Using tissue from retired NFL athletes culled posthumously, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine, is shedding light on what concussions look like in the brain. The findings are stunning. Far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. That damage has a name: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
CSTE studies reveal brown tangles flecked throughout the brain tissue of former NFL players who died young — some as early as their 30s or 40s.
McKee, who also studies Alzheimer’s disease, says the tangles closely resemble what might be found in the brain of an 80-year-old with dementia.
The damage affects the parts of the brain that control emotion, rage, hypersexuality, even breathing, and recent studies find that CTE is a progressive disease that eventually kills brain cells.
via Dead athletes’ brains show damage from concussions – CNN.com.
If you have the talent and choose to do so, you may play NFL football. We know that choice will dramatically increase your chances of concussion. We try to protect you from it with rules about legal hits and a nice hard helmet, but there is no doubt that you will very likely suffer brain damage because of your choice. Your choice to inflict brain damage upon yourself is not without consequences for others – the effects of rage, hypersexuality, and dementia will no doubt affect your family. Aside from the brain damage, there is the wear on the body that leaves many ex-pros walking around in their 40s and 50s like arthritic old men in their 90s.
That is a valid lifestyle choice. But smoke a little weed, which does not harm your brain, reduces your need for painkillers, and may have the effects of giggling, dry mouth, and munchies, and we’ll have to kick you out of the NFL.
