experience that's very true to our
00:10:00.540 experiences as well and how we connect with people so i think it's something that we're continuing to
00:10:07.180 work towards every day and we want to continue to build partnerships and get involved with
00:10:11.820 more sport organizations we've really had great success working with the school boards we're
00:10:17.660 involved with 14 different school boards across ontario and doing programming there and we're
00:10:23.100 continuing to build on educating students and whatnot i think we did around a thousand students
00:10:29.260 last year well are close to it so we're looking to continue to build on that and um and and go from
00:10:36.060 there we have a lot more to offer and a lot more effort that we're putting towards this and we're
00:10:40.860 really excited about uh that for sure seth how much does pro sports having concussion spotters
00:10:46.940 concussion protocols how is that filtering down to youth sports you know i think we're starting
00:10:52.540 to see again the conversations that we're having now are you know you look at five years ago we
00:10:57.980 weren't having those conversations and you're starting to see certain laws change and policies
00:11:02.780 of like when contact sports can start and i think that's where those ripple effects really come down
00:11:07.660 and there is this you know top-down approach like what we see at the top levels will gradually get
00:11:13.820 to you know grassroots sports and so i do think there has become a lot the landscape has definitely
00:11:22.080 shifted right but we still have a long way to go right right you know i'm i know the medical
00:11:28.020 community is involved in this and how the medical community diagnose and treats concussions has
00:11:34.220 changed or have you talked to some of the people in the medical community in the country have they
00:11:38.820 given you feedback has there been a good back and forth yeah i'd say that we uh we definitely
00:11:44.420 have talked to many people in the medical space i would say there still is quite a discrepancy
00:11:49.580 in terms of the knowledge that different practitioners have about concussion so there
00:11:54.300 are still people out there that are being diagnosed and being told to rest for a prolonged
00:11:58.760 period of time whereas now we know that you want to rest for a 24 to 48 hour period and then
00:12:03.760 gradually returned to activities um so there is quite a change in that respect but um yeah
00:12:10.040 continuing there's a lot of great programs out there like the concussion echo program
00:12:14.200 that educates practitioners and i would encourage any practitioners to be a part of that to learn
00:12:19.040 more um and so there is a lot of great work being done but there's still some some gaps in terms of
00:12:24.900 how it's being diagnosed and how it's being recommended for treatments unfortunately seth
00:12:29.540 in canada you have thousands of volunteer coaches from competitive swimming to hockey to you name
00:12:37.060 it what kind of resources do they have to know whether one of their athletes has got a brain
00:12:41.940 injury so there is on um you know when they're going through their credentials in coaches
00:12:47.300 association of ontario in canada there is um them they are able to learn about concussions i think
00:12:53.620 it's tough from the conversations i've had with coaches is it's one thing to maybe go through
00:12:58.900 something online and then it's nothing to deal with it in person right and i think during an
00:13:03.060 event during an event especially when you're a volunteer you're not a doctor right and you know
00:13:08.260 we've talked to even coaches too where it's like sometimes it's not even like the uh athletes that
00:13:12.820 are the ones that are wanting to fight back to play it's their parents right their parents
00:13:16.820 you're the coach you're pulling right off the field and the parents screaming at you yeah right
00:13:22.580 so there's so much nuance to this that for a coach who's volunteering who maybe is even
00:13:28.740 like in their 20s or like a student whatever the case may be like maybe they don't have as much
00:13:33.780 experience as uh with coaching like it's a really hard thing for them to to kind of be in that
00:13:40.580 position and again because obviously we've seen injuries especially in football like to attack of
00:13:46.900 a lower where like you know immediately like someone yeah is is this is severe but that's not
00:13:52.020 always the case with concussions and sometimes symptoms don't actually occur for another like
00:13:55.940 72 hours after so it can be really really difficult for a volunteer coach who went through one online
00:14:03.380 module who came from work went to the event and now he's got a bunch of teenagers yeah yeah
00:14:09.860 the apparel you have some of right now heads up canada the website looks great but one of the new
00:14:14.580 lines is challenge the stigma what's that about right yeah so we we've been working on that for
00:14:19.300 a little bit now and it's because of uh the stigma of concussions and we just wanted to
00:14:24.180 create something that was a representation of just people um essentially challenging the stigma
00:14:29.700 just putting it out there it's it's about um having those conversations being open about your
00:14:35.780 experiences and also encouraging others to ask hey what is that why do you wear that and everybody's
00:14:41.300 story would be individual it'd be different but challenge the stigma to us is one of our
00:14:45.460 mentalities that we have right when we're approaching our work in our education awareness
