A 30-something breakdancer who had been practicing head-spinning for about 19 years developed a protuberant and tender bulge on top of his head.

According to a medical case study recently published in the BMJ Case Reports journal, head-spinning as part of breakdancing training can cause hairless bumps on practitioners’ heads. Also known as “headspin holes” among breakdancers, these inaesthetic bulges are sometimes associated with a circle of hair loss and can become painful. In the recently documented case, the patient, a man in his 30s who had been incorporating head-spinning as part of his breakdancing training for the last 19 years, reported spinning on his head for about two to seven minutes, about five times a week. He noticed the bump a while back but told doctors that it had become larger and tender to the touch in the last five years.

Photo: Hrant Khachatryan/Unsplash+

“The presence of the lesion and associated discomfort were aesthetically displeasing to the patient, but the protuberance had not hindered the patient from continuing his head-spinning activities,” the man’s doctors noted.

Upon examining the tender bulge and conducting a structural scan of the patient’s cranium, doctors determined that a soft mass was sandwiched between the skin and the skull, but also that the skin above the mass and the bone beneath it were considerably thicker than the tissues surrounding them. They decided to surgically remove the mass and also shave the man’s scalp back to the level of the tissue around it.

Photo: BMJ Case Reports

Known as “breakdancer overuse syndrome,” this strange condition associated with breakdancing has only rarely been scientifically documented but is apparently well-known among breakdancers, although its prevalence among practitioners is still unknown. A German study found that of 100 questioned breakdancers, 31% had hair loss and 24% developed painless bumps on their heads, while 37 of them had scalp inflammation.

The limited research on the so-called “headspin hole,” suggests that practicing head-spining more than three times a week even for just a few minutes comes with a high risk of hair loss, compared with practicing the move less frequently.