The Risk Of Concussions In Football

The dangers of football included studies that have found high rates of concussions and traumatic brain injuries. There is also a serious brain disorder that has made its way into professional football and it’s being called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in former players. The NFL is also continuing to make efforts to try and make football a safer sport by increasing the mandatory medical staffs, conducting non-contact practices, and encouraging schools to not implement tackle football until high school. The dangers of football have only gotten worse over the decades with bigger guys coming into the professional league which then leads to harder hits and more injuries. A concussion is the most common injury among football players because although they wear a helmet, it does not mean that their head is invincible. Concussions occur when a collision causes the brain to shake and most likely hit the inside of the skull. The harder the impact, the worse the concussion is.

Symptoms can almost certainly include a hard time focusing, memory problems, headaches, fogginess, and most likely a loss of consciousness. After suffering from a concussion, a person and especially an athlete is much more likely to suffer from a second concussion after having another injury. A second concussion usually comes with symptoms that last much longer than the first time. The CDC or the Center for Disease Control and Prevention says that having more than one concussion can possibly cause, personality changes, aggression, anxiety, depression, and an increased risk of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, CTE, and other brain disorders. Sports will always have risks, but there are still many ways to help prevent such serious injuries like concussions. Helmets and mouthguards are commonly used but there is still no evidence yet that can help prevent concussions. In contrast, there is also some convincing evidence that if someone were to reduce or completely eliminate body checks or tackling in very rough sports such as hockey and football, it would definitely help prevent concussions and other serious injuries. Severe head injuries are not just a football problem but a problem throughout all sports and more specifically boxing. Back in the 20s, doctors at the time were publishing peer reviewed studies that were describing former boxers that were beginning to act goofy and “punch drunk” as they got older. The boxers would begin to develop trouble when they walk and some sort of confusion before their symptoms progressed to the point where their changes were very noticeable. Sometimes they would become aggressive out of nowhere and very quick to anger. Medical professionals in the early 1900s called this condition “dementia pugilistica” or how everyone knows it now as CTE.

So CTE or chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a condition or more of a disease which was believed to primarily exist among boxers but has now made its way to mostly football but also other contact sports. It’s important to know this disease because if we know how it works, we can find a way to prevent and treat it which could save many lives. It is a progressive disease that slowly affects the brain by degenerating it. It mostly affects the brain of people who have sustained multiple concussions and other serious brain injuries such as athletes who play contact sports and military personnel. The word encephalopathy comes from Ancient Greek ​en-​ which means in, ​kephale​ which means head, and ​patheia​ which means suffering. CTE usually progresses over a period of a few years and possibly even decades with the degenerative process also affecting the cranium which is the part of the skull that encloses the brain. When a person's brain is suffering from CTE, the brain deteriorates over time and which leads to the brain eventually shrinking. Certain sections of the brain are particularly inclined to obtain atrophy which is when skin cells and tissue become vestigial and fall off. Another symptom of CTE is that a few areas of the brain are accumulated with tau protein, a substance that is a stabilizer of the cellular structures in the brain's neurons. The protein has a chance of becoming defective which then leads to it possibly causing an interference with the function of the neurons. Those were only some of the side effects of having CTE and those only affected the brain. Having CTE can be life-changing but not in a good way. It would not only affect someone but also their family. The most common symptoms are memory loss, uncontrollable erratic or impulsive movements and behavior, lack of judgement, increased aggression and depression, having a hard time balancing, and a continuous dementia effect. Those are only the known symptoms and they still don’t know everything about this disease even though it has been studied for almost a century. This just shows that something can be a lot worse if no one has knowledge of it.

The NFL is making an effort to reduce injuries and specifically concussions in their league by implementing a helmet safety-rating system which was developed back in 2011. The function of the system was to rate helmets based on their ability to reduce the amount of g-force or gravitational force experienced by the head of a player across a range of different impact forces that are measured on the playing field. Even though this system was considered by the NFL to be a major step in making the game a safer place, they still allow players the right to choose which helmet they wear during games. This made the US National Library of Medicine ask, “What helmets do NFL players wear and does this policy make the game safer?” They went and got their answer when they identified helmets that were worn by almost 1000 players on the 13th week of the 2015-2016 season and the first week of the following years season. They used stop-motion footage and found that players wore a broad range of helmets with different safety ratings that were influenced partly by the age of the player and the position they played. The NFL should just regulate the players to only wearing a helmet that only has the highest level of safety that is approved by the manufacturers.

Football is a dangerous sport but many people are working on making it safer. It’s not going to be easy and it will take time, but eventually the goal is to make it as safe as possible for the players. It’s also important that people know the consequences of playing this sport and the possible long term effects it has on the players.

Works Cited

1. Research, N. (2019). Football and Brain Injuries: What You Need to Know | National Center for Health Research. [online] National Center for Health Research. Available at: http://www.center4research.org/football-brain-injuries-need-know/
2. Trilling, D. (2019). High school football concussions and long-term health concerns: Research roundup - Journalist's Resource. [online] Journalist's Resource. Available at: https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/public-health/high-school-football-injuries-concuss ions-research/
3. Quartz. (2019). Football will keep killing players until we change the way it’s played. [online] Available at: https://qz.com/1195065/football-will-keep-killing-players-until-we-change-the-way-its-played/
4. Protectthebrain.org. (2019). What Is CTE? | Brain Injury Research Institute. [online] Available at: http://www.protectthebrain.org/Brain-Injury-Research/What-is-CTE-.aspx