Welcome to Hogville!      Do Not Sell My Personal Information

Wow! New CTE study shows...

Started by Peter Porker, July 25, 2017, 11:02:40 am

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

redneckfriend



Everyone who plays realizes the risks. We are all responsible for our own decisions.
[/quote]

No, that isn't true and you know it and that is exactly the problem. Kids want to impress their parents and their peers and they think, consciously or not, who wants to live past forty? So they sign up for something they may later regret when they come to understand that there is a lot to live for after forty- kids, grandkids, fishing on a lake, going to a Razorback game as a fan, bitching on Hogville etc. i.e. things they never imagined would be important when they were 15, 17, 19. The issue isn't to make this an either/or question but to find out how to best determine a way to let people who are physically mature but mentally immature engage in a beautiful sport and come out the other side intact so they can enjoy what life has to offer after their "glory days" are over.

Cinco de Hogo

Quote from: redneckfriend on July 25, 2017, 08:31:42 pm

Everyone who plays realizes the risks. We are all responsible for our own decisions.


No, that isn't true and you know it and that is exactly the problem. Kids want to impress their parents and their peers and they think, consciously or not, who wants to live past forty? So they sign up for something they may later regret when they come to understand that there is a lot to live for after forty- kids, grandkids, fishing on a lake, going to a Razorback game as a fan, bitching on Hogville etc. i.e. things they never imagined would be important when they were 15, 17, 19. The issue isn't to make this an either/or question but to find out how to best determine a way to let people who are physically mature but mentally immature engage in a beautiful sport and come out the other side intact so they can enjoy what life has to offer after their "glory days" are over.

At 15, 17, 19 kids start driving too, all the while parents know there are more deaths Texas alone each year than have probably happened in football since it begin.  Life is about choices.  Research will do what it can about the dangers.

 

MuskogeeHogFan

Quote from: redneckfriend on July 25, 2017, 08:31:42 pm

Everyone who plays realizes the risks. We are all responsible for our own decisions.


No, that isn't true and you know it and that is exactly the problem. Kids want to impress their parents and their peers and they think, consciously or not, who wants to live past forty? So they sign up for something they may later regret when they come to understand that there is a lot to live for after forty- kids, grandkids, fishing on a lake, going to a Razorback game as a fan, bitching on Hogville etc. i.e. things they never imagined would be important when they were 15, 17, 19. The issue isn't to make this an either/or question but to find out how to best determine a way to let people who are physically mature but mentally immature engage in a beautiful sport and come out the other side intact so they can enjoy what life has to offer after their "glory days" are over.

So you allege that I am lying or attempting to deceive someone? You need to back up on that statement, bud. Just for you, let me amend that statement. Anyone who plays at the college level or above (NFL) knows, which is what this original post related to in terms of injuries later in life.

For whatever negative experience that you personally may have had or some of your family may have had with this at an earlier age, I am sorry.

For college level and Professional level athletes, they understand the longer term risks to a greater degree. I am sorry if you don't understand that.
Go Hogs Go!

zebradynasty

July 25, 2017, 09:10:47 pm #103 Last Edit: July 25, 2017, 09:32:58 pm by zebradynasty
Quote from: MuskogeeHogFan on July 25, 2017, 08:13:33 pm
No, not "drunk", though I am sure you wish you could hang that on me.

It is really about half jesting. I've heard various media outlets assert this before, just heard it again today. Same with chicken. Last time I heard this it was attributed to how the meat was cooked. Now it is just generally that all meat is bad. So meat is bad, poultry is bad because of all the added chemicals unless you eat "free range chicken". OY! Best to confine your eating habits to fruits, veggies and nuts.

For those who remember, and in the total celebration of the life of Naturalist Euell Gibbons, "Some tree bark is edible".

Stop the insanity. Everything in moderation.

And as it applies to this thread, yes, guys who have a lot of violent impacts to the head are likely to have problems at some point, but there are also those who don't. Yes, bang your head against the equivalent of a concrete wall that hits back for 10 to 20 years and you might have some problems later in life. Just as a guy who weighs 235 lbs. but has violent impact with guys who weigh anywhere from 235 to 310 lbs. over a period of time might find that they have back or neck or knee problems later in life. It happens, not unexpected.

Football is a violent sport and injuries occur. Some rear their heads earlier, some don't manifest until later in life. That's just how it goes and it is the price that you pay for having played the sport. No one is un-informed. A price is to be paid because the human body wasn't meant to incur this many violent incidents of contact.

Everyone who plays realizes the risks. We are all responsible for our own decisions.

Overreaction and kinda cold. I guess a kid playing Pop Warner if he gets banged around get a few concussions is he just paying the price? Yes, we all manage KNOWN risk but if this study is true then that is a game changer. Right now players do except the risk of bodily injuries but the risk of becoming a vegetable has always been thought to be very small. If that is not true....It may be too early to sound all the alarms but it definitely merits discussion and research. 

redneckfriend

Quote from: MuskogeeHogFan on July 25, 2017, 08:39:54 pm
So you allege that I am lying or attempting to deceive someone? You need to back up on that statement, bud. Just for you, let me amend that statement. Anyone who plays at the college level or above (NFL) knows, which is what this original post related to in terms of injuries later in life.

For whatever negative experience that you personally may have had or some of your family may have had with this at an earlier age, I am sorry.

For college level and Professional level athletes, they understand the longer term risks to a greater degree. I am sorry if you don't understand that.


I will back up. Perhaps you honestly just don't understand that kids ENTERING college are not attuned to risk, especially when the immediate payoff seems so glamorous (honestly, if it were me I would rather be accused of lying than being stupid).

bennyl08

Quote from: MuskogeeHogFan on July 25, 2017, 08:13:33 pm

Football is a violent sport and injuries occur. Some rear their heads earlier, some don't manifest until later in life. That's just how it goes and it is the price that you pay for having played the sport. No one is un-informed. A price is to be paid because the human body wasn't meant to incur this many violent incidents of contact.

Everyone who plays realizes the risks. We are all responsible for our own decisions.

There was a pretty big lawsuit against the NFL that says differently to the bolded parts. Pretty successful Will Smith movie about how people weren't informed and didn't realize the risks as well.

Further, you are over diminishing the issue. How many HS kids know that their brain will be physiologically different after just 1 year of football despite having no concussions? Sure, they are in HS so their body is still maturing, but does that explain that the amount of change is proportional to the cumulative impacts they received over the season?

We know very little about our own brains and as a population are pretty ill informed about them. You mention in this thread about somebody calling you dishonest. Saying that nobody is un-informed is absolutely dishonest. Saying that everyone who plays realizes the risks in dishonest. Especially considering we are still in the relative infancy of understanding what the risks are to begin with. It'll probably be another decade before we can really say that the cerebral risks of playing football are understood. That's the whole issue. The NFL deliberate mis-informed and withheld information about the risks. While most anybody starting football in the past few years understands there is a risk, even the researchers who work in the fields don't fully know the severity or likelihood of the risks are, much less the football players.

It's like the early years of radiation. First, it wasn't known that there were any risks, then it required years and years of testing to learn what the risks were and develop exposure standards such that the risks were at acceptable levels, not to mention the deliberate keeping workers in the dark about what they are being exposed to in the early days. The risks here with brain trauma playing football are very different than say radiation, but the process of learning is similar.
Quote from: PorkSoda on May 05, 2016, 09:24:05 pm
damn I thought it was only a color, didn't realize it was named after a liqueur. leave it to benny to make me research the history of chartreuse

hogsanity

Quote from: MuskogeeHogFan on July 25, 2017, 08:13:33 pm

Everyone who plays realizes the risks. We are all responsible for our own decisions.

really? the kid who's dad is making him play, who is always yelling to walk it off, get tough, quit being a baby, and a dozen other insults I have heard dads yell at kids on the football field, that kid knows the risks?
People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball.  I will tell you what I do. I stare out the window, and I wait for spring.

