Football players who start practicing tackle football from at least age 12 have impaired emotions and behaviors later in life, according to Boston University's brain injury research team.
The team studied 214 former players with an average age of 51, 43 of whom only played through high school and 103 who started in college.
Through a series of clinical tests and interviews, they found players who had been tackling from 12 were twice as likely to have issues with behavioral regulation and apathy, and their risk of depression tripled.
The younger they started, the worse their clinical function.
Aside from a few late bloomers, most professional players start from the age of about six years old.
The report is the latest installment in Boston's ongoing investigation into football-linked brain injury, which is studying hundreds of former players' brains - alive and dead - including Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder and committed suicide in his cell.
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11 comments:
This isn't good news for peewee and above football.
Hogwash!
Rap a kid in the head with the force of a flying brick enough times and something inside is going to be changes.
This is part of the left-wing dismantling of all things American they want to steal your child's identity.
gees guys, i'm about as conservative as they come and i will tell you that playing in a tackle football game every week is just like being in an auto accident every week. It doesn't matter how many pads you have on (the helmets actually increase the damage cause most tackle with their heads first), football is inherently dangerous. I have two sons and while i didn't discourage them from playing, I never pushed them to play either. I'm glad they both chose to play LAX instead.
Believe what you want but your children count on you to make educated choices. Choosing to ignore the very real effects of multiple concussions through your developmental years is not smart at all.
And not everything is a conspiracy by the liberals. Look at how hard doctors have had to press this issue over the last 2 decades before anyone would even consider talking about this. It's not due to lack of evidence. They have mountains of cirumstantial evidence that can easily be verified throug CT or MRI Scans.
If you think this is BS then I strongly encourage you to do some actual reading on the subject. This is no joke.
I coach various contacts sports locally to children as young as 5 upto college grads. In the last 10 years alone the information has become more available and is mandatory learning in most cases. I have also suffered about 6 concussions myself since the age of 8 and the last one at 32 left me noticeably impaired. Slower thinking, Foggy, quick to act aggressively. The effects are real.
If you cant play coach. So I do and I love it. I also want to keep your kids and their little developing brains safe.
I speak from experience: I have TBI from multiple concussions and less violent head trauma - football, lacrosse, etc. It DOES affect cognitive ability, moods, depression, etc. Luckily, I've been fighting my whole life to overcome the effects. I'm in my early 50s and sometimes I forget my birthday, my kids names, neighbors, etc. I was Mensa society as a kid and now I can barely do long division.
There's no reason to have kids running full speed into each other for our entertainment. Let's make all sports safer and get some of these Neanderthal coaches out of the game.
As long as they report for duty on Sunday afternoon in my living room I don't care if their moms were in a train wreck while they were carrying them.
More paid for science with an agenda
Jake Lamotta died today at the age of 95... Boxing is far more dangerous as far as head injury.
What's this? Another excuse to give away more freebies? I played football when I was young and was not good enough to get on a team and now I is suffering from depression. Yea, that's it. That's what is wrong wit me. Where is my free money? My free medical care?
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