Brain Disease In Football
Brain Disease Endangers Football To a high school football player, the idea of a disease being severe enough to endanger his revered sport likely evokes outrage, or at the very least, a severe case of skepticism. And understandably so. Football has defined our culture, and for many, served as a proud way of life for nearly a century. Without football, high school -and really all of America- just wouldn’t be the same. Unfortunately, new studies demonstrate that this “disease” may hold some validity -so much validity, in fact, that thousands of parents are now choosing to withhold their child’s participation in the sport. The disease, called Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE for short, is a variation of dementia caused by the
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Dr. Stefan Duma, a professor at Virginia Tech, discovered that players as young as seven have sustained impact injuries equivalent to those experienced in a car accident, which is alarming when the force exerted on a brain by a 50 pound child is replaced with that of a 250 pound man. It is the accumulation of these seemingly minor concussive and subconcussive hits inherent to football that doctors presume to result in CTE. In fact, a majority of athletes later found to be suffering from the disease had never even experienced a loss of consciousness renowned for being associated with severe head injury; they simply played the sport of football, taking hit after hit for the extent of their careers. Because it was first discovered by Dr. Bennett Omalu only 14 years ago and its existence can only be verified by examining a person’s brain after death, very little is known about CTE; no cure exists and there is still no way to slow brain degeneration. Some common trends noticed in victims include severe confusion, difficulty with motor and balance skills, inability to organize thoughts, frustration, aggression, erratic behavior, personality changes, depression, and the thinking and memory deterioration characteristic of common dementia. CTE differs in that it onsets much earlier, beginning in the 40s rather than in the 60s or
Dr. Stefan Duma, a professor at Virginia Tech, discovered that players as young as seven have sustained impact injuries equivalent to those experienced in a car accident, which is alarming when the force exerted on a brain by a 50 pound child is replaced with that of a 250 pound man. It is the accumulation of these seemingly minor concussive and subconcussive hits inherent to football that doctors presume to result in CTE. In fact, a majority of athletes later found to be suffering from the disease had never even experienced a loss of consciousness renowned for being associated with severe head injury; they simply played the sport of football, taking hit after hit for the extent of their careers. Because it was first discovered by Dr. Bennett Omalu only 14 years ago and its existence can only be verified by examining a person’s brain after death, very little is known about CTE; no cure exists and there is still no way to slow brain degeneration. Some common trends noticed in victims include severe confusion, difficulty with motor and balance skills, inability to organize thoughts, frustration, aggression, erratic behavior, personality changes, depression, and the thinking and memory deterioration characteristic of common dementia. CTE differs in that it onsets much earlier, beginning in the 40s rather than in the 60s or