00:14:49.780 and research and we're always trying to push that conversation forward and it's one of the
00:14:54.500 representations of that forgive me what is the stigma don't people understand if someone's got
00:15:00.100 a head injury is that still an issue i'm gonna defer that to right yeah so uh the stigma so
00:15:04.980 uh i actually looked into this again with my master's research so stigma manifests as stereotypes
00:15:10.100 so uh one of the ways that it does is stereotypes so people um could stereotype someone with a
00:15:15.860 concussion as perceived as weak for example or maybe they aren't returning to the the standard
00:15:22.340 uh recovery protocols and and so they're kind of like malingering or something yes yeah so they're
00:15:27.460 experiencing concussion past the the normal right trajectory of recovery and so they're whether it's
00:15:34.180 actually um said overtly or not the person is feeling it internally and those are perceived
00:15:41.780 because of the the way that we learn we learn about sport where how we have to act in sport
00:15:46.900 and then sometimes too as seth mentioned like his coaches looked at him differently whether that's
00:15:51.380 real or perceived that's still a significant thing that makes him feel disconnected and so it's that
00:15:56.660 disconnect those expectations around sport that create a disconnection when you're not able to
00:16:02.740 live like fully through your athletic identity like the way you want and the way you're taught
00:16:08.580 so it's it there's a lot that's maybe not said right i think that's the one thing but you've
00:16:14.420 if you've had the injury you sense it yeah it's not it's not something that people are like oh
00:16:18.900 yeah you're you're weak because of this it's it's more internal it's more how you understand your
00:16:24.500 own experiences through the lens of what you think you should be doing not how your actual experience
00:16:29.300 is the cmha has done such great work for mental health in canada but are they at a level helping
00:16:36.420 people with concussions because i always feel that cmha is working on different levels of mental
00:16:41.300 health how are they working with the different concussion advocates in canada by understanding
00:16:46.820 the mental health struggles if you've had a concussion you know i can't necessarily answer
00:16:51.940 directly where they've been linked to with concussions but what i can say is the layers
00:16:56.900 around mental health and someone who has experienced anxiety like the resources that you get and there
00:17:03.300 was actually someone that we're really close with said like when you're dealing with mental health
00:17:07.460 and anxiety you're dealing with mental health and anxiety that's not like your it's your concussion
00:17:12.020 specific mental health anxiety so it's like sometimes you have to treat the person where
00:17:15.460 they're at right and i think that's where the cmha in doing the work that they do is so imperative
00:17:21.540 for someone with concussion because if you're going through those struggles it doesn't matter
00:17:25.700 that it's stemmed from the concussion necessarily the fact that you're still going through the
00:17:29.380 anxiety or depression or irritability the resources that cmha has can very well um work
00:17:35.860 for that person or help you cope through that and i think that's where in the lane that what the cmha
00:17:41.060 does is so important for the work that we do because again we're talking about a person's
00:17:46.100 brain we're talking about something that everyone has but we all have a different you know way of
00:17:51.300 reacting to things and to experiencing things and so i think that's where the breadth of what
00:17:56.580 the cmha does can really encompass everything we're coming up to 10 years of this heads up can
00:18:03.780 i know you're giggling at it right it's been wild but in the 10 years from the people
00:18:08.900 that have bought the apparel do you get feedback no i'm not talking about the medical community
00:18:14.340 but the average canadian that have been part of this what kind of feedback are you getting from
00:18:17.780 them yeah i think well first of all it is crazy that we've been doing this for almost 10 years
00:18:23.140 yeah we started in our fourth year university and we like i don't think we ever imagined that we'd
00:18:28.980 still be doing it but it's just the community the people involved in the space really help us to
00:18:34.420 keep going with it um the response i would say is quite positive like especially in terms of the
00:18:39.940 apparel everybody always loves how comfortable they are it looks great yeah and and uh especially
00:18:45.140 our hoodies people love yeah especially fall coming up yeah yeah but i think it's something
00:18:50.500 that uh we we actually kind of took a little bit of a step back from in terms of our promotion of it
00:18:56.260 um maybe a few years ago but it's something that seth and i have talked about wanting to revamp and
00:19:01.460 and kind of bring it back out there into the fold and and be a little bit more um involved with that
00:19:07.860 side of the business as well yeah because it's something that we care about it's something that
00:19:12.100 honestly we love wearing it all the time too and it's a big part of who we are and
00:19:17.380 the response from the community has always been super positive and that also came in part with
00:19:22.420 our advocate program where we we highlighted a lot of people's stories so essentially we would
