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Athletes' Brains Reveal Concussion Damage
jamie found a story on research about what concussions do to athletes, with the insights coming mostly from the study of the donated brains of dead athletes. The NFL has the biggest profile in the piece, but other sports make an appearance too. Turns out that repeated concussions can result in depression, insomnia, and the beginnings of something that looks a lot like Alzheimer's. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," said [retired wrestler] Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."
They just need to smoke more pot!
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/27/1354225
If it works for Alzheimers... maybe it'll work for Football
How about Rockys brain?
drain bamage - when only the best will do.
"The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," said [retired wrestler] Nowinski.
This was a legitimate idea that people actually believed?
If this is true, then why do schools insist on giving money to sports programs while starving arts and sciences budgets? Not only do they not do their job, they're effectively making kids dumber by causing brain damage.
We have to stop that before someone is so gone that he shoots himself in the leg.
I remember an ESPN interview of a retired NFL linebacker. He'd had multiple concussions in his playing days. He was quite mentally damaged, at the ripe old age of 45.
One day he went out for a drive, and when he got to his block, he couldn't recognize his own house. So he decided to just keep driving around the block, over and over. More than an hour elapsed before one of his family members spotted the car out the front window and went outside and flagged him down.
It wasn't the first time seemingly simple things/memories just completely escaped him
And they needed to study athletes for this? They could have asked anyone who's ever done more than a week of front-line tech support.
Briefly, the degree of mental impairment is roughly proportional to the depth of the worn-out concavity in the desk. The rates at which both measurements increase over time show a logarithmic flattening-out as one progresses from front-line support to management.
Whoever tagged this "nobrainer" deserves a cookie. :)
The thing that is probably going to be lost on 99% of the people reading this article and thinking the "dumb jocks" deserve it is the affects of sitting in a chair for many hours staring at monitors and making the same repetative movements day after day.
Whale
"The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone," said [retired wrestler] Nowinski. "We know we can't do that anymore. This causes long-term damage."
Wow! This is absolutely shocking news! I never would've guessed that repeated damage to a single organ/body part would have lasting effects....
This guy's the limit!
For once I am thanking the fact that I have no atheletic skill and turned to a life of technology and computers.
Fixed it for them. Take some of these
This is about FOOTBALL (American) players, not all athletes.
Only a small subset of athletes get their bells rung on a regular basis.
Crikey already.
Physical sports where concussion's occur are not going to go away. People will always sacrifice their body for potential fame and fortune. The fallacy of "a concussion will never happen to me or have lasting effects" is strong amongst young people, those typically playing these types of sports. Plus, using football as an example, is so ingrained in North American society: from high school through to college/university to a Professional paying job that the game will not go away. What needs to change is the way these sports are played.
Where there just as many concussions when people wore the thin leather helmets vs today's super helmets? Players dressed up in all that protective gear feel invincible literally throw themselves around and taking more hits and risks. You don't see near as many concussion injuries in a sport like rugby. While similar in nature those players aren't spearing others with their head to make a tackle.
Turns out that repeated concussions can result in depression, insomnia, and the beginnings of something that looks a lot like Alzheimer's. "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone,"
But this has been fairly obvious since Mohammed Ali...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I remember discussing this with fellow fencers and coaches. The consensus was that after receiving literally thousands of blows to the head every day during practice and lessons, coaches would eventually show signs of brain damage in their (not so) old age. Basically, the younger coaches looked at the old ones and figured that perhaps it was better to hold a mask in the unarmed hand as a target instead of using their own mask/head to prevent micro-choc from debilitating them.
Shortly my company is going to be working on a way to detect and hopefully stage concussions using a portable non-invasive test. Looks like sports medicine will be our target (previously looked at military). It already works for neurodegenerative disorders, so it should be able to find traumatic neropathy as well.
Sports programs are important part of a good all round education. Being in shape is conducive to good mental ability, well for the majority of us at least.
However I do agree that the amount of money spent on sports compared to arts and science is disproportionate. I wonder if there is a correlation between decades of such spending policies and our current economic problems. We do need to cut down Educational Administration costs, increase the budgets for arts and sciences, and bring sports budgets into line with the rest. (Most sports costs are due to liability coverage; so people stop suing everything under the sun when little Johnny or Erica gets a bump on the head). Oh and most importantly get educators to start teaching and allowing critical thinking in the classroom again.
