Shocking New Study Is Clear That Football Remains Dangerous

I have to be honest: I’ve never been a fan of football.

Actually, I’m just not a fan of sports in general. It’s just never been a passion of mine. I’m deathly bored by sports games on TV. I played soccer on a team for a season when I was 13, and that was just because all my friends were on the team.

Thank God I ended up with a fellow non-sports fan for a fiance, am I right?

People who dislike football now have a new, more pressing reason to hate this sport: new research shows just how impactful playing football is for the human brain. 

What did the research reveal?

99% of Players’ Brains in the Study Had CTE 

The research, published by the American Medical Association, found that 99% of National Football League (NFL) players had CTE. CTE stands for chronic traumatic encephalopathy and can only be diagnosed postmortem. Players had donated their brains for research for this purpose. 

Although the study included players from a range of football professions, including those in high school, college, and semi-professional, those from the NFL had the highest percentage of CTE. Those from high school had a 21% prevalence of CTE while those in college had 91%; those in semi-professional had 64%.

As you can see, football players in college along with those in the NFL had the highest percentage of having CTE. The people who played the most football sustained the highest stages of CTE. Of those with mild CTE, 27% reported symptoms in their lifetime while 89% with severe CTE reported symptoms.

These symptoms included mood and behavioral problems as well as “cognitive symptoms” and signs of dementia. 

What Is CTE?

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy is considered to be a neurodegenerative disease. What this means is that the neurons in your brain are consistently damaged or die (or both) and can cause problems with cognitive function or physical function. 

You know about other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease. Fun fact about neurons: they can’t be replaced. Once certain neurons are gone, they’re gone. Some research questions whether or not certain neurons can regenerate later in life, but the jury’s still out on this.

Neurons are important because they facilitate communication between your brain and just about every other part of your body. They are responsible for communicating all types of information, including everything from movement to memories. 

CTE is diagnosed in stages (from I to IV) with stages I and II obviously being mild and stages III and IV being severe. During CTE, tau protein slowly spreads through the brain, which kills brain cells. Although some parts of the brain might be atrophied by these changes, others may become enlarged.

When the Damage Starts

Symptoms of CTE usually aren’t apparent until years of abuse have passed—by this, of course, I mean repeated head trauma. Symptoms have not been noted to appear before the age of 17, with symptoms most commonly coming out in the late 20s or 30s. 

The symptoms include aggression, mood changes, paranoia, depression, impulse control, and more. Memory, thinking, and judgment may all be impacted by the onset of CTE. These cognitive symptoms usually won’t appear until the 40s or 50s of a patient’s life while mood symptoms may be apparent much earlier.

CTE may be present for years before symptoms show. Even if a patient stops playing football, the disease can worsen. In some cases, symptoms may remain stable for a while and then progressively get worse as the neurons continue to be affected.

Who Else Is Affected by CTE?

Anyone who has sustained repeated head injuries or impacts over the years could be affected by CTE. These are most commonly football players, but people in the military and other contact sports such as boxing—the sport in which CTE was first observed in an athlete—are also at risk for the degenerative disease.

Concussions aren’t necessary in order for someone to have CTE. Even head injuries that wouldn’t medically qualify as concussions can contribute towards the disease. This is particularly seen in research that followed children who played tackle football—none of whom had any symptoms or diagnosis of a concussion—but changes were still present in the brain’s white matter even after only one season of playing football.

Of course, this new research by the American Medical Association only examined the brains of a little over 200 football players. However, this doesn’t change its alarming nature when it comes to the safety of football. CTE is very real concern among players, even those that only sustain “minimal” injuries during this sport. 

Want to find out more? The popular movie Concussion that came out in 2015 with Will Smith chronicles CTE’s connection to football. You can also learn more at Boston University’s FAQ page about CTE. If you suspect you or your child has CTE, you can visit your doctor in your healthcare plan to talk about your risk, symptoms, and testing.