00:19:28.260 people would share their story we would with the picture of them in the apparel and and that was
00:19:33.300 a really great way to not only um make them feel connected to the overall community for having the
00:19:39.380 apparel and and being connected to the concussion advocacy network but um just a great way to share
00:19:44.980 their story start that conversation uh similar to the challenge the stigma shirts as well well
00:19:50.020 and seth almost guaranteed when someone reads that story there's going to be someone goes oh
00:19:54.100 that's me yeah that happened to me yeah yeah i think that's the thing that i find the most
00:20:00.100 fulfilling um and even if it's just one person ryan and i have always said it's just like
00:20:05.460 the impact that that makes because we kind of when we were going through it we did feel alone we did
00:20:10.020 feel like no one knows what i'm going through type of and it wasn't until i met ryan where
00:20:14.180 i started to realize well this is what he went through and we had this huge breakthrough and
00:20:18.020 it's you know obviously led to 10 years later i was being sitting here with yeah yeah yeah yeah
00:20:22.900 yeah i think like we've had people reach out being like i thought i was the only one going
00:20:26.980 through this like it's so like nice to know that someone else um not that nice to know that someone
00:20:31.300 went through that experience but like it's reassuring it's not you know as alienating as
00:20:37.300 it may have felt right and i think that you know for us and we've seen people come out for our
00:20:41.460 events we've seen a lot of the community is very supportive and so it's kind of really um it
00:20:47.700 reminds us our mission it reminds us our purpose and going back to that challenging the stigma it
00:20:52.340 just really reinforces that for us because i'm sure when you're wearing it people must come up
00:20:56.260 to you what is that yeah yeah yeah and then you explain it so yeah so that's interesting so
00:21:02.260 facebook instagram x youtube headsupcan.ca for heads up ken what's next for you guys
00:21:08.740 um well for me in particular i'm kind of doubling down on the research road and i'm
00:21:13.060 actually starting my phd at the university of toronto next oh congratulations oh wow okay so
00:21:18.100 i'll be studying uh in part with some of the work that we do with heads up but i'll be doing
00:21:22.900 concussion education and policy and looking into that avenue of research and um so that's definitely
00:21:28.820 my next step but on top of that we're looking to expand our educational program partnerships
00:21:34.660 uh we recently just partnered with laurentian university oh nice um and we're going to be
00:21:38.980 doing some education programming up there in sudbury which is definitely an under
00:21:43.140 um supported area absolutely and so we're really excited to provide some education up there
00:21:49.780 um and then we're also looking to or we're in the midst of finalizing a partnership with waterloo
00:21:54.500 university as well nice um and we're going to be doing some education through the university there
00:21:59.140 and and just continuing our programming from our education standpoint and hoping to get a
00:22:04.020 a few different research publications out this year as well and Seth for you for me right now
00:22:08.960 the big project is we actually um put together this education series because we found that you
00:22:14.660 know there isn't a lot of people that highlight the organizations doing the work and we've had
00:22:20.020 the privilege of meeting a lot of these amazing organizations who are boots on the ground and so
00:22:25.540 this education series is going to be a three-part series um where you've highlighted three organizations
00:22:30.160 and the work that they're doing uh the neurotrauma care pathways uh the novel lab um at holland
00:22:35.760 blue review and then the ontario brain injury association and so it's going to be kind of a
00:22:39.920 multimedia series where it's going to be on youtube as well as podcasts and we sit down and do
00:22:45.200 interviews with their uh leading um members and founders of these organizations they talk about
00:22:50.880 the work they're doing where the gaps still exist and how we can kind of move forward and continue
00:22:56.160 to progress uh in the you know it's called the inside the concussion landscape so in that in
00:23:00.960 the landscape that we are in and uh something we're really passionate about is bringing that
00:23:04.960 education to the forefront and making it accessible for people because not everyone knows all the work
00:23:10.320 that's being done um and so that's something that we're really excited to release at the end of the
00:23:14.640 month and ryan i think that's where social media is a good thing because it's able to you're able
00:23:19.920 to get the message out to a lot of different people different age groups right yeah no it's
00:23:24.320 fantastic and we're really excited to produce that series and and to be able to share it in many
00:23:29.920 different ways as well right like uh with all those i'm sure you're aware but you gotta tailor
00:23:34.320 it to each of the absolutely platforms and all that stuff so it's it's cool to have different
00:23:38.720 voices on each of the platforms and and just get all get the word out ryan seth thank you very much
00:23:43.440 i really would this has been a real pleasure and thank you for the work you guys are doing
00:23:46.480 Great job.
00:23:47.480 Thank you.
00:23:48.480 Appreciate you having us.
00:23:49.480 Thank you.