One of my local tack shops is staffed by a lady who had her bell rung enough times being thrown from her horse (sans helmet in those days) that she can't ride for risk of getting her last concussion. And she makes sure that everyone starting has a good *properly* fitting helmet. (Even someone with as big a head as me - finding proper fitting hats is a lifelong challenge!) So no. Concussions are not limited to only American Football.
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Not to create massive waves of controversy or anything, but this is a non-story. Of course it causes problems. Everyone knew this already - including the athletes. All you're doing by spreading this kind of panicky attitude is asking for silly legislation which outlaws a perceived danger. Eventually we must understand that we can't protect people from everything, and we can't escape from danger. Sometimes it really is ok to live dangerously. It's funny, but once upon a time mankind understood this, and while he may not have lived as long, his life was far more interesting, and I would argue that he was a better human being for it.
Deja Moo: The distinct feeling that you've heard this bull before.
. . . crowds of plebes have gleefully enjoyed watching folks, bash the shit, out off other folks. It keeps the populace's minds of other social problems.
I wouldn't be surprised if the next government economic stimulus act funds "Ben Hur" style Roman warship battles in the Washington Monument Reflecting pool. With free bread for the spectators.
If this is true, then why do schools insist on giving money to sports programs while starving arts and sciences budgets?
Such programs don't bring out the crowds on the weekends to the stadiums.
Hmmm . . . maybe Stem Cell experiments, with cheerleaders would work.
Enraged wacko-physicists hurling cold fusion experiments at each other, maybe.
You just need to have plenty of vendors with cheap booze and fast food on hand.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I could look at any video of Muhammad Ali made in the last 20 years.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The Fifth Estate did a fantastic news piece on this. http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2008-2009/head_games/video.html/
Levon Barker
This is nothing new, and has been described and studied for decades as 'Dementia pugilistica', and ..."first described in 1928 by Harrison Stanford Martland in a Journal of the American Medical Association article..."[from the above linked wiki article]
Having watched the changes in both George Foreman and Cassius Clay(AKA Mohammed Ali) over the years in interviews, this was pretty obvious even to a medical layman.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
http://icanhascheezburger.com/?s=smoke
To be honest even considering the money they make I don't think it'd worth it to have a body and mind that will be worthless well before it should be.
These are grown men playing children's games. It's quite sad how worked up people can get over something so insignificant as sports while at the same time they're typically not into keeping themselves fit.
Never bet on the guy named "Nowinski". He's never won anything.
Just tell them to smoke marijuana.
If you feel pain that means that the body is telling you are damaging something. Athletes that think you must work through the pain and the attempt to believe in their mind that the pain is not there.
A good example is Muhammad Ali which now has Parkinson's Syndrome.
If you don't feel pain, you may not have a brain.
Damn.
There's this football player from my High School who once smeared crap all over the bathroom of the fast food restaurant at which I was working . . . several minutes after he saw me sweeping the floors and repeatedly asked if I worked there.
Now, after twenty years of designing, building, and testing a Piranha-infested Lap Pool of Doom to torture the bastard in, I learn that he's probably already a Depends-clad imbecile. What's the sport in luring to his doom through a fiendish social engineering scheme a shaky feeb who probably earns a living waving around a Mattress Barn sign by the side of the road?
Given the large number of althletes who do not have any of these symptoms, but are injured in the same way; it is great that there is a body of knowledge out there to encourage those to be tested as well so there can be a sort of "control" group. I would think it would help deturmine "what kind" or "what extent" of damage the brain can handle and what health factors make others less susceptible to the symptoms (genetics, cell density, injury location, protien/biochemical differences, etc.)
I'm not a doctor but it seems if there is causal evidence for "Alzheimer's like" damage, and non-symptomatic athletes have the same damage(s), it would help researchers isolate causes and contributing (or preventative) factors of the disease for the general population, specifically lessor athletes (amatuer or pre-professional) to make sports safer.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I'm sure it's a good idea to study the effecs scientifically, but, seriously, no-one actually believed that you could "whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine."
ORLY!!
Ever notice how many times they were knocked on the head in every book?
"The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine is gone....We know we can't do that anymore."
