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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2011 11:10:42 GMT
I confess that I hadn't realised the American football was quite so brutal. But it seems that repeated concussion can lead to exceptional brain deterioration: Before the former American football player Dave Duerson killed himself, he asked that his brain be left to researchers studying head injuries among athletes. Here's an extract from a rather long article, dealing with the dissection of an unknown footballer's brain,
.....
The dissection reveals three huge holes in the brain – one large triangle right in the centre of the brain, and two ovals parallel to each other at the base. It is apparent that McKee, who has studied more athletes' brains than probably any other person, is shocked by what she sees.
"This is an extreme case," she says, "but it is also very characteristic." She points to the triangular hole, consisting of the lateral ventricles, and says it clearly shows "tremendous disruption". There should be a membrane separating the two ventricles, but it has been so battered by the footballer's repeated blows to the head that only the thinnest of filaments is left. The two oval holes are the ventricles of the temporal lobe and they too are extremely enlarged to compensate for tissue lost from the lobes themselves, another classic sign of having your head bashed repeatedly. "The temporal lobes are crucial to memory and learning and you can see they are very, very small, as miniaturised as possible."
McKee takes a deep look at the cross-section of this brain and momentarily appears sad. "This is a brain at the end-stage of disease," she says. "I would assume that with this amount of damage the person was very cognitively impaired. I would assume they were demented, had substantial problems with their speech and gait, that this person was Parkinsonian, was slow to speak and walk, if he could walk at all."
Without being melodramatic about it, I say, you are holding in your hands an example of the price that is paid for being a professional footballer at the top of his game.
She hesitates a second. "At least in this case, yes," she says.
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Post by alanseago on Jul 20, 2011 12:39:14 GMT
Do they need a brain?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2011 18:58:47 GMT
I always thought that Rugby Union players had to be brain surgeons.
An equally rough game, I think, but played without the kevlar body armour.
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Post by sadie1263 on Jul 21, 2011 1:33:41 GMT
It can definitely be brutal. I know with many other sports the injuries lead to better and safer ways to do things.....I'm not so sure that is what has happened with this one.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 21, 2011 4:22:40 GMT
I always thought that Rugby Union players had to be brain surgeons. An equally rough game, I think, but played without the kevlar body armour. Rougher probably, and Rugby League not much better, Australian and Gaelic rules (rules?!) even more so. But there might be a degree of reverse consequences, just like seat belts probably raise the risk of serious crashes by trapping a victim and allowing a false sense of safety to boy racers, but lower the injury rate of the much greater number of minor prangs and shunts. Those footballers covered in armour are positively encouraged to feel invulnerable, but no amount of armour will stop the shock of one mass colliding with another. At best, it transfers it and instead of broken ribs and endangered skulls, the impetus is spread to shock-waves to the jelly they protect, avoiding the natural pain of a blow that is not diffuse. On that score, unprotected rugger-buggers are going to know all about a contusion that has them taken off while American players (disregarding any macho heroics) might be feeling a bit woozy but come out of it and carry on far less aware of how much damage has been done too deep to feel it. If you want a sort of comaparison, it's a common belief that leprosy is a disease that causes bits to rot and fall off. It is nothing of the sort: it is a nerve disease that causes anaesthesia, so that quite trivial injuries that would normally result in protecting the injured part go unnoticed and build up to gangrene.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2011 6:02:58 GMT
That's a fascinting explanation, Liberator.
There has been some recent research concluding that cyclists with helmets are more likely to be hit by a car than those without. In that case the "sense of invulnerability" seems to be in the mind of the car driver not the cyclist, but I suppose the principle is the same.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 22, 2011 4:27:43 GMT
Somebody long ago suggested that the best way to reduce traffic accidents would be to make all cars rear-engined with a front of pure shatterable glass. For a couple of years, injuries would increase dramatically - but thereafter, everybody would be cautious.
I don't recommend it literally, but I do see that there is a valid observation there.
There's been a few times in my life that now decades later come back to haunt me with cold sweat. One is driving back with my future wife from a Bulmers owned canal pub in Shirley (The Bell or Bluebell?) where the pumps were sweet (Woodpecker), Medium, Dry and Watney's Red Barrel. She turned to tell me "You don't know what you're doing" and my answer was "Of course I do - I'm doing 80 miles an hour" Then I looked up and saw a pile of traffic lined up at a red light 50 yards or less ahead because I hadn't realised that I was back in Brum and slammed the anchors on before I piled into them.
