jmg999
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Posts: 263
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Post by jmg999 on Apr 28, 2014 14:23:32 GMT -6
There was a study presented at the Alzheimer's Association conference a few years back (I can't remember the name of the paper), which found evidence that surveyed US football players who'd suffered a sports-related brain injury were significantly more likely (at an almost 3:1 rate) to experience signs of dementia by about 61 years of age. Another study presented at the same conference found similarly significant results among elderly veterans, who'd suffered a traumatic brain injury. They were more than twice as likely to suffer from dementia by age 55 than a veteran, who'd not suffered a traumatic brain injury. The study of elderly veterans was rather wide-ranging, too. They compared the medical records of almost 300,000 veterans, which is a rather sizable sample. As for rates of suicide, I've never heard that rates of NFL'ers outnumber those of the general population. There was a study, however, looking at the increased rates of suicide among soldiers, who had suffered repeated brain injuries. Yet, as I'd referenced in my earlier post, peripheral symptoms of traumatic brain injury, such as major depressive disorder and PTSD, can certainly lead to suicide. Coach, not calling you into question, but I do have an issue w/ some of this study that you've cited. I personally have A LOT OF TROUBLE following a SURVEY of US football players. First off, where are they finding these "60 something" football guys to survey in the first place? Secondly, are their really that many 60 something FB guys out their taking this brain injury survey to provide a large enough sample to make it reliable? Sorry coach, not trying to be a jerk, but something smells a little fishy here. The other issue I have with this study is you cited soldiers w/ repeated brain injuries. Not so sure their are many of those out their either. I have a bit of military history in my family and experience tells me that most soldiers who get a brain injury are usually taken out of the line of duty. Again, I just find it difficult to believe their is a huge sampling of these guys out there as to make the sample reliable. I have a concern that some of these medical professionals may be more concerned w/ making a name for themselves than actually being completely accurate. I mean, it would be a pretty big deal to be introduced at a lecture as "the guy" who changed American football. Again, JMO. I haven't read the entire study of US football players. I've only read the abstract and seen the results. I don't recall where they found these players, but my guess would be through the NFLPA. That would be the most likely source. If you re-read my original post, the soldiers medical information came from medical records. This wasn't a survey. They were looking at reported injuries.
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jmg999
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Posts: 263
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Post by jmg999 on Apr 28, 2014 14:42:29 GMT -6
There was a study presented at the Alzheimer's Association conference a few years back (I can't remember the name of the paper), which found evidence that surveyed US football players who'd suffered a sports-related brain injury were significantly more likely (at an almost 3:1 rate) to experience signs of dementia by about 61 years of age. Another study presented at the same conference found similarly significant results among elderly veterans, who'd suffered a traumatic brain injury. They were more than twice as likely to suffer from dementia by age 55 than a veteran, who'd not suffered a traumatic brain injury. The study of elderly veterans was rather wide-ranging, too. They compared the medical records of almost 300,000 veterans, which is a rather sizable sample. As for rates of suicide, I've never heard that rates of NFL'ers outnumber those of the general population. There was a study, however, looking at the increased rates of suicide among soldiers, who had suffered repeated brain injuries. Yet, as I'd referenced in my earlier post, peripheral symptoms of traumatic brain injury, such as major depressive disorder and PTSD, can certainly lead to suicide. I am definitely not getting into the concussion aspect of this debate but... So by this study...75% of the people who suffered a "sports-related" brain injury experienced signs of dementia around 61 years of age? (if the ratio (odds) is 3:1, dementia to non-dementia, then the probability is 3/4) I have a hard time believing that regardless of their research. The veterans - "twice as likely"...or...half as likely to not develop...depending on your perspective. So 2 out of every 3? 66% of the veterans are likely to suffer from dementia? "This month, red meat once again made headline news after a new study reported that eating cured meats such as bacon, sausages and luncheon meats, increased the risk of developing a lung condition called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)...Compared to those subjects who ate no cured meats, those eating 14 or more servings a month were found to be almost twice as likely to develop COPD. COPD is typically a disease associated with smoking and this study found that those people who ate the most cured meats were also more likely to smoke. This makes it difficult to draw clear conclusions." So what's the #$%^ing point of saying anything if you cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that this is the cause? On the suicide aspect - I've got to be honest...I think the suicide piece has more to do with boredom and lack of adrenalin than anything else. No one is committing suicide because of a brain injury while they are playing. I think they miss the comradery of the team, the excitement of the game, the cheering of the crowd, the fame and all that and once it's gone...well in a lot of cases for some of those guys, that's