Stop playing sports now and preserve your brain!
Okay, maybe that sentence was a little dramatic, but let’s be honest – sports are dangerous. As an athlete myself, I don’t think I have ever met an athlete that hasn’t incurred some sort of injury playing their sport. Whether it is something as small as a sprained ankle, or something more serious like a severe concussion, it seems like we are becoming more accepting of the inevitable fact that playing sports will subsequently end in some sort of injury. Now a tweak or a sprain here or there may be painful and provide minor, short-term inconveniences to our lives, but what about those injuries affecting more delicate areas, like the brain? Well, this blog will show you how detrimental these acute injuries can be on arguably the most important organ in the body, and prove that mere participation in specific sports can set you up for fatal diseases later in life.
Head injuries - what happens?
When we think of brain injuries, the word concussion comes to mind (no pun intended). Concussions are caused by the rapid acceleration or deceleration that causes the brain to rock against the inner walls of the skull. Despite its covert nature, observable symptoms such as dizziness, confusion and vomiting after the incident can point towards a diagnosis of concussion. While some concussions can be severe, most are not, and approximately 80 percent of them resolve over 7 to 14 days, with an average of 10 days. While this sounds like an easy fix, a lot of the time, athletes do not take the proper time out of their sports, either because they didn’t even realize they had a concussion, or because they actually had a subconcussive event instead. A subconcussive event is similar in that it also involves a transfer of mechanical energy to the brain at enough force to injure axonal integrity, but does not result in clinical symptoms. Now one or two of these events isn’t going to kill you (statistically speaking), but an individual increases their susceptibility to incur more concussions later in their life after having one concussion, even if they have completely healed from their first one. With this increased likelihood of concussion, athletes run the risk of incurring long term, lifelong disturbances. One major long-term, even fatal, danger of multiple concussions is an athlete developing Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE).
What is CTE?
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease found in athletes, military veterans, and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. In CTE, a protein called tau misfolds and malfunctions, causes other proteins to misfold, and sets off a chain reaction where this malfunctioning tau slowly spreads throughout the brain, killing brain cells. CTE has been seen in people as young as 17, but symptoms do not generally begin appearing until years after the onset of head impacts. While there are a few proposals out there to categorize individuals, the most common is the four-stage model, which categorizes patients based on their clinical and pathological changes. This infographic is a great representation on the stages of CTE and the symptoms associated with each stage.
Fortunately, for some, it’s not everyone that is equally likely to incur this disease. If you’re an athlete playing a low impact sport, then you have very little to worry about. Now if you’re participating in high impacts sports, like boxing or football for example, I am sorry to say that you have drawn the short straw, as CTE has been found in individuals whose primary exposure to head impacts was through, the military, boxing and pro wrestling (link).
So, will my head injury turn into CTE?
After reading this article, you may be thinking that one head injury you sustained years ago has set you up for a later diagnosis of CTE. Well, the good news is that this is not the case at all. In fact, the best evidence available today suggests that while in theory CTE could begin after one brain injury, if it does, it is rare. In populations that are exposed to years of regular, repetitive brain trauma, CTE does not appear to be rare, but we do not yet know how prevalent it is because it cannot be accurately diagnosed during life. There are also many individuals who suffer years of head impacts but do not develop CTE. More research will help us understand these factors in the future.
So, if you’re only a college athlete like me, then chances are, you don’t need to quit your sport. If you do know any professional athletes however (especially those footballers) then you should send them this article – a little education never hurts, and could cause them to be more careful, which could potentially save their life in the future.
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