"Anything goes wrong, anything at all, your fault, my fault, nobodies fault, I'm going to blow your head off."  John Wayne in BIG JAKE

TNRazorbacker

Quote from: LRHog on July 25, 2017, 11:30:41 am
breaking news: small sample size of a narrow segment of the population that is exposed to all the right conditions have this disease.

I'm also the first white male with 2.33'' hair that is light brown in color with green eyes with eye lashes .02% longer than average that has walked on the moon.

See how conditions can skew data.

Intuitively, to me these findings just make sense so I don't really understand this level of skepticism. The brain is an organ. Like any other organ a single injury can have long term, even lifelong consequences. Repetitive injuries, or playing with an injury, can obviously take a much more severe toll. Nobody questions this as it relates to injuries of say a knee or a shoulder, it's obvious, yet the suggestion of similar ramifications for brain injury is considered so spurious we look for reasons to dismiss it even in the presence of research further demonstrating it's real. Why is there a higher burden of truth on brain injury than any other body part?

I think the bias resides in the way we've been conditioned to measure sport injury. Historically this judgement has been measured largely by the limitation said injury has on the immediate ability to continue play. Blow a knee out and this is immediately obvious, a brain injury typically less so. Historically you toughed it out and played. This mindset lingers in the tendency to dismiss brain injury as a legitimate concern.

I love football but at the end of the day it's just a game. If there's even a remote possibility (a threshold that's already been met it would seem) that it's leading to serious brain injury then we err should on the side of caution.


twistitup

Quote from: redneckfriend on July 25, 2017, 08:31:42 pm

Everyone who plays realizes the risks. We are all responsible for our own decisions.


No, that isn't true and you know it and that is exactly the problem. Kids want to impress their parents and their peers and they think, consciously or not, who wants to live past forty? So they sign up for something they may later regret when they come to understand that there is a lot to live for after forty- kids, grandkids, fishing on a lake, going to a Razorback game as a fan, bitching on Hogville etc. i.e. things they never imagined would be important when they were 15, 17, 19. The issue isn't to make this an either/or question but to find out how to best determine a way to let people who are physically mature but mentally immature engage in a beautiful sport and come out the other side intact so they can enjoy what life has to offer after their "glory days" are over.

great post.

We need to to keep things in perspective....our redneck friend did just that.
How you gonna win when you ain't right within?

Here I am again mixing misery and gin....

Dumb ole famrboy

Quote from: twistitup on July 26, 2017, 06:10:12 am
great post.

We need to to keep things in perspective....our redneck friend did just that.
Yes we do need to keep things in perspective which also includes recognizing the sample upon which this study was based is skewed and bias. The study indicates there is a correlation between playing football and CTE. But it does not provide any valid data for determining how great that risk is.

twistitup

Quote from: Dumb ole famrboy on July 26, 2017, 06:40:54 am
Yes we do need to keep things in perspective which also includes recognizing the sample upon which this study was based is skewed and bias. The study indicates there is a correlation between playing football and CTE. But it does not provide any valid data for determining how great that risk is.

common sense has to come into play at some point....the dots are not hard to connect. The science is out there - this is far from the only study on head trauma / football / CTE
How you gonna win when you ain't right within?

Here I am again mixing misery and gin....

Inhogswetrust

Quote from: RazorWest on July 25, 2017, 11:22:32 am
I love watching football, but I really feel it's a dying sport. Many Mothers and fathers will refuse to let their kids play.  The talent pool will shrink

That's been going on forever. My Mother in Law refused to let her two boys play football and they are in their 60's now. My Mom didn't want me to play it either and let it be known however she reluctantly relented and I played one year. I realized I wasn't big enough or fast enough.
If I'm going to cheer players and coaches in victory, I damn sure ought to be man enough to stand with them in defeat.

"Why some people are so drawn to the irrational is something that has always puzzled me" - James Randi

MuskogeeHogFan

July 26, 2017, 07:15:25 am #112 Last Edit: July 26, 2017, 07:36:34 am by MuskogeeHogFan
Boy, some of you guys really overreact. And name calling? Really? Very mature.

I said there were risks. And this study was about NFL players, not Pop Warner, not Middle School, not HS players. I think it is sad that there are some parents who choose to live vicariously through their kids, forcing them to play a game that maybe, they don't want to play. I don't disagree with any of that. That's a different subject than head trauma. Head trauma can be suffered by kids who want to play just like those who feel the pressure to play. But this isn't about who wants to play and who doesn't.

I'll go back to my point. The players that they studied were former NFL players. Far less than 1% of the population that have ever played football in their lives and guys who have grown up understanding that when you get knocked out, let alone just dinged, is not a good thing. There used to be a good reason that once a kid had been knocked out 3 or 4 times in a single season, that they weren't allowed to play anymore, and that wasn't in the NFL.

The guys in the NFL that they studied played and knew the risks. Maybe not as much as they understand them today with enhanced research, but they knew there were associated risks with repeated head traumas even when they played. I'm not making light of it and I am not being cold about it. At higher levels of football, again what this article discusses, it is just part of the job and no one is blinded to that fact.
Go Hogs Go!

 

Dumb ole famrboy

Quote from: twistitup on July 26, 2017, 07:02:12 am
common sense has to come into play at some point....the dots are not hard to connect. The science is out there - this is far from the only study on head trauma / football / CTE
Use your common sense and connect all the dots you want based on results extracted from a dataset comprised primarily of football players exhibiting symptomatic CTE prior to death.

RME

Quote from: bennyl08 on July 25, 2017, 03:34:38 pm
Hahaha, that's a good joke.

...At least I hope you were joking...

Sadly, I don't think he was. Amazing how this thread has brought out Hogville's best and brightest self-proclaimed statisticians who apparently don't understand sample sizes, extrapolation, or pretty much the base definition of "statistics."

I'm no statistician by any means. My knowledge of the field doesn't go past my grad school statistics and analytics class. But some elementary concepts here are being blatantly disregarded.

Cinco de Hogo

Quote from: RyanMallettsEgo on July 26, 2017, 08:38:29 am
Sadly, I don't think he was. Amazing how this thread has brought out Hogville's best and brightest self-proclaimed statisticians who apparently don't understand sample sizes, extrapolation, or pretty much the base definition of "statistics."

I'm no statistician by any means. My knowledge of the field doesn't go past my grad school statistics and analytics class. But some elementary concepts here are being blatantly disregarded.

Well please enlighten us for better or worse.

What I see is a study of 111 people who died of lung cancer who smoked their entire life and their families wanted stats so they could sue the tobacco industry all the while knowing their whole lives that smoking caused cancer.  Oh and they all started when they were seven years old out behind the barn. 

It's pretty simple, if you don't want to get hurt don't play violent sports.  If you don't want cancer don't smoke.  Of course there is still no guarantee you want have either problem.

PorkRinds

Football is dangerous, no doubt. But how many people are affected by CTE? Most people stop playing football in high school.  Not many high school players with CTE, so we are really talking about a very small subset of people who play. If I were an NFL or college lineman I would probably take steps to make sure my career was short enough to mitigate the long term damage. Beyond that I don't think it's that worrisome.  Little league, junior high, and high school players aren't thanking the kinds of hits it takes to cause CTE.