all they know. You have to remember, those guys were local celebrities in high school, they were celebrities in college and the NFL. You take a 14 year old kid, put him on a pedestal and he stays on it for the next 14 years...heck, that's all he knows and when it's gone...he's lost and depression follows quickly. Heck boys we are all coaches...why are we coaches? We coach because we love the game, we love the thrill of the fight, the commradery of the team and when our careers came to an end we didn't want to let go of the game and we still haven't. Some guys don't have a choice but to give it up. **I don't know how to spell "comradery" and my computer kept suggesting "comrade" so I just said phuk it, you guys know what I mean. You're mis-stating what a I wrote. Researchers found that football players, who had suffered a suffered a sports-related brain injury, were three times more likely to experience signs of dementia by age 61. For instance, if researchers looked at 100 former football players and determined that 20 of them suffered from signs of dementia by age 61, and of those 20, 15 had experienced a sports-related brain injury, that would be at a 3:1 clip. That's not the same thing as 75% of them suffering dementia by age 61. Scientific experiments are conducted w/ an explicit purpose in mind. They are performed in an effort to show correlation and cause. These studies will never show causation. The best they can do is indicate correlation. The reason you conduct these experiments, and release the results, is to provide evidence. These are simply hypotheses that are either supported by evidence or not supported by evidence. If enough evidence can be found, a theory can be developed. But, this takes years of experiments and mountains of data. The study you cited is simply that: A single study. For all we know, it hasn't been peer-reviewed, nor has it been independently replicated. Unless both of these things happen (repeatedly), this study hasn't provided any evidence to support what it claims. It's the same w/ any of these studies. The reason you don't see suicide during playing years is b/c, suicide is not a result of brain injury. Suicide is a result of the results of brain injury. In other words, a brain bruise does not cause you to commit suicide. A brain bruise may lead to major depressive disorder, which can definitely lead to suicide. What you've brought up can certainly lead to depression, which can lead to suicide.
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jmg999
Junior Member
Posts: 263
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Post by jmg999 on Apr 28, 2014 14:55:46 GMT -6
Btw, I thought that I would list some of the studies being referenced in this thread...
Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in College Football by P. Stewart Published in: Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, volume 36 issue Supplement (30 April 2004), pages S54-S55
From Football to Flies: Lessons About Traumatic Brain Injury by Author Unknown Published in: Telecommunications Weekly (30 October 2013), page 154
Coroner Cites Football as Reason for Brain Injury by L. Eaton (This was a study on an English footballer.) Published in: BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), volume 325 issue 7373 (2002-Nov-16), pages 1133-1133
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, the National Football League, and the Manufacture of Doubt: An Ethical, Legal, and Historical Analysis by D.S. Goldberg Published in: The Journal of Legal Medicine, volume 34 issue 2 (30 November 2012), pages 157-191
Football: A Case-based Approach to Mild Traumatic Brain Injury by D.T. Bernhardt Published in: Pediatric Annals, volume 29 issue 3 (2000-Mar), pages 172-172
Helmet Monitors Lead the Way to Fewer Brain Injuries in Football by Author Unknown Published in: Pain & Central Nervous System Week (2 May 2011), page 1033
Traumatic Brain Injury in High School Athletes by J.W. Powell & K.D. Barber-Foss Published in: JAMA : The Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 282 issue 10 (1999-Sep-8), pages 958-963
Concussion in Professional Football: Summary of the Research Conducted by the National Football League's Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury by E.J. Pellman & D.C. Viano Published in: Neurosurgical Focus, volume 21 issue 4 (30 November 2005), pages E12-E10
Brain Injury Doubled Dementia by F. Correa Published in: Clinical Psychiatry News, volume 39 issue 8 (August 2011), pages 27-27
A Focus on Football Injury by Author Unknown Published in: Journal of Nuclear Medicine : Official Publication, Society of Nuclear Medicine, volume 54 issue 3 (2013-Mar), pages 16N-16N
Does Football Cause Brain Damage? by A.H. Kaye & P. McCrory Published in: The Medical Journal of Australia, volume 196 issue 9 (2012-May-21), pages 547-549
Relationship Between Concussion and Neuropsychological Performance in College Football Players by M.W. Collins et al. Published in: JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, volume 282 issue 10 (8 September 1999), pages 964-970
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Post by 19delta on Apr 28, 2014 18:34:59 GMT -6
Why is it no one ever figures in all the other crap these guys do when investigating brain problems? Jim McMahon's messed up. Must be football! How about the fact he was a raging alcoholic and party boy too? No one ever considers the drugs, pain killers, alcohol or steroids a lot of these guys did. What if the sport isn't damaging, but when combined with the rest it's an issue? Same thing about steroids and PEDs. I remembered when Ken Caminiti died. All the journalists and talking heads blamed it on steroids while ignoring the 15-year bender he spent on cocaine, whiskey, and hookers. My guess is that when you look at the guys who have developed problems later in life, you will find a pattern of substance abuse. Now, the question is, did the substance abuse cause the brain damage or did the brain damage lead to the substance abuse?
