With the recent increasing medical concern over brain damage in players, I've joined the ranks of "conscientious objector" to the sport. So today, I'd like to share some data from recent studies in an article by Brian Resnick from Vox.com: "What a Lifetime of Playing Football Can Do to the Human Brain."
I want to emphasize the point that this is about a condition, chronic traumatic encephalopathy [CTE], that is different from a severe, acute brain injury like you might get in an automobile accident. This is an accumulation of effects from repeated, milder injuries. You can't assume that, if the person doesn't lose consciousness, there is no effect on the brain. Here are excerpts from the Resnick article:
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"Six things to know about the NFL, concussions, and brain damage. Football isn’t just a contact sport — it’s a dangerous game of massive bodies colliding into one another. . . [that] can do extraordinary damage to brains and bodies . . . . "Doctors have learned a tremendous amount about concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain condition believed to be caused by repeated hits to the head, since the first former NFL player was diagnosed with CTE in the early 2000s. Concern around the issue has only grown now that more than 100 former NFL players have received a postmortem diagnosis of CTE, and new research is finding that youth football may be a risk factor for CTE down the line. . . .
"Here’s what you need to know.
"1) Concussions are incredibly commonplace in professional football . . . . [W]hen a person hits their head hard, the brain can bounce around and twist in the skull. It’s this rapid motion of the brain inside the skull that creates the traumatic brain injury known as a concussion. . . .
"2) Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive hits
CTE is not about single concussions. It’s the result of repeated concussions . . . even head impacts that are not quite as severe . . . can result in lasting structural changes in the brain. . . .
"Specifically, brains with CTE accumulate a protein called tau (which is believed to be dislodged from brain fibers during an injury). Tau clumps together in the tissues of the brain, interrupting critical information flow. . . .
"3) There’s a range of CTE symptoms, from forgetfulness to violent behavior
The symptoms of CTE creep slowly, taking 8 to 10 years to manifest after initial repeated brain traumas, and can grow worse over decades. . . .
"4) CTE can only be conclusively diagnosed in autopsy (though progress is being made in diagnosing via MRI). So it’s hard to say how many current and former football players have the condition. What we do know is . . . enough to be alarming.
"In 2017, JAMA [Journal of the American Medical Association] published a major and disturbing finding. Researchers had collected the autopsied brains of 202 former football players who had donated their brains to science, or had them donated via their next of kin. The players included those who had played in the NFL, but also those who only played through college, and a few who had only played in high school.
"Of the 202 brains, 177, or nearly 90 percent, were diagnosed with CTE. And there was a pattern: Those who had played football longer were more likely to have worse brain damage. . . . The more trauma over a longer period, the worse the symptoms.
"This is not to say that 99 percent of NFL players will develop CTE (the brains were donated and are not a representative sample). [I would add that it's likely that those with recognized symptoms would be more likely to be in the study, either from their own permission or that of their family. -RR] But it does show that football players are, indeed, at risk. . . .
"5) Even high school and college-level play poses a risk. One of the biggest consequences of the concussion research is that fewer young people are participating in the sport. . . . Celebrities like former President Barack Obama have said they wouldn’t let their sons play football. . . .
"The number of high school students playing football dropped by 20,000 between 2016 and 2017, continuing a downward trend. In 2008, 1.11 million high school students played football. Now, it’s 1.039 million. That said, football is still the most popular sport for high school males. . . .
"A 2015 study found that former NFL players who began football before age 12 fared worse on cognitive assessments than those who started later in their teens. And this held true even controlling for number of years played. . . .
"More recently, a study on the brains of deceased football players also found a link between early play and CTE. Athletes who began playing tackle football before age 12 developed the cognitive and behavior symptoms of CTE 13 years earlier on average than those who started playing later in their teenage years. . . .
"There are many uncertainties left in the research. A study of 3,000-plus Wisconsin men who had played high school football in the 1950s found no elevated rates of cognitive impairment. This shows not everyone who plays football as a teen suffers consequences, and researchers still need to better understand how much exposure to football tackles is too much.
"6) The NFL has made the game somewhat safer. But it’s still dangerous. It’s unclear how many former NFL players have CTE. . . . And these days, the league is donating millions to concussion-related research. . . .
"[T]he NFL has banned helmet-to-helmet hits, made kickoff plays slightly safer, and limited the amount of contact allowed in practices. It’s also looking into artificial playing surfaces to soften the blow of impacts. . . .
"But even with better helmets, football might not ever be a perfectly safe sport for brain health. As long as football is a sport where human-to-human collisions are fundamental to play, it’s going to be a dangerous game.
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Whenever high speed body blows involve suddenly changing the direction the head is moving, there is going to be brain trauma. It's not the blow itself as much as the "brain banging around in its bony box" that causes the trouble.
And then there's boxing, which may be as bad for brains. Touch football, anyone?
Ralph
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