Just curious in what medical journal was this ever listed outside of the No-Shit-Sherlock section?
Unreal what a Common Sense deficiency can do to a person.
I can tell you from my time in high school that the brain damage in football players actually occurs far before their professional careers.
Captain Obvious strikes again. Although, quantifying the effects is certainly a useful undertaking.
The problem is that this will surely encourage proponents of the continued woosification of America.
Are we supposed to live our lives in plastic bubbles eating only bean curd?
Athletes have brains?
Who EVER had "The idea that you can whack your head hundreds of times in your life and knock yourself out and get up and be fine" ?!
I doubt it, our society in it's current form, with it's selfish economy, violent sports, and warlike nature is way too volatile, corrupt, and short-sighted to last. I'd give it another 100 years, 200 max. Egypt lasted 5000 years, but that's not us. When I think of America, I tend to think of Rome.
nt
What do you expect? He has probably been playing football for too long.
There are gentler styles that still are effective martial arts but without stressing one's body to the point of failure after a few years. This includes Aikido (even though you fall, you fall gently), Iaido (just don't cut yourself), and possibly Kendo.
Their "Run Away! Run Away!" technique seems to avoid most martial arts injuries.
Provided that you are a better runner than your opponent.
On the serious side, I read about a "Beimo" champ a few years ago. "Beimo" were roof-top informal bare-knuckles fights in Hong Kong in the 60's. He was very successful, but he stated that the purpose was to whack your opponent out of commission, before he did the same to you.
With devastating results on the health of both opponents. I can't find the original link, but I think this is from the same guy: http://home.vtmuseum.org/articles/peterson/wongbeimo.php
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Uh oh!
Why me laugh?
They're better than the gladiators that entertained thousands by killing or getting killed. These guys actually get to see something out of the sacrifice they make.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
I read that article, and it seems that the main proponent of the idea that not all of his problems may be caused by boxing is -- surprise -- his "long-time ringside physician".
This is like the tobacco industry claiming that smoking does not cause cancer.
...Duh?
This is precisely why it's so great that so many of us live where these guys get elected as mayors or governors or Congressmen. Isn't at least a little brain damage a job requirement for elected offices? They're good to go after a stint in pro sports.
I have read several places that for a fighter to be "punch drunk" was not known during the bareknuckle days. It makes sense that the heavy gloves allow a man to hit his opponent harder in the head than he could otherwise. One proponent of this opinion was Louis L'Amour. Better known for being a great western writer, he also had a long and successful career as a heavy-weight fighter.
Risks can be good. But the risks from playing high school football? Unacceptable. There's absolutely no reason to raise a generation of brain-damaged kids with no decent work alternative other than going into the army - were further concussions are currently the most prevalent combat injury. Okay, might as well get them partly brain-dead before sending them into combat ... except, this being /., we need to consider that we're not too many years short of having an all-robot army. Anticipating that, we should shut football down, now.
As Richard Florida's research shows, public investment in sports arenas negatively correlates with economic growth. So it's time to go for zero tolerance for activities which demonstrably produce brain-damaged kids, and in their professional forms are bad for our civic economies. Let's make football illegal by 2010!
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
So then OJ should be able to ask for a retrial and plead mental insanity. Clearly he is brain damaged.
Recently, medical rules in several sports have changed to avoid the second concussion syndrome (mandatory bench time after a concussion). SCS is a sudden death that can occur when a person receives even a mild concussion too soon after receiving a concussion.
I wonder if those same rules might limit the long term damage TFA talks about. Unfortunately it will be several years before we really know.
There were fewer concussions in the 1910s.
Instead players died.
The NCAA was created because of the horrifying number of permanent injuries and fatalities being incurred on an annual basis by intramural football players. More people died of football injuries on a yearly basis in the 1910s than died on a yearly basis in the 2000s, despite an almost hundred-fold increase in the amount of competitive players today as compared to then.
Concussions were pretty common with the old leather and suspension helmets of the 1920s through the 1960s. They were good enough to prevent skull fracture, basically. The new wave of helmets, starting in the 1970s, largely prevented devastating head injury and most concussions, and moved the big injuries into the neck, as injuries became inertial instead of focal.
One reason you don't see as many rugby injuries is that rugby has a very small penetration in the American market, and their injuries just aren't noted. Cheerleading and soccer are also surprising dangerous sports that don't get as much coverage, because they are less viewed here and aren't perceive as as violent of sports.