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Post by 19delta on Apr 28, 2014 18:38:51 GMT -6
for what its worth.....Cap Rooney had a spinal issue, not head trauma. "He's {censored} up; they're all {censored} up"I love that movie, though. Jamie Williams was the one who originally wrote the script and much of that was true throughout his playing days in the 80s. If you really want a slap in the football face, watch "Draft Day". I thought he had a couple concussions, too. There are a couple scenes were he gets hit and the lights go out. I could be wrong. Again...that half bottle of Jim Beam thing that I brought up earlier... Incidentally, I didn't think James Woods was that bad of a guy. Without James Woods, Shark doesn't make his bonus. And Matthew Modine's character...what a little {censored}. He rats out James Woods' character and then picks up exactly where he left off.
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jmg999
Junior Member
Posts: 263
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Post by jmg999 on Apr 28, 2014 20:25:34 GMT -6
Why is it no one ever figures in all the other crap these guys do when investigating brain problems? Jim McMahon's messed up. Must be football! How about the fact he was a raging alcoholic and party boy too? No one ever considers the drugs, pain killers, alcohol or steroids a lot of these guys did. What if the sport isn't damaging, but when combined with the rest it's an issue? Same thing about steroids and PEDs. I remembered when Ken Caminiti died. All the journalists and talking heads blamed it on steroids while ignoring the 15-year bender he spent on cocaine, whiskey, and hookers. My guess is that when you look at the guys who have developed problems later in life, you will find a pattern of substance abuse. Now, the question is, did the substance abuse cause the brain damage or did the brain damage lead to the substance abuse? These factors are considered in an experimental analysis. If they're not the variables being studied, they're considered extraneous variables, and they're extrapolated.
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Post by Chris Clement on Apr 28, 2014 21:41:25 GMT -6
for what its worth.....Cap Rooney had a spinal issue, not head trauma. "He's {censored} up; they're all {censored} up"I love that movie, though. Jamie Williams was the one who originally wrote the script and much of that was true throughout his playing days in the 80s. If you really want a slap in the football face, watch "Draft Day". I thought he had a couple concussions, too. There are a couple scenes were he gets hit and the lights go out. I could be wrong. Again...that half bottle of Jim Beam thing that I brought up earlier... Incidentally, I didn't think James Woods was that bad of a guy. Without James Woods, Shark doesn't make his bonus. And Matthew Modine's character...what a little {censored}. He rats out James Woods' character and then picks up exactly where he left off. Professional ethics and legal responsibilities be damned and all.
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Post by 19delta on Apr 28, 2014 22:33:32 GMT -6
I thought he had a couple concussions, too. There are a couple scenes were he gets hit and the lights go out. I could be wrong. Again...that half bottle of Jim Beam thing that I brought up earlier... Incidentally, I didn't think James Woods was that bad of a guy. Without James Woods, Shark doesn't make his bonus. And Matthew Modine's character...what a little {censored}. He rats out James Woods' character and then picks up exactly where he left off. Professional ethics and legal responsibilities be damned and all. I don't think either one of those guys took the Hippocratic Oath seriously...
