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Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (cte
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Americans have known for more than forty years that alcohol damages the evolving brain of children. Americans have known for more than fifty years that cigarette smoking is harmful for the body. Americans have known these things, and we have done things to regulate it; the drinking age is twenty-one, smoking in enclosed public spaces is illegal. We have given up old practices for the safety and betterment of the world; with the exception of football. It has become clear that repetitive hits to the head in contact sports like football place athletes at high risk of permanent brain damage, yet parents still let their children play football. Parents should not allow their children to play football because their brain is not yet fully developed; …show more content…
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy or C.T.E is a, “Progressive degenerate disease which afflicts the brain of people who have suffered repeated concussions and brain injuries (BIRI). C.T.E can be the result of contact sports, like football, due to multiple hits to the head. People who contract C.T.E often have symptoms that include: major depression, memory loss, and suicidal thoughts and actions. Would you want to risk your child’s health by letting them play football? Football is a very dangerous sport, and C.T.E. is just one of the many ramafactions that can come from the …show more content…
Some people say scientist are developing helmets with more cushioning that will lessen the likely hood of getting concussions and brain damage, but studies have shown, “no amount of protection can stop the sudden acceleration and deceleration of the head” (The Week). This sudden acceleration and deceleration can be due to a copious of things like blocking, tackling, and being hit. This can cause the brain to move around like the yolk inside of a strongly shaken eggshell. By the sudden stopping and starting of the brain, it causes the brain to damage neurons, which never can fully recover. This means that you are permanently damaging your brain in football even if you have the best of the best
He Appeals to Logos when he writes, “Over the past two decades it has become clear that repetitive blows to the head in high-impact contact sports like football, ice hockey, mixed martial arts and boxing place athletes at risk of permanent brain damage….Why, then, do we continue to intentionally expose our children to this risk?” He continues by writing, “If a child who plays football is subjected to advanced radiological and neurocognitive studies, there can be evidence of brain damage at the cellular level of brain functioning…. If that child continues to play over many seasons, these cellular injuries accumulate to cause irreversible brain damage, which we know now by the name Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy,” a disease founded by Dr.Omalu in 2002. C.T.E can cause “major depression, memory loss, suicidal thoughts and actions, loss of intelligence as well as dementia later in life.” C.T.E has also been linked to “drug and alcohol abuse as children enter their 20s, 30s, and 40s.” Dr.Omalu Appeals to Ethos when he writes, “As physicians, it is our role to educate” and “protect the most vulnerable among
Are young children putting their health and even their lives at risk if they partake in the sport of football? Some claim that the American sport is far too dangerous and the risk of concussions and injuries far outway the pros of the physical sport, while others insist that technological improvements and new regulations have made the sport safer. Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history and education at New York University, argues in his paper, “We Must Stop Risking the Health of Young Football Players,” that football is a sport that is too dangerous for the youth. He states his belief that technological improvements in helmets and changes in the rules of the sport have had little effect on reducing injuries and that nothing has worked.
American football is full of exciting competition, but do we realize the danger! Helmet safety in football remains an immense problem as the sport accounts for the highest incidence of concussions. Since leather football helmets, the technology for safer helmets has improved drastically and continue to improve. The development of newly designed helmets and technology has lowered the risk of head injuries for players. Furthermore, improvements in helmet testing methods have led to better understanding head injuries and the protectiveness of the helmet. In respect, football helmet safety still remains a challenge, such as a necessity of a proper categorization system to rank helmets and regulations to improve helmet safety. Regardless, standards and regulations attempt to address helmet safety through government intervention and a proper measuring system for football helmets. Despite the cultural perception of football, measures are taken to ensure safety, such as the reforms and education with regards to playing safer football. I intend to address the technological advances and regulation of football towards the discussion of helmet safety. Therefore the aggresivity in football’s culture should embrace stronger helmet standards and regulation that are promoted through improved testing methods and innovations because of the need to prevent further dangerous head injuries, especially concussions.