Wow! I can barely imagine how brilliant I'd be if I hadn't played all that hockey. Move over Hephen Stawking!
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Did anyone else skim over the headline and see "Atheists' Brains Reveal Concussion Damage"?
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Chronically Concussed Eric Lindros Announces Retirement From Citibank
Name...That...Autocomplete!
...it's alright to bleed from the ears!
All I will say is make sure your kid wears a bike helmet. Wouldn't be a bad idea for adults to wear one too. If you've suffered any type of brain injury, you'd know how much they can affect you.
I'm posting as AC, but I can tell you that I have a type of epilepsy likely due to a brain injury as a child. The condition became active an adult. Its not fun. Prevention is the best medicine. There's debate of the effectiveness of helmets. I'd say if its 10% better prevention than no helmet, choose helmet.
... it is called football. Apparently, the idiot decided to play the game before giving it a name. Which also resulted in a game being called soccer, as opposed to anywhere else on the planet.
require calm nerves
While he very well may have suffered from Parkinson's syndrome, this may have been just what was claimed (or known at the time) while he actually suffered from the histopathology of chronic traumatic encephalopathy from a career in boxing. It in fact is a more likely explanation of his early onset of symptoms than Parkinson's, given that this is so common among NFL players who have had post-mortem exams and that boxers intentionally sustain repeated concussions.
The guy in the article was a "wrassler," not real wrestler, and before that, apparently played football for those gridiron legends at Harvard. Concussions in real contact sports such as pro football and hockey are a definite problem, but please, CNN, don't make a WWE washout who's trying to sell his book into the poster child for this important issue.
. . . like the prototypical geek who got beat up by the jocks in high school and never got laid. Get over yourself already.
Apparently, you've never been to a Friday night football game to see hundreds of people cheering on a team, or lived in a city with a franchise contending for a championship to see how it can bring people together. Pro athletes donate a lot of time and money to charities, too -- probably a lot more than you ever will. You may not like sports, but most people do and aren't as negative and anti-social as you apparently are.
At one point there were NINE wrestlers in the WWE that had BROKEN THEIR NECKS, had their neck vertebra FUSED, and then then RESUMED WRESTLING.
Pro-wrestling is not a sport as the results are scripted, but you have no idea what the fuck you are talking about if you think pro wrestling doesn't require a hell of a lot of athleticism. Aside from the vastly more grueling schedule (name a sport where you're on the road for 270+ days out of the year), you're expected to work through injuries that would sideline you in a second in the NBA or the NFL. Pulled hamstring? Work through it. Herniated disk in your back? Go out there and drop the title in a match before taking time off.
Kurt Angle - who headlined Wrestlemania knowing he was going in for neck surgery immediately afterword - pulled his groin, tore his abdominal muscle and blew his hamstring in his last night for the company. And he still finished the match.
If you don't like pro-wrestling, it's a free country. I haven't watched it in years. But if you don't think pro-wrestlers are athletes, go tell that to a wrestlers face and see what the result is.
which is found all over open source
The article's attention applies mainly to concussion-prone sports such as hockey, rugby, boxing, and the like.
I don't think running the track does any kind of damage. The post's title is somehow generic.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
Deifying athletics is ridiculous - but so is ridiculing it. Music, art, athletics, hell, even math and science for the vast majority of high schoolers, are not things we teach our children because we want them to spend the rest of their lives painting or playing guitar. They are ways to grow the whole human body and mind into a stronger, faster, smarter, more social, more responsible, and just pure *better* adult.
Or at least they should be.
The goal of school should be to produce well-rounded people. That includes being able to read, math skills, logical thinking and similar things, but it also includes being healthy, and having at least some basic knowledge of arts, and being able to draw, and to make music, at least on some basic level.
Too often, people assume that the goal of school is to produce a workforce for corporations. This is the wrong way of looking at it. The goal of school should be to produce people who have the abilities they need to live a happy life. This includes, of course, being able to work, but it isn't the only aspect by far.
My brother's liver was invaded by cancer, no amount of positive thinking would have changed the final outcome.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Backtrack on this thread to find scientific proof of this.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Football (you have to use your head very occasionaly to hit the ball), tennis, athletics, gymnastics just to name a few.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But they are performers also.