311Hog

Quote from: bigpigpimpin on July 25, 2017, 10:14:14 pm
Of course this is their result. That's what they got paid to do. They are going to make their research show the results that the people funding them want it to.

i am as big a skeptic as anyone and even i cannot fathom what it must be like to be you.  If this truly how you think..... how do you even go outside.

311Hog

Quote from: TNRazorbacker on July 26, 2017, 03:34:58 am
Intuitively, to me these findings just make sense so I don't really understand this level of skepticism. The brain is an organ. Like any other organ a single injury can have long term, even lifelong consequences. Repetitive injuries, or playing with an injury, can obviously take a much more severe toll. Nobody questions this as it relates to injuries of say a knee or a shoulder, it's obvious, yet the suggestion of similar ramifications for brain injury is considered so spurious we look for reasons to dismiss it even in the presence of research further demonstrating it's real. Why is there a higher burden of truth on brain injury than any other body part?

I think the bias resides in the way we've been conditioned to measure sport injury. Historically this judgement has been measured largely by the limitation said injury has on the immediate ability to continue play. Blow a knee out and this is immediately obvious, a brain injury typically less so. Historically you toughed it out and played. This mindset lingers in the tendency to dismiss brain injury as a legitimate concern.

I love football but at the end of the day it's just a game. If there's even a remote possibility (a threshold that's already been met it would seem) that it's leading to serious brain injury then we err should on the side of caution.



No kidding i do not think some of these people have functional brains.  Those that doubt this i want you to go into your garage get a tiny hammer and hit your pointer finger on about a 2 or 3 outa 10 strength and do this continuously for the next 3 hours, do this at least 3 times a week for the next 4 months, over the next 3 to 10 years and let me know what your finger looks like when you are done.

This is yet another demonstration of how 1 human is willing to let another human die for their entertainment.  Not just let, but try and shame and goad them into doing it.

31to6

Quote from: 311Hog on July 26, 2017, 09:32:43 am
This is yet another demonstration of how 1 human is willing to let another human die for their entertainment.  Not just let, but try and shame and goad them into doing it.
That's pretty harsh.

I am by nature skeptical.

So is every good scientist (and they should be). Skepticism is what prompts a scientist to continually challenge what "we know"--even when what "we know" is something they are inclined to agree with...

110 of 111 essentially means "if you play in the NFL you are going to show CTE". All the skeptics here are saying is that the findings do NOT in fact say that because (due to the nature of the limitations of the samples they had to study) they could not use random/blind sampling, control groups, etc. All the samples are in a similar age range. All of them are, clearly, self-selected by, well, being people who have died. All of them are from players who played well before there was any real focus on concussions and brain trauma in the football. And so on.

The results are very troubling for football. What we need to know, now, is:

1) Are we currently doing enough with new helmet technologies, concussion protocols, rules changes limiting head-to-head contact, and so on?
2) If not, can we change football in a way that let's it be the physical sport it should be to keep the spirit of the game while bringing the risks down to a more acceptable level?

We do not have a sample of people who have played in this newer era of rules, technology and protocols because they are all still alive and, for the most part, playing right now.

3) Can we find ways to better measure CTE effects in *living* players, so we can monitor the brain trauma on an individual basis? (Work is being done, but it is not yet very effective at all.)

Lots of questions.

People who love football have to accept the rules changes and other impacts unless and until we know if we have gotten it mostly right.

For those who compare CTE to other types of football injury, I do have one point:  Your knee and your shoulder and your back are not *who you are*. Who you are is what is in your brain. That is why dementia is so terrifying to those who suffer it in old age--they feel *themselves* slipping.

This is, in fact, a different health risk than anything else.

That all being said, we don't need to go too far an chicken-little football to, literal, death.

mhsbc59

Coming from someone who play college football, NAIA, the more i learn about CTE the more it starts to worry me. I played contact football for 13 years. All of those as an OL and DL.  If I only take the last 8 years I played being high school and college i had hundreds of thousands if not close to a million reps.  Now I had heard somewhere that OL and DL hitting each other is like putting your body in 15-25 mph car crash on every snap. 

Now when I played no one cared about concussions. I can recall on multiple occasions. my after hits my vision narrowing and seeing colors and after my coach would say shake it off being right back out there.  I never thought nothing of it and would go back out there. As I am now 14 years removed from playing I can say that I don't think I'm that much different than I used to be. Have said that though.  I'm though very sensitive to light. I can get irrationally mad over small things.  I keep it in my head but I do think dang I took that to a dark place.  I also tend to forget things and have trouble remembering people names.  Now I could just not be that bright and it could be nothing but I do wonder now if football may be somewhat to blame.. Just my thoughts on the matter.
I have changed my sig line of over 4 years that was never a problem until May 5 ,2011

Cinco de Hogo

Quote from: 311Hog on July 26, 2017, 09:29:25 am
i am as big a skeptic as anyone and even i cannot fathom what it must be like to be you.  If this truly how you think..... how do you even go outside.

It's easier when you aren't running scared from every single article on research like that one.

twistitup

Quote from: 31to6 on July 26, 2017, 09:45:35 am
That's pretty harsh.

I am by nature skeptical.

So is every good scientist (and they should be). Skepticism is what prompts a scientist to continually challenge what "we know"--even when what "we know" is something they are inclined to agree with...

110 of 111 essentially means "if you play in the NFL you are going to show CTE". All the skeptics here are saying is that the findings do NOT in fact say that because (due to the nature of the limitations of the samples they had to study) they could not use random/blind sampling, control groups, etc. All the samples are in a similar age range. All of them are, clearly, self-selected by, well, being people who have died. All of them are from players who played well before there was any real focus on concussions and brain trauma in the football. And so on.

The results are very troubling for football. What we need to know, now, is:

1) Are we currently doing enough with new helmet technologies, concussion protocols, rules changes limiting head-to-head contact, and so on?
2) If not, can we change football in a way that let's it be the physical sport it should be to keep the spirit of the game while bringing the risks down to a more acceptable level?

We do not have a sample of people who have played in this newer era of rules, technology and protocols because they are all still alive and, for the most part, playing right now.

3) Can we find ways to better measure CTE effects in *living* players, so we can monitor the brain trauma on an individual basis? (Work is being done, but it is not yet very effective at all.)

Lots of questions.

People who love football have to accept the rules changes and other impacts unless and until we know if we have gotten it mostly right.

For those who compare CTE to other types of football injury, I do have one point:  Your knee and your shoulder and your back are not *who you are*. Who you are is what is in your brain. That is why dementia is so terrifying to those who suffer it in old age--they feel *themselves* slipping.

This is, in fact, a different health risk than anything else.

That all being said, we don't need to go too far an chicken-little football to, literal, death.

We can track CTE in living players, but it requires going to a neurologist - this could be career ending for many players and they avoid it. After my multiple concussions due to football- I was given a brain scan and damage was evident to the frontal lobe. I didn't play football after this report....it changed the course of my life for sure, but it may have saved my life too - who knows?

ANY football player can go into the doctor and request a brain scan.....but be careful asking questions if you don't want an honest answer - the truth may sobering
How you gonna win when you ain't right within?

Here I am again mixing misery and gin....

hogsanity

Quote from: PorkRinds on July 26, 2017, 08:50:13 am
Football is dangerous, no doubt. But how many people are affected by CTE? Most people stop playing football in high school.  .  Little league, junior high, and high school players aren't thanking the kinds of hits it takes to cause CTE.


