Essays and topic ideas on Football

Why Athletes May Get Hurt

In the past decade, thanks to advances in medicine doctors have been able to study the effects of these repetitive injuries on players. Concussions happen when a player’s heads collide into something with a large amount of force resulting in the brain smashing against the inside of their skulls. With all the contact that happens, you can imagine this occurs pretty often. The harder the impact the greater the severity of the concussion. Players normally end up with symptoms like disorientation, headaches, blurred vision and sometimes even loss of consciousness. The bad part about concussions is that each time an athlete suffers from one their symptom persists for longer and can become worse. This is problematic because their careers center around a high impact contact sport.

Consequences of Sport Injuries

Bears the question of what are the effects of amassing so many traumatic brain injuries throughout their careers? Thanks to breakthroughs in science and medicine Doctors have been able to study the long-term effects of repetitive concussions on the brain. The first case report of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in an NFL player in 2005 opened the floodgates for the identification of CTE in American football (Pearce et al., 2020). CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy) Is a disease that is linked to repetitive head injuries. Most times symptoms don’t begin to show for years after it’s begun to develop. CTE causes a protein known as TAU to form clumps that slowly spread throughout the brain and kill brain cells.

Brain cells die over time and brain damage occurs sufferers tend to experience changes in behavior, thinking, and overall function of the brain. Because it is caused by repetitive trauma to the brain the severity of CTE symptoms tends to progress the more a person played the sport (‘Brain Disease Is Common in Former Football Players: Study’, 2020). Usually with CTE symptoms don’t start to present themselves until years after a player’s last injury. By this point, the damage is usually extensive. Some Symptoms of CTE include loss of memory, confusion, impulsive behavior, bad judgment, aggression, depression, and a range of other mental ailments. A study found that patients suffering from CTE had a significantly higher probability of developing dementia in their later years (Tsai, 2020).