At a recent family gathering over Thanksgiving, my family was watching the traditional NFL football games when they announced the death of Frank Gifford, a former NFL legend. The sports reporters also announced that the medical examiners found evidence of CTE in Gifford’s brain. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is caused by atrophy in the brain. Research has found that over 17% people who receive repetitive concussions develop CTE(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2945234/). CTE presents symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s disease, with memory disturbances and personality changes.
After my family heard this news, they either didn’t completely believe the news or thought he was probably just an outlier. I tried to explain that even with today’s technology, many people who receive multiple concussions can suffer from CTE. This means players from the era of football before modern-day equipment was invented likely had a much higher prevalence of CTE. However, football fans don’t want to believe these facts because they don’t want the game they love to change.
I played football here at Concordia, I know what it feels like to get a concussion. I also know the kind of pressure a player who receives a concussion gets to return to play because often times coaches, teammates, and even trainers do not understand the severity of the injury. Just because the injury is not physically visible, players are simply expected to shake it off, or run the risk of having their “toughness” questioned.
Recently Ben Roethlisberger, a NFL quarterback, removed himself at the end of a recent game because he believed he might have received a concussion. The media and fans had a mixed reaction to his decision. That is ridiculous! I heard many of my teammates say things like, “I’ve had a concussion before, I could play through it if I was in the NFL.” Even some in the media criticized Roethlisberger for his decision. Essentially, people were saying they value their own entertainment more than the potential brain injury Roethlisberger suffered.
The public is not educated enough on the risks and dangers of concussions, especially multiple concussions. The most dangerous issue with concussions is recovery time. Scientists cannot accurately estimate the recovery time needed for concussions to heal in different patients with differing severity. This can lead to second impact syndrome, which occurs when an athlete returns to play too early and receives another concussion before their brain is “healed” from their previous concussion(http://www.brainandspinalcord.org/traumatic-brain-injury-types/second-impact-syndrome/index.html).
The symptoms of second impact syndrome are potentially deadly partially because of the effect concussions have of the white and gray matter in the brain. A brain is made up of white and gray matter. Gray matter consists mostly of cell bodies, dendrites, and axon terminals of neurons. It is involved in muscle control and sensory perception. White matter is comprised of myelinated axons and glial cells in the brain. These myelinated axons modulate the distribution of action potentials. In other words, they coordinate communication between different areas of the brain(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_matter).
A concussion can have very harmful effects in the brain because the traumatic force induced from a concussion can disrupt the white matter in the brain. When white matter is physically disrupted, the axons can become demyelinated. Demyelination decreases the axons ability to send signals to other neurons, which in turn slows down the communication between different areas of the brain(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_matter). When your brain receives another traumatic force while it is attempted to fix its white matter, it can cause irreversible damage.
My advice: teach kids at a young age to properly tackle and hit each other in football. We should use rugby as an example for youth football players. Rugby players are forced tackle without hitting their heads because they do not have protective gear. Rule changes to protect players should continue to be discussed and enforced in upper level football divisions, especially the NFL.
Concussions… a question of toughness?