Ah, but there is the problem, we do not know how many are affected because, as of now, it can not be detected until after death. Also, it is not the big hit that causes it, it is the repetitive jarring of the brain, sloshing it around against the skull that seems to be the issue the CTE.

But why are so many focusing on the sample size. I think we all agree it is a small sample, BUT good grief, 110 out of 111?

And I still can't figure out why so many would have the reactions they have had. No one is saying shut down football, or ban kids from playing, or anything like that, but you would have thought the world ended for some of you when this came out.
People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball.  I will tell you what I do. I stare out the window, and I wait for spring.

"Anything goes wrong, anything at all, your fault, my fault, nobodies fault, I'm going to blow your head off."  John Wayne in BIG JAKE

 

twistitup

Quote from: hogsanity on July 26, 2017, 10:06:36 am
Ah, but there is the problem, we do not know how many are affected because, as of now, it can not be detected until after death. Also, it is not the big hit that causes it, it is the repetitive jarring of the brain, sloshing it around against the skull that seems to be the issue the CTE.

But why are so many focusing on the sample size. I think we all agree it is a small sample, BUT good grief, 110 out of 111?

And I still can't figure out why so many would have the reactions they have had. No one is saying shut down football, or ban kids from playing, or anything like that, but you would have thought the world ended for some of you when this came out.

CTE can't be detected until after death, but brain damage can be detected anytime with the proper scan
How you gonna win when you ain't right within?

Here I am again mixing misery and gin....

EastexHawg

Quote from: bennyl08 on July 25, 2017, 06:36:10 pm
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? That's like responding to a study about the mercury levels in salmon and pointing out that the Omega-3 oils are healthy. That's great, but it doesn't solve the issues of mercury. Now, if people were talking about banning the sales of salmon, then pointing out that you have to eat quite a bit to accumulate much mercury and the benefits of eating salmon in moderation outweigh the harm is a great argument to make. However, when the conversation is simply about whether or not we can change to lower mercury levels in the fish we eat, such an argument is out of place and frankly useless.

Nobody is talking about the banning of football. The topic at hand is that the brain damage a person can receive from playing football is likely a good bit worse than many people realize. It is something that people should be aware of as a risk before playing. It is something worth taking a long look at ways that the risk can be minimized without altering the game too much.

Nobody is saying that physical exercise isn't healthy for you. Nobody is saying that you can't choose to risk injury for yourself if you choose (except maybe seat belt laws...). However, risks and potential dangers shouldn't be covered up and hidden from the participants. Further, they should be minimized as much as possible without changing the game too much. For example, actions such as chop blocks have been removed from the game to minimize the risk of ACL injuries by keeping people from deliberately trying to injury somebody's knees. They still happen, they are still a risk, but the risk has been reduced in a way that doesn't weaken the game. Brain trauma is a risk. It a greater risk than a lot of players realized going into it. Is it something that players in the future will be fine with risking? Is it a risk that can be reduced?

And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China?  In what part of my post did I say it's a bad thing to try to limit head trauma?  Where did I say football is about to be banned?  Who doesn't know by this time that football involves collisions, and that numerous or severe impacts to the head might possibly result in injury?

I pointed out the result of a CDC study that shows NFL football players, on average, outlive men who don't play football.  Before that I made a tongue in cheek post about Hall of Famers I thought of off the top of my head and how old they are.  I posted all that in response to the alarming Wow! thread title and the statistics that made it sound like 111 of 112 brains of men who played football were damaged with CTE.  If former players exhibited known effects of brain damage before death I would expect that most of those brains would indicate brain damage, just as I would expect the corpse of a man with numerous bloody entry (maybe even exit) wounds to exhibit evidence of being shot.  Does that mean 99.1% of men will die from gunshot wounds?

The subject of this thread is how dangerous football is, and yet we know based on a study conducted by the nation's premier center for disease research that men who make it and play in the NFL for at least five years live longer than men who don't.  Everyone should feel free to offer explanations of why that is a fact, but at the end of the day it is still a fact.

RME

Quote from: EastexHawg on July 26, 2017, 10:24:37 am

The subject of this thread is how dangerous football is, and yet we know based on a study conducted by the nation's premier center for disease research that men who make it and play in the NFL for at least five years live longer than men who don't.  Everyone should feel free to offer explanations of why that is a fact, but at the end of the day it is still a fact.

The subject line and original post in this thread relay the conclusions of the study. You're the one making an insinuation that the thread's overall point is to outline how "dangerous" football is.



Further, you point to the lifespan study. If the conclusions of the lifespan study constitute, in your own words, as "facts," then why don't the conclusions from the CTE study constitute as "facts?"

Pre-emptive guess of your response: Sample size or selection bias.

hogsanity

Quote from: EastexHawg on July 26, 2017, 10:24:37 am


The subject of this thread is how dangerous football is,


No, that was not the subject of the OP or the study cited. The point is that there are POSSIBLE long term effects that we are just now learning more about as science becomes more capable of studying it.

But for some, ANY mention of anything like this brings out the typical responses of " you cant live life without risk " " football provides more good than bad " and a dozen others when not one part of the OP brought any of that into question to start with.
People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball.  I will tell you what I do. I stare out the window, and I wait for spring.

"Anything goes wrong, anything at all, your fault, my fault, nobodies fault, I'm going to blow your head off."  John Wayne in BIG JAKE

31to6

Quote from: twistitup on July 26, 2017, 09:59:26 am
We can track CTE in living players, but it requires going to a neurologist - this could be career ending for many players and they avoid it. After my multiple concussions due to football- I was given a brain scan and damage was evident to the frontal lobe. I didn't play football after this report....it changed the course of my life for sure, but it may have saved my life too - who knows?

ANY football player can go into the doctor and request a brain scan.....but be careful asking questions if you don't want an honest answer - the truth may sobering
Oh, I agree. I just mean that it is still somewhat imprecise, costly, time consuming and potentially invasive.

Not practical to do, say, every other week for every player on the team, for example. *If* we could really do that, we could mandate it. Players (and parents and team doctors) could still make the play/no play decision, but do with more information.

Also if we could do something like that we would know if sitting out a couple weeks helps long-term or not. What if football dropped a game or two and stretched out the season to playing every other weekend? Fewer games, less frequently, to let the brain rest? Well right now we don't really even know if that would help...

Glad and sorry to hear your story. I hope you made the right decision for you. I know other elite athletes who had to make a decision to stop. It's always hard.

Be well!

EastexHawg

Quote from: hogsanity on July 26, 2017, 10:47:32 am
No, that was not the subject of the OP or the study cited. The point is that there are POSSIBLE long term effects that we are just now learning more about as science becomes more capable of studying it.

But for some, ANY mention of anything like this brings out the typical responses of " you cant live life without risk " " football provides more good than bad " and a dozen others when not one part of the OP brought any of that into question to start with.

Long term effects such as CTE aren't dangerous, and that isn't the point of this thread? 

EastexHawg

Quote from: RyanMallettsEgo on July 26, 2017, 10:35:24 am
The subject line and original post in this thread relay the conclusions of the study. You're the one making an insinuation that the thread's overall point is to outline how "dangerous" football is.



Further, you point to the lifespan study. If the conclusions of the lifespan study constitute, in your own words, as "facts," then why don't the conclusions from the CTE study constitute as "facts?"

Pre-emptive guess of your response: Sample size or selection bias.

If the point of the thread isn't that CTE is linked to football, and that CTE is dangerous, and therefore football is dangerous...what is the point?