If you think anybody can do what they do and that they don't injure themselves while jumping, spinning and being thrown all around the place, then your sense of logic may need some checking.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.. when your making millions of dollars and banging super models???
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Research shows that multiple, repeated blows to the head cause brain damage.
In other breaking news, jabbing a railroad spike through your left testicle hurts. More at 11.
~Syberz
One should also take note that both this "Just suck it up" mentality and the pervasive idea that "sports" means powerful concussion is only pervasive in America.
Just take a look at the Olympics, how many of the sports there are done wearing full body armor?
To most of the rest of the world, "sports" consists of athletic activities to often have little body contact. Even those that have body contact, one is not expected to crash head-on with the opponent.
Oliver.
I don't need some scientists to tell me that. I watched all of the Rocky movies.
So, Bobby, how do you think the game has gone in the first period?
Well, Jim, uhh, we're playing good. But, uhh, the other team, uhh, they're like a bit better, eh? Uhh... so they're leading us... uhh... two to one.
Bobby, what's your strategy for the rest of the game?
Well, uhh... we've got to play better, like... uhh... score more, maybe and uhh... improve the defence. Our players are good, Jim, but... uhh... we have to push to be better than the other team or... uhh... we'll lose, Jim.
I played youth soccer in the late 70's/early 80's. I was a goalkeeper mostly and got a rep for bravery/idiocy due to the fact that, if someone broke away and was going to take a shot, I'd run out and jump on the ball. This inevitably led to being kicked in the head - hard - about 3x. At the time, I was viewed as having great big balls and just sat out until the throbbing stopped, then got right back in there. I wasn't seriously concussed - not dizzy, etc. - but I'd definitely had my bell rung.
Fast forward, and after decades of trouble in school and at work with focus and motivation, I was diagnosed with dysthymia, a form of chronic depression. I don't know that I can pin it on soccer - I seem to remember having depressive episodes before I started playing - but it is intriguing nonetheless. And I'm going to keep a closer eye on the wrestlers I coach, including my son.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
This is bad news for football players. If my high school experience is at all indicative of these guys mental powers, they're not exactly bangin' on all cylinders to begin with. I can't imagine some of these guys any dumber then they already were.
or else!
Did we really need any other proof that hits to the head cause brain damage?
"Yes, because there's a much higher earning potential for artists than football players... they're both disciplines where a few people make it big, and the rest scrounge or go into something else while talking about their lost dreams."
Reminds me of a big theme in Levitt's _Freakonomics_. He called it the "tournament", what you describe there where you have an attractive or seemingly attractive top position that few people reach...thanks to seeing this "top position", people put what should logically be considered an unrealistic amount of effort into reaching it.
His at-length examples involve business (well, at least the drug business) and the sports world (his case study being elite Japanese sumo)
HG Bissinger's _Friday Night Lights_ is another book that explores the effects of this phenomenon (Warning: the movie sucked; not sure about the TV show)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
There are many non contact sports out there. We should replace football in schools with one of them. Certainly you would want to eliminate any academic boxing programs (if there are any). As for soccer, I am OK with that if they also outlaw any use of the head as well as the arms. This is one of the modifications in sports rules that can be done. Now for the people that cry that these rule changes would change the nature of the game. Yes, they will but would that be a bad thing? Also, you could allow the full contact stuff for when the child is over 18 years old. I'm just opposed with school sports program actually doing harm when they should be doing good.
It's rare for a sports program to pay for itself. If this was true, why do many school districts have a "pay for play" policy? Football has very high equipment costs and these costs are only partially offset by ticket receipts. If you did a careful analysis of all the costs, you would probably find that it cost the school district. The real shame is that this analysis is often not done.
"Football players are really in the same business as prostitutes...abusing their bodies for the benefit of others' enetertainment"
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
A lot of sports players (and the announcers for that matter) drop obviously tactical points like it's divinely inspired strategery; it's not just hockey.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
this is not good.. and it happens in a lot of sports.. more consideration needs given to the personal future of the athletes and their quality of life. I know sports are competitive but we are given only one head and certain injuries can not be repaired.
Vicki Zerbee http://AntiAgingByDesign.com Central PA, USA vicki@antiagingbydesign.com