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Monday, December 23, 2013

Youth Sport Injuries May Lead To Adult Brain Disease

The degenerative brain disease being blamed for suicides and mental illness in pro athletes may have started when they were young athletic children and absorbing knocks in grade school and high school, experts say.

The theory also suggests that many people who are not elite athletes playing contact sports, but did play sports as children, may be at risk for developing chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

Recommended: Ryan Freel Had CTE, Parents Say

"We don't know what the age of onset is with any of these cases," said Chris Nowinski, the co-director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy. "There is reason to believe it can begin when a child is very young."

The latest discussion of CTE arose after former Major League Baseball player Ryan Freel, who committed suicide at the age of 36, was diagnosed to have had the disease. CTE had not been associated with baseball players. Instead it is linked to the public's perception of more violent sports like football, ice hockey and boxing.

Nowinski's colleague, Dr. Ann McKee, has dissected and studied more than 180 brains of athletes. Over 100 have been found to have CTE pathology.

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9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Must be right; didn't Obama hit his head playing hoops when he was younger?

Anonymous said...

Well, it's nice you are myopically focusing on one single posibility here instead of recreational drug use, steroid use, originating with a low IQ, and the myriad of other possibilities out there.


Noooooo, let's see if we can blame it on starting out young in a career.

How much did I pay for this bogus study?

Anonymous said...

5:05 Obama had it before he hit his head.

Anonymous said...

Well, we also know Obama was noted for his drug use when he was a member of the Choom Gang.

Anonymous said...

Not only brain diseases but also a host of other problems within the skeletal/muscular systems.

Anonymous said...

Weren't most of the school shooters football players? I'm pretty sure they were, this is why they went nuts and shot up their schools!

Anonymous said...

9:07- No they were not. They are usually nerdy wimpy cowards that were coddled too much by their mommies.

Anonymous said...

9:07-Common denominator with these school shooters has been Psychostimulant drugs ie Ritalin.
Not so much coddled but told and labeled as different because they didn't conform to the social engineering that goes on with children. Not behavioural but personalities.

Anonymous said...

No, Common denominator is Democrat, leftist and mental history, which describes the first two titles I mention.