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What Happens To a Football Player's Neurons?
An anonymous reader writes "It seems like every week there's a new story about the consequences of all those concussions experienced by football players and other athletes — just a few days ago, the NY Times reported that some athletes diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease may actually have a neural disease brought on by head trauma. But missing in these stories is an explanation of what head trauma actually does to the brain cells. Now Carl Zimmer has filled in the gap with a column that takes a look at how neurons respond to stress, and explains how stretching a neuron's axon turns its internal structure into 'mush.'"
Yet there are people who argue that football is a game based on sophisticated strategies, that anyone able to play it proficiently must have an intelligence on the higher outliers of genius.
Now it seems that "mushy" neurons are good enough...
So, you have to be really dumb to use steroids. The prosecution rests.
Actually, football (soccer here in the US) has risk factors of its own including heading the ball causes neuronal damage.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Pretty much everything, but to be able to rub the lotion on Giselle's back on the beach in Ipanema might be the simplest way to express it.
Funny thing is, at least in places (not Texas) that don't take high school football too seriously, football is an excellent opportunity for a nerd to get into the "in" crowd.
In fact, it's how I became "cool." It didn't matter how well you played or how annoying or ugly you were, as long as you survived hell week and stuck with the team, you were in with the cool people(and, by extension, the juniors and seniors and the parties that they threw and all the pussy surrounding that whole scene). You were allowed to scream, cuss, punch lockers, high-five, whatever you had to do to shrug off the pain...as long as you took your hits and didn't cry like a bitch on the field.
Plus, a working knowledge of sports makes it much easier to bond with others and make new friends. And, of course, the health benefits. Now if only those damn San Diego Chargers would quit taking bribes and fucking up in the playoffs so I can see them win at least one super bowl before I die.
Those two articles observe that increased regulation and improved helmet safety resulted in less injuries. You allude to players tackling more strongly when better equipment safely allowed them to. The OP posited that players without padding and helmets would consciously elect to tackle with less impact, reducing injuries of their own volition. None of these three observations conflict.
The objective in boxing is to cause sufficient brain trauma to your opponent that he loses consciousness or can no longer stand up. That's not a sport, that's barbarism, and has no business in a civilized society. the short term, it's highly dangerous, and in the long term it can turn you into what's left of Muhammad Ali.
By contrast, wrestling is a real sport, in spite of the fact that professional boxing is for real and professional wrestling is as much fake showmanship as sport. (And yes, just because it's fake doesn't mean than any of those guys can't throw my ass out of the ring, and look good doing it.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That's why that version of Football, as in where you kick around a white spherical ball with black pentagons, should only ever be referred to by its proper name: Soccer.
I agree. The rightful title of 'Football' should go to the sport where you carry an elliptical object with your hand and .. umm...
Nevermind.
You mean handegg.
The term football for hundreds of years has been used to refer to many games that were "played on foot" as opposed to on horseback or some other means. "American Football" definitely gets a claim on that. Every bit as much as soccer (properly known as "Association Football").
Read, learn... (if you can)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football
Funny thing is, at least in places (not Texas) that don't take high school football too seriously, football is an excellent opportunity for a nerd to get into the "in" crowd.
In fact, it's how I became "cool." It didn't matter how well you played or how annoying or ugly you were, as long as you survived hell week and stuck with the team, you were in with the cool people(and, by extension, the juniors and seniors and the parties that they threw and all the pussy surrounding that whole scene).
No, actually, the funny thing is how in the USA (maybe also Canada?) you so ridiculously obsess about being popular, being with the "in" people. Is being yourself so scary, over there?
While I believe that there is some peer pressure to conform, everywhere, in the USA it seems it has become grotesque.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.