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Title: 76 Of 79 Deceased NFL Players Had Brain Disease Post by: bama57 on October 01, 2014, 02:37:04 PM A shocking report from PBS Frontline says 76 of 79 deceased NFL players suffered from the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
CTE is caused by repeated head trauma, where the functioning of the brain is interrupted and nerve cells begin to die, according to Frontline. It is associated with memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and, eventually, progressive dementia. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/frontline-nfl-brain-disease_n_5911142.html Title: Re: 76 Of 79 Deceased NFL Players Had Brain Disease Post by: SUPERCOACH on October 01, 2014, 03:02:40 PM We need to do something about this or the game we all know and love will someday be a distant memory.
Title: Re: 76 Of 79 Deceased NFL Players Had Brain Disease Post by: 2Stater on October 01, 2014, 03:42:50 PM (http://gifshost.com/3204840swsw.gif)
Lord, forgive me and the Pygmies in New Guinea...... :-[ Title: Re: 76 Of 79 Deceased NFL Players Had Brain Disease Post by: Marshal Dillon on October 01, 2014, 04:12:24 PM We need to do something about this or the game we all know and love will someday be a distant memory. Agree. How do you do that? The nature of the game is very physical and you can get hit in the head by accident with no ill intent. ??? Title: Re: 76 Of 79 Deceased NFL Players Had Brain Disease Post by: SUPERCOACH on October 01, 2014, 06:10:23 PM We need to do something about this or the game we all know and love will someday be a distant memory. Agree. How do you do that? The nature of the game is very physical and you can get hit in the head by accident with no ill intent. ??? We start by making safer helmets. They can be improved, no doubt. I think that until recently, the laymen consensus was that helmets were safe enough, so there was no need to improve them. But now we are seeing evidence to the contrary. It may have been known for some time within certain corners of the medical profession and the NFL, but now it has become public knowledge with all of the evidence that has accumulated. In this climate, there will be a lot of support for funding research and even paying more money for a safer helmet. Then we also need to eliminate all of the intentional head shots through rules and suspensions, and in the case of the NFL, fines. I think the recent rules changes with regard to targeting will help quite a bit after a few years, once the players learn to pull up instead of killing the guy. Players can learn not to hit the guy in the head on purpose, just like they learn to stop when the whistle blows or the guy is out of bounds. There will always be accidental hits, but those can be forgiven at the referee's discretion, just like late hits are now if the guy was trying to stop and just didn't have enough time. In addition to eliminating the intentional head shots by the defense, which we are already in the process of doing, you also need to eliminate the practice of the offensive guy lowering his head to make contact. We don't have any rules against that at the moment, but we need some. One suggestion I've heard that might work is to blow the whistle and call the guy down the moment he lowers his head. Then he gets no advantage from doing it, even if he manages to run over the guy and break the tackle. In time, the offensive guys will learn to stop doing that if they want a chance to break the tackle and get a long run. With all of that in place, there will still be occasions when there is a severe head shot and concussion on accident. I don't think we will ever be able to eliminate it entirely. But the goal should be to minimize the occurrence to the point where the risk is acceptable. For example, people are injured in car accidents all the time, but we still drive cars because the risk is so low. Especially now compared to the days before we had seat belt laws, airbags, antilock brakes, crumple zones, and all the other safety features that are built in to cars these days. We need a similar effort to make football safer from head trauma. The occasional broken leg or arm, or ACL injury, is acceptable in my opinion since those injuries can typically be recovered from in time. And even in the case of a severe body injury, even if you can't make a full recovery, it doesn't impact your brain functionality like a concussion does. Title: Re: 76 Of 79 Deceased NFL Players Had Brain Disease Post by: ssmith general on October 01, 2014, 08:58:37 PM What is the control? can we test some dead non football players? Me thinks the brain shows signs of this over time for a lot of reasons.
Title: Re: 76 Of 79 Deceased NFL Players Had Brain Disease Post by: Marshal Dillon on October 01, 2014, 10:26:34 PM What is the control? can we test some dead non football players? Me thinks the brain shows signs of this over time for a lot of reasons. I think we could use dead non-football people. Plus, with yearly MRI's, you will see the changes over time. You pay non-players to participate in the study and have yearly MRI's, which is probably being done even now for some other reason. I know for a fact, that at UAB, they are doing MRI's on autistic children to monitor brain activity and other things. :wave: :wave: :wave: |