No, my response is that the brains that were studied were those of men who had apparently exhibited symptoms of brain injury.  As I said in the post you quoted, if I'm a detective who sends a body riddled with bloody holes to the coroner I am not going to be surprised when the cause of death comes back as gunshot wounds.  If I send 112 such bodies to the coroner and 111 of them are confirmed as gunshot victims, does that imply that 99.1% of men in my city are in danger of being shot to death?

RME

Quote from: EastexHawg on July 26, 2017, 10:58:46 am
If the point of the thread isn't that CTE is linked to football, and that CTE is dangerous, and therefore football is dangerous...what is the point?

No, my response is that the brains that were studied were those of men who had apparently exhibited symptoms of brain injury.  As I said in the post you quoted, if I'm a detective who sends a body riddled with bloody holes to the coroner I am not going to be surprised when the cause of death comes back as gunshot wounds.  If I send 112 such bodies to the coroner and 111 of them are confirmed as gunshot victims, does that imply that 99.1% of men in my city are in danger of being shot to death?

I would say the point is to relay the findings of the study.

--------

Key Points
Question  What are the neuropathological and clinical features of a case series of deceased players of American football neuropathologically diagnosed as having chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)?

Findings  In a convenience sample of 202 deceased players of American football from a brain donation program, CTE was neuropathologically diagnosed in 177 players across all levels of play (87%), including 110 of 111 former National Football League players (99%).

Meaning  In a convenience sample of deceased players of American football, a high proportion showed pathological evidence of CTE, suggesting that CTE may be related to prior participation in football.

--------

That block is taken directly from the study.

Also, the brains studied were those that were donated, healthy or otherwise. Unless you're saying healthy brains could not have been donated and included. According to the study, "playing American football was sufficient for inclusion." The stats aren't as cherry-picked as some of you want them to be.

The conclusion of the study has nothing to do with "the dangers of football." It shows that "CTE may be related to prior participation in football." Yes, CTE is a negative thing. But the conclusion has been interpreted and bastardized all over this thread.

Dumb ole famrboy

Quote from: hogsanity on July 26, 2017, 10:47:32 am
No, that was not the subject of the OP or the study cited. The point is that there are POSSIBLE long term effects that we are just now learning more about as science becomes more capable of studying it.

But for some, ANY mention of anything like this brings out the typical responses of " you cant live life without risk " " football provides more good than bad " and a dozen others when not one part of the OP brought any of that into question to start with.
No the subject of this thread was

"Wow - New study shows 110 of 111 ex-NFLers had CTE."

Of which I am of the opinion misrepresents the actual results of the study.


EastexHawg

Quote from: RyanMallettsEgo on July 26, 2017, 11:07:36 am
Also, the brains studied were those that were donated, healthy or otherwise. Unless you're saying healthy brains could not have been donated and included. According to the study, "playing American football was sufficient for inclusion." The stats aren't as cherry-picked as some of you want them to be.

Who decided to donate brains, and why do you suppose that choice would be made?  If someone you know who played high school and college football but was working the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in one hour dies of cancer or after being run over by a milk truck, are you going to donate his brain to the CTE study?

Pork Twain

I completely believe this.  I had a TBI in 1997 and no amount of head protection will stop your brain from bouncing around inside your head.
"It is better to be an optimist and proven wrong, than a pessimist and proven right." ~Pork Twain

https://www.facebook.com/groups/sweetmemes/

Seebs

Let's see what these scans look like in another 25 years with the new rules in place. Maybe tha twill lessen the damage from the Ronnie Lott days.
To add a "sig line" or "signature line": Go to your "profile" then go to "modify profile" then scroll down to where it says "Signature" and type in what you want it to say and then click on "change profile". That's it, you're done. Your sig line will only show up on your first post on each page.

hogsanity

Quote from: Pork Twain on July 26, 2017, 11:21:49 am
I completely believe this.  I had a TBI in 1997 and no amount of head protection will stop your brain from bouncing around inside your head.

EXACTLY, which is why the risk of brain injury is NEVER going to be reduced much less taken out of football.

It is kind of like the risk of needing Tommy John surgery if you are a pitcher. No amount of training, protection, pitch limits, or anything else will take out the risk of tearing that ligament. You can tear it the very 1st time you throw a baseball, or you can play for 30 years, have a 20+ year career as a pitcher and never have elbow trouble. Is anyone calling for the end of baseball? No, but they do want people to know the risks.

Same with head injuries and the effects of those in football. It is just information to give to people before they play or before they let their kids play.
People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball.  I will tell you what I do. I stare out the window, and I wait for spring.

"Anything goes wrong, anything at all, your fault, my fault, nobodies fault, I'm going to blow your head off."  John Wayne in BIG JAKE

311Hog

last thing i will say about this, having your mind go before your body is the worst way to die.

We all will die someday, and i hope that when i do it isn't because i languished unable to care for myself mentally some people in this thread can't possibly have had to deal with a loved one who suffered mentally due to age or other reasons nothing scares me more, i would rather be tied to a bed because i can't walk than not know who i am or other people etc.

This study just proves one thing.  Former NFL players who were suffering mental illness enough to decide or their families decided to donate their brains for research after they did found closure that their loved one was suffering from an identifiable disease one that up until now has largely been discredited and had a major marketing/suppression effort by the NFL and others to keep down.

Like Tommy John and any other health issue (remember when tearing your ACL automatically ended your career?) at first the $$$$ tries to hide/deny and then they eventually ease into acceptance because they have no choice.  This is where we are.

twistitup


The most recent study is something to consider - That's it, nobody wants football to die.... I agree w Hogsanity, it's about information
How you gonna win when you ain't right within?

Here I am again mixing misery and gin....

bennyl08

Quote from: MuskogeeHogFan on July 26, 2017, 07:15:25 am
Boy, some of you guys really overreact. And name calling? Really? Very mature.

I said there were risks. And this study was about NFL players, not Pop Warner, not Middle School, not HS players. I think it is sad that there are some parents who choose to live vicariously through their kids, forcing them to play a game that maybe, they don't want to play. I don't disagree with any of that. That's a different subject than head trauma. Head trauma can be suffered by kids who want to play just like those who feel the pressure to play. But this isn't about who wants to play and who doesn't.

I'll go back to my point. The players that they studied were former NFL players. Far less than 1% of the population that have ever played football in their lives and guys who have grown up understanding that when you get knocked out, let alone just dinged, is not a good thing. There used to be a good reason that once a kid had been knocked out 3 or 4 times in a single season, that they weren't allowed to play anymore, and that wasn't in the NFL.

The guys in the NFL that they studied played and knew the risks. Maybe not as much as they understand them today with enhanced research, but they knew there were associated risks with repeated head traumas even when they played. I'm not making light of it and I am not being cold about it. At higher levels of football, again what this article discusses, it is just part of the job and no one is blinded to that fact.

Might want to re-read the study. It wasn't just about NFL players. NFL players in the study made up just over half of those studied.

Further, multiple studies have been linked in this thread. For example, the study that focused solely on the changes that occur to the brain following just one year of HS football.

