It is possible to rock too hard. Doctors at Hannover Medical School in Germany treated a 50-year-old man earlier this year complaining of constant headaches that were only getting worse. He had no history of head injuries or drug problems, but told doctors that he had been headbanging at a Motörhead concert with his son the month before. After scanning his head, doctors found a brain bleed.

According to their case study published today in medical journal the Lancet, doctors then drilled a hole in the man's head to drain the blood, after which his headaches stopped. It was all the headbanging.

"We are not against headbanging," Dr. Ariyan Pirayesh Islamian, one of the man's doctors, told the Associated Press. "The risk of injury is very, very low. But I think if (our patient) had (gone) to a classical concert, this would not have happened." More from the Daily Beast:

Doctors wrote in the study, that "headbanging, with its brisk forward and backward acceleration and deceleration forces, led to rupturing of bridging veins causing haemorrhage…" and declared that the case "serves as evidence in support of Motörhead's reputation as one of the most hardcore rock'n'roll acts on earth, if nothing else because of their contagious speed drive and the hazardous potential for headbanging fans to suffer brain injury."

None of this should discourage you, headbanger, from continuing to do so. "Rock 'n' roll will never die," Islamian said. "Heavy metal fans should rock on."

[Image via MTV]