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jmg999
Junior Member
Posts: 263
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Post by jmg999 on May 1, 2014 0:34:28 GMT -6
I just have a hard time pinning the blame on "sports related injury" when so many other factors can play into it. Car wrecks, hitting your head while working on your house, falling when you were little learning how to walk, wrecking your bicycle as a kid (cause you know we didn't have helmets back then), high fevers as children, diet, wrecking a 4 wheeler, etc. Anyone who has raised boys...how many times did they hit their head pretty hard growing up? I simply do not see how any kind of consistent baseline could possibly be established with the infinite differences of those individuals life experiences. It seems that these guys are taking a group of guys who all have dementia and are then looking for a common denominator and they point to sports related injury because that's something they have in common. I bet they have all hit their head from wrecking a bicycle too. I mean 64 and 96 are both divisible by 8 but they are also divisible by 2, 4, 16 and 32. That's all I'm saying. Coach, if you read my most recent post in this thread, I explained how this is handled. Any scientific experiment will account for what you're referring to. They're called extraneous variables. In other words, things you're not testing for. This study wanted to know the effects of sports-related brain injuries, so they would have potential participants go through a screening process, whereby anyone who'd suffered a previous brain injury, for whatever reason, would be eliminated from the sample. The only other option for handling this would be to factor it into the results. Brain injuries caused by hitting your head on concrete during a bicycle accident look different than repeated and sustained blows to the head over long periods of time. A neuroscientist would, under normal conditions, be able to tell the difference. However, it is still more likely that these participants would be removed from the sample. Ultimately, different types of injuries may lead to the same result (dementia, major depressive disorder, Alzheimer's, PTSD, etc.), but they would take a different route in getting there. Recently, I posted an article about applying statistics and analytics to football. I walked through the basics of the experimental process and some of the burdens researchers have to meet in order to reach what are considered significant results. If you take a look at it, it may help to explain the process a bit better.
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Post by s73 on May 1, 2014 6:02:39 GMT -6
I just have a hard time pinning the blame on "sports related injury" when so many other factors can play into it. Car wrecks, hitting your head while working on your house, falling when you were little learning how to walk, wrecking your bicycle as a kid (cause you know we didn't have helmets back then), high fevers as children, diet, wrecking a 4 wheeler, etc. Anyone who has raised boys...how many times did they hit their head pretty hard growing up? I simply do not see how any kind of consistent baseline could possibly be established with the infinite differences of those individuals life experiences. It seems that these guys are taking a group of guys who all have dementia and are then looking for a common denominator and they point to sports related injury because that's something they have in common. I bet they have all hit their head from wrecking a bicycle too. I mean 64 and 96 are both divisible by 8 but they are also divisible by 2, 4, 16 and 32. That's all I'm saying. Coach, if you read my most recent post in this thread, I explained how this is handled. Any scientific experiment will account for what you're referring to. They're called extraneous variables. In other words, things you're not testing for. This study wanted to know the effects of sports-related brain injuries, so they would have potential participants go through a screening process, whereby anyone who'd suffered a previous brain injury, for whatever reason, would be eliminated from the sample. The only other option for handling this would be to factor it into the results. Brain injuries caused by hitting your head on concrete during a bicycle accident look different than repeated and sustained blows to the head over long periods of time. A neuroscientist would, under normal conditions, be able to tell the difference. However, it is still more likely that these participants would be removed from the sample. Ultimately, different types of injuries may lead to the same result (dementia, major depressive disorder, Alzheimer's, PTSD, etc.), but they would take a different route in getting there. Recently, I posted an article about applying statistics and analytics to football. I walked through the basics of the experimental process and some of the burdens researchers have to meet in order to reach what are considered significant results. If you take a look at it, it may help to explain the process a bit better. For me, one of the things that gets lost in all of this is personal choice. The parents, and at some point later in life the individual gets to make the choice of whether or not they want to trade the risks of football for the experiences of playing the game. I for one suffered a very serious injury that as I age has more and more caused me a great deal of soreness and pain. Yet, I would do it all over again in a heart beat. That is my choice. Educate RESPONSIBLY and then get out of the way. Let people decide. Don't like seeing legislators who've never played the game trying to control how we practice and play this game based on some study they read somewhere. JMO.
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Post by bleefb on May 3, 2014 0:00:33 GMT -6
Introduction of air helmets allow players to keep their helmets under-inflated for "comfort" reasons. Watch any NFL or college game and you can see how loose the helmets are. Guys take them on and off like a baseball cap.
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