Again, no, they did not know the risks. That is literally why there was this whole class action lawsuit against the NFL. It would be akin to knowing that when driving, you face the risk of being involved in a collision vs finding out that the vibrations just from sitting in a car wears down your cartilage. Yes, they knew there was the risk of catastrophic head injuries but that the odds of it impacting them are very low. Now we are learning that you don't ever have to have anything close to a concussion to still get brain damage. People hear brain damage and think it has to be something huge. There are varying degrees of CTE. Going back to the car analogy, people understand that there are risks to being in a car. But, if we were to find out that the vibrations lead to early onset arthritis, that would be a completely new risk that people were unaware of, a risk with the impact being much lower, but the odds being much higher. It wouldn't wreck your life to have your cartilage wear down quicker, but it is something that could make many people, especially those with an active lifestyle, second guess it and would get people to start thinking about not eliminating cars, but reducing the vibrations, changing the seats, etc... Football players know the risk of catastrophic injuries and concussions, they know the risk of wear and tear on their bodies, but that their brains can be slowly damaged over time just from the basic play of the game even if they don't suffer anything close to a concussion? That is a risk players were not aware of. How prevalent and damaging that risk is, is something that nobody has all the answers to at the moment. Saying they knew there were risks is involved and thus this is meaningless is a dishonest way of framing the debate.
Quote from: PorkSoda on May 05, 2016, 09:24:05 pm
damn I thought it was only a color, didn't realize it was named after a liqueur. leave it to benny to make me research the history of chartreuse

RME

Quote from: EastexHawg on July 26, 2017, 11:20:37 am
Who decided to donate brains, and why do you suppose that choice would be made?  If someone you know who played high school and college football but was working the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle in one hour dies of cancer or after being run over by a milk truck, are you going to donate his brain to the CTE study?

Sure, why not? If he played football for an extended period of time but didn't die due to degenerative complications that come with CTE, why not just donate it just to see what the results are?

bennyl08

Quote from: Cinco de Hogo on July 26, 2017, 08:48:18 am
Well please enlighten us for better or worse.

What I see is a study of 111 people who died of lung cancer who smoked their entire life and their families wanted stats so they could sue the tobacco industry all the while knowing their whole lives that smoking caused cancer.  Oh and they all started when they were seven years old out behind the barn. 

It's pretty simple, if you don't want to get hurt don't play violent sports.  If you don't want cancer don't smoke.  Of course there is still no guarantee you want have either problem.

Well, you have entirely changed your argument.

First, you argued that 111 people is too small to get any meaningful results from and that any unbiased scientists would agree with that. That is simply not true. If the sample is truly random, you only need say 50-100 people to get an accurate measure for a city with 100k or a state with 15M. And that throws a lot of people off who have never had statistics. You see a poll of say 1200 people across the US that are supposed to represent the 200M or so voting aged adults and question how such a small number can give an accurate measure, but if the sample is truly random, it absolutely will.

Which is why the original argument that 111 people couldn't possibly be enough and that no unbiased scientists would say any different is absolutely laughable. It is as fundamentally wrong to say that as it is to say that that 2*3 doesn't equal 6. Now, where the limitations in this study do lie s in the fact that this was not a random sample, nor does the study ever say or imply otherwise. The study itself is very clear on what it's own limitations are. This is not a random sample and thus the results can not be generalized to the entire population. Not only does the study recognize that it isn't a random sample, but that it is a biased sample. People who think or their families think will have brain damage are much more likely to have the brain donated to science to analyze than somebody who was or at least appeared to be mentally healthy.

To the last part, the analogy here would be second hand smoke. There was a period of time where we knew that smoking itself was bad, but it was assumed that so long as you aren't right next to the person smoking, it dispersed enough that somebody smoking on one side of a restaurant would not damage the lungs of a person 100 feet away from them. However, upon further research, we learned that was wrong and despite the smoke being dispersed to the point it wasn't visible, it was still able to do significant damage to passerby's lungs or fellow restaurant patrons, etc... Yes, people knew that concussions weren't good for you and that too many and you had to quit, but people didn't know that even the lighter impacts that regularly happen damage your brain as well.
Quote from: PorkSoda on May 05, 2016, 09:24:05 pm
damn I thought it was only a color, didn't realize it was named after a liqueur. leave it to benny to make me research the history of chartreuse

hogsanity

I think what bothers some people is that they fear is that all the talk about head injuries will cause moms and dads to not let their kids play football so that pee wee and elementary level football will die. Heard a former NFL player today say he would not let his kid play tackle football until JRHS, but then when he is at a level where the coaches are trained in proper techniques and in handling head injuries, he has no problem with his kid playing even though he knows guys with memory issues and other signs of brain impairment.

I think tackle football before JRHS should be done away with because of the coaching issue. Too many at the young ages are dads who think they are Saban. I talk to jrhs and hs coaches all the time, and their #1 gripe is having to correct all the bad habits kids learned playing youth ball. The jrhs coaches would rather have a kid that has never had pads on than one who has 100 bad habits they have to fix. That is pretty much what 7th grade coaches spend an entire season doing, correcting bad habits.
People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball.  I will tell you what I do. I stare out the window, and I wait for spring.

"Anything goes wrong, anything at all, your fault, my fault, nobodies fault, I'm going to blow your head off."  John Wayne in BIG JAKE

MuskogeeHogFan

Quote from: bennyl08 on July 26, 2017, 12:11:38 pm
Might want to re-read the study. It wasn't just about NFL players. NFL players in the study made up just over half of those studied.

Further, multiple studies have been linked in this thread. For example, the study that focused solely on the changes that occur to the brain following just one year of HS football.

Again, no, they did not know the risks. That is literally why there was this whole class action lawsuit against the NFL. It would be akin to knowing that when driving, you face the risk of being involved in a collision vs finding out that the vibrations just from sitting in a car wears down your cartilage. Yes, they knew there was the risk of catastrophic head injuries but that the odds of it impacting them are very low. Now we are learning that you don't ever have to have anything close to a concussion to still get brain damage. People hear brain damage and think it has to be something huge. There are varying degrees of CTE. Going back to the car analogy, people understand that there are risks to being in a car. But, if we were to find out that the vibrations lead to early onset arthritis, that would be a completely new risk that people were unaware of, a risk with the impact being much lower, but the odds being much higher. It wouldn't wreck your life to have your cartilage wear down quicker, but it is something that could make many people, especially those with an active lifestyle, second guess it and would get people to start thinking about not eliminating cars, but reducing the vibrations, changing the seats, etc... Football players know the risk of catastrophic injuries and concussions, they know the risk of wear and tear on their bodies, but that their brains can be slowly damaged over time just from the basic play of the game even if they don't suffer anything close to a concussion? That is a risk players were not aware of. How prevalent and damaging that risk is, is something that nobody has all the answers to at the moment. Saying they knew there were risks is involved and thus this is meaningless is a dishonest way of framing the debate.

(From the originally cited article)

The study points out potential bias because relatives of these players may have submitted their brains due to clinical symptoms they noticed while they were living. It also acknowledges the lack of a comparison group that represents all individuals exposed to college-level or professional football. Without that, the study lacks an overall estimate on the risk of participation in football and its effects on the brain.

Out of 202 deceased former football players total -- a combination of high school, college and professional players -- CTE was neuropathologically diagnosed in 177, the study said. The disease was identified in 110 out of 111 former NFL players. It was also found in three of the 14 high school players and 48 of the 53 college players.

Although the disease cannot be formally diagnosed until after death, many of the symptoms of CTE that may be experienced during a lifetime, such as depression or anxiety, are treatable, Kutcher said. That is why its important for someone experiencing these symptoms to access a comprehensive evaluation by a neurologist, and work with them to figure out a treatment plan.

You have to look at the total person though," Kutcher said. "You have to understand why people play sports. It's an individual decision, everybody gets different things out of it. You also have to understand what the arc of their life is going to be, what their health is going to be at the end of their career."


