Concussion findings keep getting scarier

[Auggie]

Ray Ratto, San Francisco Chronicle, 11-1-09

Turn your heads if it helps. Put your hands over your ears and sing loudly to drown out the noise. Yell at anyone who raises the subject.

But it's still there. Football is beginning to scare the hell out of football players, and at some point, it's going to have to start scaring the hell out of you.

As evidence slowly but surely grows from scientists and studies, even one commissioned by the NFL, that the game itself at nearly every level is bad for the human brain, you're going to have to come to grips with the notion that your favorite sport is not that much different than boxing - a guilty pleasure.

The most disturbing tale of all, perhaps, was a submission from Michael Oriard, the 61-year-old former Kansas City Chiefs offensive lineman and now an associate dean of English at Oregon State, who wrote a Deadspin.com piece Friday admitting that he essentially has been replaying his entire career, play by play, to try to find the moment he might have started the road to early-onset dementia, or worse.

Telling quotes follow.

MORE: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/31/SP9C1ACVQM.DTL

It's an issue I know is there but have ignored because I love the game so much.

[JonLP24]

1. The game isn't so much the problem but how it's treated

I imagine players encourage themselves to play through injuries and concussions are not always visible and players try to play through them and there may be a stigma to not play due to injury. Also players when diagnosed are often rushed back to play next week. One thing to look for is to see if Brian Westbrook plays today, he had a concussion last week and should not play today. All that and probably more makes it worse but they are coming out with new age helmets design to fully protect the players.

[caraher]

2. No, it may be a lot worse than you think

Read the (lengthy) New Yorker piece on the subject. It's not just concussions, it's normal play with no noticeable injuries that may be leading players to dementia in old age. Some samples:

The other major researcher looking at athletes and C.T.E. (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) is the neuropathologist Bennet Omalu. He diagnosed the first known case of C.T.E. in an ex-N.F.L. player back in September of 2002, when he autopsied the former Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster. He also found C.T.E. in the former Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Andre Waters, and in the former Steelers linemen Terry Long and Justin Strzelczyk, the latter of whom was killed when he drove the wrong way down a freeway and crashed his car, at ninety miles per hour, into a tank truck. Omalu has only once failed to find C.T.E. in a professional football player, and that was a twenty-four-year-old running back who had played in the N.F.L. for only two years.

“There is something wrong with this group as a cohort,” Omalu says. “They forget things. They have slurred speech. I have had an N.F.L. player come up to me at a funeral and tell me he can’t find his way home. I have wives who call me and say, ‘My husband was a very good man. Now he drinks all the time. I don’t know why his behavior changed.’ I have wives call me and say, ‘My husband was a nice guy. Now he’s getting abusive.’ I had someone call me and say, ‘My husband went back to law school after football and became a lawyer. Now he can’t do his job. People are suing him.’ ”

McKee got up and walked across the corridor, back to her office. “There’s one last thing,” she said. She pulled out a large photographic blowup of a brain-tissue sample. “This is a kid. I’m not allowed to talk about how he died. He was a good student. This is his brain. He’s eighteen years old. He played football. He’d been playing football for a couple of years.” She pointed to a series of dark spots on the image, where the stain had marked the presence of something abnormal. “He’s got all this tau. This is frontal and this is insular. Very close to insular. Those same vulnerable regions.” This was a teen-ager, and already his brain showed the kind of decay that is usually associated with old age. “This is completely inappropriate,” she said. “You don’t see tau like this in an eighteen-year-old. You don’t see tau like this in a fifty-year-old.”

McKee is a longtime football fan. She is from Wisconsin. She had two statuettes of Brett Favre, the former Green Bay Packers quarterback, on her bookshelf. On the wall was a picture of a robust young man. It was McKee’s son—nineteen years old, six feet three. If he had a chance to join the N.F.L., I asked her, what would she advise him? “I’d say, ‘Don’t. Not if you want to have a life after football.’ ”

There's also information about a study using helmet-mounted accelerometer in practices. Remarkably, many of the concussions occur on the less violent hits (as measured by accelerometers). And the sheer number of high readings during normal play is startling.

Very scary stuff.

[JonLP24]

3. I'm aware of all that

I was addressing specific problems that make it worse. Treatment delayed, players rushed back on the field, etc.

You're right though it is very scary stuff.

OTL went over the much of the same stuff in that article but that article has a little bit more information so thank you for sharing.