Women! Those annoying creatures that remind men that they've made an utter dog's dinner of what the woman would never have been daft enough to risk in the first place.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 22, 2011 7:12:15 GMT
Ha! Women can be just as daft as men sometimes Liberator!
There is certainly a theory that the safer we make cars for their occupiers, the less safe they become for pedestrians and cyclists. Car manufacturers have been lambasted for devoting far too much energy to the former, often at the expense of the latter. "Bull bars" on four wheel drive vehicles are one example.
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Post by Liberator on Jul 23, 2011 3:33:10 GMT
Ha! Women can be just as daft as men sometimes Liberator! Haven't I been fighting feminists for years ot say just that ;D I think that is probably wrong overall, but there is a measure of implying that you can be a complete idiot because we will look after it for you in a lot of modern marketting, and especially computers (ie glorified videophones far too complicated now to write even the simplest acceptable 1+1 or Hello World program without extensive details on window handling that you will find a hard job to find.
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Jul 25, 2011 23:03:03 GMT
In US football the head is often used as a battering ram. Pretty scary what can happen! It's been shown that the "headers" ( hitting the ball with one's head at high speeds ) in FIDE football can cause similar brain damage!www.personal.psu.edu/afr3/blogs/SIOW/2010/09/the-dangers-in-football.html QUOTE: The Dangers in FootballGrowing up a Penn Stater, Penn State football has come second to none in my family. Similarly, my younger brother has played football every year since seventh grade. However, just last week, he suffered his first concussion playing against the varsity offensive line as a sophomore. A week later and he is still suffering and showing symptoms. For example, he has to have all the lights turned off to avoid pain and sometimes watches TV with sunglasses on. My brother can't even sit through a day of school without passing out. I think we all know that football is a dangerous sport. The speed and size of today's players create much bigger and harder hits. While this might be pleasing to the fans, do we really know what these collisions are doing to the players? Even recently, it has been brought up in the sporting news that what might appear to be a simple headache can be a threatening concussion. There is a vast amount of research about what multiple concussions can do to a person and how it will affect them for the rest of their life. This New York Times article does a great job laying out just a minimal amount of the findings there are in the science world about the dangers of head injuries sustained through playing football. Watching my brother go through this scares me, especially after reading this fact presented by the NFL and the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research: "Alzheimer's disease or similar memory-related diseases appear to have been diagnosed in the league's former players vastly more often than in the national population -- including a rate of 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49." Even just a last year, Chris Henry of the Cincinnati Bengals died after a traumatic fall from a moving vehicle had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) -- a form of degenerative brain damage caused by multiple hits to the head -- at the time of his death, according to scientists at the Brain Injury Research Institute, a research center affiliated with West Virginia University. (ESPN) CTE is an extremely serious issue and the only known cause if multiple violent hits to the head. It is unknown for sure if CTE was a reason why Henry died from the accident, but many scientists say there is direct causality. As shown in the image, CTE is an issue more people need to be worrying about. There are many more issues that come up with this topic: Are the helmets currently being used effective enough? Are all of the new rules/penalties the NFL/NCAA implies really protecting the players? Should children be able to play football starting from the age as young as five and continue on through high school/college/pros? How many players get concussions but then never report them? Do players even know they have a concussion and not just a headache? I will always love the sport of football and I want my brother to get the the highest level he can. But no one knows how long the affects of a concussion will live with you and I hope that someday there will be even better technology to protect everyone who plays the sport of football.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2011 9:53:17 GMT
Scary stuff, Anna.
We play football with my dog. We throw the ball, he bounces it back using his nose, but sometimes it hits his head.
It is quite a soft ball, but Dog is destined to be Crufts Agility Champion (I wish!) so perhaps we'd better stop.
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♫anna♫
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Post by ♫anna♫ on Aug 8, 2011 22:21:57 GMT
Yeah scary stuff! I sometimes play FIDE football/soccer, but I would never whack the ball with my head. Of course in US football the head is used as a battering ram. I played touch US football without helmuts and we never did any of that head bashing stuff. Boxing is probably the worst sport as far as brain health goes!
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