Now there are the highlights of this article. Benny, you can say that players didn't know the risks, but as I pointed out above, everyone, "who actually played", especially at the college and NFL levels, were aware of the negativity of sustaining dings and actual concussions due to head trauma while playing. And, if you became a player who seemed to repeatedly get knocked out, 2 to 3 times in a single season, you were told that you could no longer play. I don't know your level of experience with the game but if you ever played at the HS level or above, I hope that you had a HC that was responsible enough to talk to players about these sustained head injuries and how they were going to handle those for the players and the family of the players, benefit.

I'm not saying that these studies aren't important. I'm not saying that everyone should ignore sustained trauma to the brain through contact sports. I am saying that in the case of college and NFL players it is a matter of personal choice and personal responsibility. If you read again above, apparently Dr. Kutcher understands this.
Go Hogs Go!

hogsanity

Quote from: MuskogeeHogFan on July 26, 2017, 12:43:17 pm
(From the originally cited article)


everyone, "who actually played", especially at the college and NFL levels, were aware of the negativity of sustaining dings and actual concussions due to head trauma while playing. And, if you became a player who seemed to repeatedly get knocked out, 2 to 3 times in a single season, you were told that you could no longer play. I don't know your level of experience with the game but if you ever played at the HS level or above, I hope that you had a HC that was responsible enough to talk to players about these sustained head injuries and how they were going to handle those for the players and the family of the players, benefit.


But that's the thing, they did not know all the risks. Sure, they knew getting dinged was probably not good, but they did not even make players sit out of games after getting dinged. They gave them smelling salts, got their head clear, and back in they went.

As for coaches below college being responsible about head injuries, please remember we are not that far removed from coaches who would not let their players have water during practices.
People ask me what I do in winter when there is no baseball.  I will tell you what I do. I stare out the window, and I wait for spring.

"Anything goes wrong, anything at all, your fault, my fault, nobodies fault, I'm going to blow your head off."  John Wayne in BIG JAKE

bennyl08

Quote from: EastexHawg on July 26, 2017, 10:24:37 am
And what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? 

It was a direct response to your post.

QuoteIn what part of my post did I say it's a bad thing to try to limit head trauma?

You didn't. However, it a thread talking about limiting head trauma, your response is to take a combative tone, diminish the arguments being made about the damages about head trauma, and deflect the conversation to the benefits of playing football.

While you never say that we shouldn't try and limit head trauma, the purpose of your post was clear.

QuoteWhere did I say football is about to be banned?

See above.

QuoteWho doesn't know by this time that football involves collisions, and that numerous or severe impacts to the head might possibly result in injury?

Lots to dissect here. First, "numerous or severe" is kind of the whole theme of the topic. It's been known for a long time that severe impacts to the head are not good. A player with several concussions will be forced to retire from football. However, numerous impacts were though to not be a big deal.

Secondly, "might possibly". This is the other major crux of the topic. I'll concede that numerous impacts to the head "might possibly result in injury" is probably known by all with the caveat that "might possibly" is a very small number. The problem is that the "might possibly" is turning into "likely probably" with the new research. It's a big difference in risk assessment to have a rare but very damaging risk vs having a common but smaller impact risk.

QuoteI pointed out the result of a CDC study that shows NFL football players, on average, outlive men who don't play football.  Before that I made a tongue in cheek post about Hall of Famers I thought of off the top of my head and how old they are.  I posted all that in response to the alarming Wow! thread title and the statistics that made it sound like 111 of 112 brains of men who played football were damaged with CTE.  If former players exhibited known effects of brain damage before death I would expect that most of those brains would indicate brain damage, just as I would expect the corpse of a man with numerous bloody entry (maybe even exit) wounds to exhibit evidence of being shot.  Does that mean 99.1% of men will die from gunshot wounds?

Except, the statistics don't sound like that at all. Nobody is saying that 99% of all NFL players will get CTE. If anybody reads the study and comes to that conclusion, they are flat out wrong and have just as bad a misunderstanding of statistics as others.

QuoteThe subject of this thread is how dangerous football is, and yet we know based on a study conducted by the nation's premier center for disease research that men who make it and play in the NFL for at least five years live longer than men who don't.  Everyone should feel free to offer explanations of why that is a fact, but at the end of the day it is still a fact.

Here you go again. I mean, you are basically having a dueling oratory with yourself. Driving in a car is dangerous, yet people live longer since the car was invented. Neither of those statement contradict the other. Football is dangerous. It absolutely is. People have known that since it was first invented. However, being physically active and in good shape is healthy. There's a reason the NFL is said to have a 100% injury rate, because the sport is violent. Somebody working 9-5 in a cubicle is much less likely to experience an ACL tear than a football player, but are more likely to have other health problems. The longevity of players has nothing to do with the danger of the sport. Which is why it is confusing that you keep bringing that up in a way that it sounds like you think you are countering the danger argument. In reality, you are basically just arguing that oranges are orange in response to apples are red.
Quote from: PorkSoda on May 05, 2016, 09:24:05 pm
damn I thought it was only a color, didn't realize it was named after a liqueur. leave it to benny to make me research the history of chartreuse

MuskogeeHogFan

Quote from: hogsanity on July 26, 2017, 12:54:29 pm
But that's the thing, they did not know all the risks. Sure, they knew getting dinged was probably not good, but they did not even make players sit out of games after getting dinged. They gave them smelling salts, got their head clear, and back in they went.

As for coaches below college being responsible about head injuries, please remember we are not that far removed from coaches who would not let their players have water during practices.

Getting "dinged" and completely "knocked out", while certainly related, are two different levels of injury. And yes, I am sure that there are irresponsible coaches. I played in that "no water" era and while that was certainly a mistake in terms of care of the players, the coaches I was around always took "dings" and certainly getting "knocked out"(concussions) far more seriously and handled them with extreme caution.
Go Hogs Go!

bennyl08

Quote from: EastexHawg on July 26, 2017, 10:53:42 am
Long term effects such as CTE aren't dangerous, and that isn't the point of this thread?

http://www.usmedicine.com/agencies/department-of-veterans-affairs/new-cte-study-categorizes-stages-of-degenerative-brain-disease-in-veterans-athletes/

Many people in this thread (i.e. not singling you out) seem to have a major misconception about brain damage as it relates to CTE. I.e. somebody with CTE must be full on crazy, psychotic, bed ridden, etc... That is not the case. There is a full spectrum of CTE depending on how much damage accumulated. From the above link

•   In Stage I, headaches and issues related to attention and concentration were common;

•   In Stage II, the symptoms expanded to include depression, explosivity and short-term memory impairment;

•   In Stage III, reported symptoms included cognitive impairment and problems with executive functions, specifically planning, organization, multitasking and judgment.

•   In Stage IV, there was evidence of full-blown dementia (i.e., memory and cognitive impairments severe enough to impact daily living).

You have to go all the way to stage 4 CTE before your daily life is severely impacted. Stage 1 is something that plenty of people without CTE deal with regularly. It isn't inherently a big deal. The issue is that while plenty of people have headaches or issues related to attention/concentration, stage 1 CTE is bringing those impacts to somebody who didn't have those issues in the past or make them noticeably worse if they already had them. Even stage 2 isn't anything worse than naturally shows up in some people anyways. However, again, this is a physical change to the brain that wasn't there before. Akin to how a person's coming back from war isn't going to be the same person they were before. They are still fully functioning members of society, but they aren't quite the same person. While football isn't the same thing as war, your brain doesn't really care if it got slammed to your skull because of a concussive blast from a nearby explosion or if ray lewis hit you and the impacts can be similar.
Quote from: PorkSoda on May 05, 2016, 09:24:05 pm
damn I thought it was only a color, didn't realize it was named after a liqueur. leave it to benny to make me research the history of chartreuse

bennyl08

Quote from: 31to6 on July 26, 2017, 09:45:35 am
That's pretty harsh.

