Dementia Risk and NFL Football Players

The New York Times featured an article last week on a study conducted by University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on the alarming 5 fold higher assurance of dementia related illnesses such as Alzheimer’s that former NFL players experience.   ESPN also reported on the study as well which of course caught the attention of the sports world but mentioned that the study did not prove football causes dementia.  Maybe not, but we now do have a smoking gun and just have to match the fingerprints on the weapon with the perpetrator.  

Institute for Social Research, used a phone survey to ask 1,063 retired players of various ages dozens of health-related questions, one of those being whether they had received a diagnosis of “dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, or other memory-related disease.” About 6 percent of respondents said they had, five times the national average. Player’s ages 30 through 49 showed a rate of 1.9 percent, or 19 times that of the national average.

Unfortunately, when a person begins to lose the mind and dementia creeps in they become a patient who will probably need supervision and long term care before the pass away. 

What was shocking to me was that players just age 30-49 had a 1,900% higher rate of dementia related symptoms than the average population.  I was watching the University of Florida play the Kentucky Wildcats in a football game last week and All-America quarterback Tim Tebow suffered a crushing hit and while falling, the back of his head crashed against one of his teammate’s knee on the way down.  He laid motionless for several minutes as the whole stadium watched in utter silence.  He was taken to the hospital and thankfully it seems he had a concussion which can be serious, but was likely to recover quickly. 

Its stories like this which leads me to believe that all those bone shattering hits an average football player received throughout their careers (from little league, to high school, to college) can wreck havoc on the brain causing permanent damage.  This damage can lead to need long term care once the dementia sets in to the point where the person can no longer safely manage their activities of daily living.  Activities most take for granted like eating, bathing, dressing, transferring, toileting, and maintaining continence.  Dementia is typically an older age disease (not always of course) that begins typically when the person is in their 80's.  When this disease takes hold it can wreck havoc on the family as they scramble to learn how to take care of mom who now is a different person. 

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