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Showing posts with label Concussion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Concussion. Show all posts

Friday, December 20, 2013

What Happens in the Brain After a Concussion

Thomas Northcut/Getty Images
Head concussions are a serious issue for professional and ameture athletes. The challenge of determining brain damage is forcing medical scientists to research better diagnostic evaluation methods. Today's post is shared from nytimes.com

A remarkable recent experiment allowed scientists to see inside the skull and brain of animals that had just experienced a concussion, providing sobering new evidence of how damaging even minor brain impacts can be. While the results, which were published in Nature, are worrisome, they also hint at the possibility of treating concussions and lessening their harm.
Concussions occur when the brain bounces against the skull after someone’s head is bumped or jolted. Such injuries are fairly common in contact sports, like football and hockey, and there is growing concern that repeated concussions might contribute to lingering problems with thinking or memory. This concern was heightened this week by reports that the brain of the late major league baseball player Ryan Freel showed symptoms of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative condition. He reportedly had been hit in the head multiple times during his career.
But scientists did not know exactly what happens at a molecular level inside the brain during and after a concussion. The living brain is notoriously difficult to study, since it shelters behind the thick, bony skull and other protective barriers. In some earlier studies, scientists had removed portions of lab animals’ skulls to view what happened to their brains during subsequent impacts. But removing part of the skull causes its own tissue damage and physiological response, muddying any findings about how the brain is...
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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Study: No helmet brand can save football players from concussion risk

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from www.latimes.com


Health experts have some bad news for high school football players: There is no particular type or brand of helmet or mouth guard that will keep you relatively safe from a concussion.
The companies that make helmets and mouth guards often claim that their own products can reduce players’ risk of a sports-related concussion or lessen the impact of a concussion that does occur. These manufacturers cite “laboratory research” that purports to show one brand is safer than others, and a group of researchers wanted to see if they could verify such claims, according to a summary of a presentation they made Monday at a national meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The research team, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Medical College of Wisconsin, tracked 1,332 high school football players from 36 schools during the 2012 season. Participating players completed a preseason questionnaire about their injury history and demographic information. Then, as the season progressed, athletic trainers from the schools kept tabs on the incidence and severity of any concussions that occurred.
At the start of the study, 171 of the players — or 13% — told the researchers that they had experienced a sports-related concussion in the previous 12 months. During the 2012 football season, an additional 116 concussions were sustained by 115 players — 8.6% of the student athletes in the study.
When the researchers compared...
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Friday, October 18, 2013

NFL Fans Weigh Impact Of Players' Head Injuries

Fans cheer wildly with a Kansas City Chiefs player at an NFL game against the Oakland Raiders. For many fans, the risky side of football doesn't quell their love of the sport.
Ed Zurga/AP
Fans cheer wildly with a Kansas City Chiefs player at an NFL game against the Oakland Raiders. For many fans, the risky side of football doesn't quell their love of the sport.

The NFL season is in high gear — a fact that pleases the roughly 64 percent of Americans who watch football. The season rolls on despite the now constant news about concussions in the sport.
The recent TV documentary League of Denial and the book by the same name claim that for years the NFL had denied and covered up evidence linking football and brain damage. Is the concussion conversation challenging this country's deep love for the game?
Apparently, not very much. Open a magazine, turn on a TV, and the new NFL ad campaign asks, "Why do you love football?"
"It doesn't matter if you're a coach or parent, player or fan. If you love football, now's your chance to tell your story. Go to togetherwemakefootball.com. If you're story's chosen, you could end up at the Super Bowl, just like I did," a boy says in one ad.
Whether intended or not, the ads have also helped blunt severe criticism facing the NFL in recent years. There was the massive concussion lawsuit pitting thousands of former players against the NFL — the league's potential liability was enormous. And League of Denial was poised to hit TV screens and bookstores, exposing more darkness.
But a week before the season started, the NFL settled the suit. And by the time League of Denial aired last week on PBS, many more football...
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Friday, October 4, 2013

Book: NFL denied concussion link to football

Today's post was shared by FairWarning and comes from espn.go.com

Book: NFL Denied Concussion Link
The National Football League conducted a two-decade campaign to deny a growing body of scientific research that showed a link between playing football and brain damage, according to a new book co-authored by a pair of ESPN investigative reporters.
The book, "League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth," reports that the NFL used its power and resources to discredit independent scientists and their work; that the league cited research data that minimized the dangers of concussions while emphasizing the league's own flawed research; and that league executives employed an aggressive public relations strategy designed to keep the public unaware of what league executives really knew about the effects of playing the game. ESPN The Magazine and Sports Illustrated published book excerpts on Wednesday morning.
The NFL's whitewash of the debilitating neurological effects of playing football suffered by players began under former commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who left office in 2006, but continued under his successor, current commissioner Roger Goodell, according to the book written by ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru.
The book, which will be released Tuesday by Crown Archetype, compares the NFL's two decades of actions on health and safety to that of Big Tobacco -- the group of cigarette-making corporations whose executives for years covered up the fact their products contained dangerous, addictive,...
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