I am by nature skeptical.

So is every good scientist (and they should be). Skepticism is what prompts a scientist to continually challenge what "we know"--even when what "we know" is something they are inclined to agree with...

110 of 111 essentially means "if you play in the NFL you are going to show CTE". All the skeptics here are saying is that the findings do NOT in fact say that because (due to the nature of the limitations of the samples they had to study) they could not use random/blind sampling, control groups, etc. All the samples are in a similar age range. All of them are, clearly, self-selected by, well, being people who have died. All of them are from players who played well before there was any real focus on concussions and brain trauma in the football. And so on.

The results are very troubling for football. What we need to know, now, is:

1) Are we currently doing enough with new helmet technologies, concussion protocols, rules changes limiting head-to-head contact, and so on?
2) If not, can we change football in a way that let's it be the physical sport it should be to keep the spirit of the game while bringing the risks down to a more acceptable level?

We do not have a sample of people who have played in this newer era of rules, technology and protocols because they are all still alive and, for the most part, playing right now.

3) Can we find ways to better measure CTE effects in *living* players, so we can monitor the brain trauma on an individual basis? (Work is being done, but it is not yet very effective at all.)

Lots of questions.

People who love football have to accept the rules changes and other impacts unless and until we know if we have gotten it mostly right.

For those who compare CTE to other types of football injury, I do have one point:  Your knee and your shoulder and your back are not *who you are*. Who you are is what is in your brain. That is why dementia is so terrifying to those who suffer it in old age--they feel *themselves* slipping.

This is, in fact, a different health risk than anything else.

That all being said, we don't need to go too far an chicken-little football to, literal, death.

Based on the bold and the rest of your post, it sounds like then there is a major miscommunication going on in this thread. From what I've read, nobody is saying 99% of NFL players have CTE as you suggest is being said in the bolded part. The limitations of the study are well known and not hidden. Your skeptical arguments are exactly, point for point, what is being argued by "pro" CTE crowd in this thread.

The "skeptical" crowd, otoh, seem to be saying the study itself is a hatchet job, that we don't need to be looking further into this, and that the new information coming out isn't, in fact, a different health risk and is something that every does and has always known about.
Quote from: PorkSoda on May 05, 2016, 09:24:05 pm
damn I thought it was only a color, didn't realize it was named after a liqueur. leave it to benny to make me research the history of chartreuse

bennyl08

Quote from: MuskogeeHogFan on July 26, 2017, 12:43:17 pm
(From the originally cited article)

The study points out potential bias because relatives of these players may have submitted their brains due to clinical symptoms they noticed while they were living. It also acknowledges the lack of a comparison group that represents all individuals exposed to college-level or professional football. Without that, the study lacks an overall estimate on the risk of participation in football and its effects on the brain.

Out of 202 deceased former football players total -- a combination of high school, college and professional players -- CTE was neuropathologically diagnosed in 177, the study said. The disease was identified in 110 out of 111 former NFL players. It was also found in three of the 14 high school players and 48 of the 53 college players.

Although the disease cannot be formally diagnosed until after death, many of the symptoms of CTE that may be experienced during a lifetime, such as depression or anxiety, are treatable, Kutcher said. That is why its important for someone experiencing these symptoms to access a comprehensive evaluation by a neurologist, and work with them to figure out a treatment plan.

You have to look at the total person though," Kutcher said. "You have to understand why people play sports. It's an individual decision, everybody gets different things out of it. You also have to understand what the arc of their life is going to be, what their health is going to be at the end of their career."


Now there are the highlights of this article. Benny, you can say that players didn't know the risks, but as I pointed out above, everyone, "who actually played", especially at the college and NFL levels, were aware of the negativity of sustaining dings and actual concussions due to head trauma while playing. And, if you became a player who seemed to repeatedly get knocked out, 2 to 3 times in a single season, you were told that you could no longer play. I don't know your level of experience with the game but if you ever played at the HS level or above, I hope that you had a HC that was responsible enough to talk to players about these sustained head injuries and how they were going to handle those for the players and the family of the players, benefit.

I'm not saying that these studies aren't important. I'm not saying that everyone should ignore sustained trauma to the brain through contact sports. I am saying that in the case of college and NFL players it is a matter of personal choice and personal responsibility. If you read again above, apparently Dr. Kutcher understands this.

First, I guess this is your way of apologizing and admitting you were wrong. That the study didn't only focus on NFL players. Apology accepted and it was very big of you to admit that you were wrong.

2. You are combining sustaining dings with concussions and being repeatedly knocked out. And that is the whole crux of the issue. Yes, it has been known for a very long time that getting knocked out repeatedly is bad and that concussions are bad. Maybe your definition of a ding is different from mine though. A ding to me would be something that makes you say ow, but a minute or two later, it doesn't hurt, no red mark is left, no bruise, no nothing. Very, very different from something like a concussion or being knocked out.

If your coaches were warning you that those sustained dings will lead to physical changes to your brain, then holy crap, they were decades ahead of their time seeing as nobody else was aware of that and people who actually research the brain are still trying to figure it out. Did your coach also have an iphone decades ago, because I'm guessing if he was aware of that issue that long ago, he was probably a time traveller. Because the idea that you don't have to have a hard hit to your head that you even come close to giving you a concussion or knock you out to damage your brain is a very new one. Your examples of getting knocked out, concussions, and actual head injuries being bad and known for a long time suggests that you don't really understand what is being said about CTE. You don't need to ever be knocked out, concussed or sustain any head injuries to develop CTE. Just the generic banging of heads that happens while playing football is enough.

Lastly, I'm not sure what your point in the last paragraph is. Yes, it is the player's choice and responsibility to play the game if they want. I'm glad the doctor understands that. Don't see how that relates to there being a newly discovered risk to playing football that people didn't know about before hand. 31to6 described it very well. We need to research this more, and it will probably take a decade before we can actually know enough about CTE to move forward with minimizing it. When we do know enough about it, it becomes a question of are we doing enough to protect, and if not, can we change the sport in a way that lets it be the physical sport is should be and keep the spirit of the game while bringing the risks down to an acceptable level.

In the meantime, while we are still learning about the disease, it becomes a question of what will be acceptable levels of risk for the players? Having arthritis when you are 40 changes what you can do, but not who you are as a person. CTE changes your brain and to a degree, changes who you are. How many players will accept that risk? How many parents will accept that risk for their children thus potentially changing the talent pool? When the players are adults, it becomes their decision whether to continue playing or not, as it should be. I mean, people die climbing mountains all the time, yet it is still a popular hobby for many including myself. However, if something in future came out that simply being outside in below freezing temperatures would damage my brain even if I'm wearing warm clothes, I'd either stop of at least greatly reduce the time I spend doing it. We've seen several talented young players retire early from football despite having no concussions or anything like what RW3 had.

Best thing we can do right now is to research it more so that we can know how prevalent it is, whether it can be prevented or reversed, and then if there is anything we can do to change the game without changing what the game is. For example, maybe given time, the brain will heal itself and thus mandatory 4 months of offseason would be implemented such that damage from one season has time to heal and doesn't carry over to the next such that after several years it becomes permanent. Who knows. That's why we need to study it and research.
Quote from: PorkSoda on May 05, 2016, 09:24:05 pm
damn I thought it was only a color, didn't realize it was named after a liqueur. leave it to benny to make me research the history of chartreuse