Gladwell provides research conducted by Anne McKee a neuropathologist who is involved in the detection of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E) on football players which was caused by head trauma. Using the research of McKee who is deeply involved with C.T.E allows the reader to better understand C.T.E. First we are presented on how by autopsying a brain of a person who had received a diagnosis of dementia. McKee discovered that this patient was a boxer in his early days and due to many hits in the head he developed C.T.E. Unfortunately, this person was diagnosed with dementia but ultimately he had C.T. E “which is a progressive neurological disorder found in people who have suffered some kind of brain trauma”. (Offensive Play). We are also presented with a research done by Kevin Guskiewicz director of the University of North Carolina’s Sports Concussion Research Program. Guskiewicz carefully monitors North Carolina’s football team with sensors on the player’s football helmets. These sensors allow Guskiewicz to measure the force of the impacts the players receive while playing football. Guskiewicz compared the hits to the head a payer receives to a car accident: “if you drove your car into a wall at twenty-five miles per hour and you weren’t wearing your seat belt, the force of your head hitting the
Football is a sport your mother warns you not to play, but your father is on the other side of the argument, encouraging you to do it because it is a “man’s game”. Even though you don’t want ruin your manhood, your mother is always right. Football is in the top three of most injuries caused in sports (HEALTH GRADES, INC) and a majority of it comes from concussions. A concussion is a temporary unconsciousness caused by a blow to the head. Football helmets are used to prevent that from happening and is still a battle today on creating the perfect helmet to protect these young athletes. The football helmet has undergone significant transformation during the evolution of the game. To find out how this important head gear came to be, you have to
Football is a dangerous sport, in fact, retired NFL players are 19 time more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease of any other similar memory loss diseases, found by a recent study by the university of Michigan. CTE a disease that Acura as a result of constant head injuries and contact, and has been growing rapidly in the NFL. The NFL has been denied giving the many claims that CTE has a direct connection with professional football, until recently. The NFL has been taken to court multiple times over the topic of CTE. Although the National Football League is preparing to settle a class-action lawsuit with players with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the League should do more for players because not only has it profited from
When looking for an argumentative visual I wanted to do something over a topic that was one day going to relate to me. So I chose the topic of young male children playing tackle football. In this PBS Learning Media documentary, a group of doctors persuasively discuss the effects of allowing a male child under the age of fourteen to play tackle football and the head injuries it can cause as well as the later effective of their growth they can encounter if a hard blow to the head was the happen. The documentaries argument clearly stated that allowing your children to play tackle before the age of fourteen is dangerous and should be avoided for the child 's safety. The film also successfully utilized many rhetorical appeals that convinces parents to reconsider their idea of allowing their son to participate in tackle football. The first rhetorical appeal used in the film was pathos, it was a video clip of a child on the ground hurt because of a hard hit to the head. Another rhetorical appeal used was logos when they interviewed doctors from highly respected fields to state their factual
B. Research Questions The research questions being proposed in this paper include but are not limited to the following: How well do helmets prevent concussions from occurring and prevent the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)? Is there one helmet that is better at protecting players against concussions than the others on the market? Is there any protective equipment besides helmets that football players should be wearing to prevent concussions? What is the current National Football League (NFL) concussion protocol?
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a neurodegenerative disease attributed to single, sporadic, or repetitive brain trauma, including concussions and subconcussive hits (Baugh et al., 2012; Wortzel et al., 2013). This disease was originally referred to as dementia pugilistica, and nicknamed “punch drunk,” because individuals suffering from this disorder would present symptoms that were similar to someone’s mannerisms while being intoxicated (Wortzel et al., 2013). This “drunken” behavior is thought to be attributed to the cognitive, mood, and behavioral alterations as a result of the repetitive hits to the brain over an extended period of time. Because individuals suffering from this disease are often exposed to conditions that allow them to sustain blows to the head multiple times, the populations most often examined in these studies are athletes (football, boxing, rugby) and/or individuals in the military (McKee et al., 2009). Individuals can be symptom free for several years (Baugh et al., 2012). The onset of symptoms are sometimes seen about eight to ten years after an individual retires from their sport, which roughly equates to someone aged thirty to fifty yeas old (Baugh et al., 2012; Wortzel et al., 2013; Karantzoulis and Randolph, 2013). As with all diseases, symptoms can range from mild to severe. Researchers have found a positive correlation between the number of brain injuries sustained during a length of time playing a sport and the severity of symptoms (McKee et al., 2009).
Mihoces, Gary. “Parents Weigh Risks of Youth Football Amid Concussion Debate.” USA Today. USA Today, 23 May 2012. Web. 11 Apr. 2014.
While the use of helmets does aid in protecting players from brain trauma, they also increase the risky behavior of players; this is called risk compensation. Risk compensation is the adjustment of individual behavior, responding to the perceived changes in risk (TheFreeDictionary.com). Most people that wear helmets have a pre-conceived idea that, because they have a helmet on, they can possess more daring behaviors and be fine. The helmet is basically thought of as a tool to hit harder, or improve performance in today’s culture. Adventure writer and pilot, Lane Wallace (2011) accurately understands the dangers of helmets being used incorrectly, and how they are used as weapons instead of safety. Wallace also theorizes like the NFL, a change in football culture and of viewpoints towards helmets would vastly reduce trauma to the
Even though the advantages of the helmet designs are extensive, the football players are put in dangerous and sometimes unexpected situations on the field. Players are running and hitting each other at full speed while not taking into consideration what they are doing, and considering the consequences. Sometimes with head related injuries, these players may not feel any symptoms until later on in the day, or even day...
Given the requirements stated previously, it would seem that the most effective way of preventing concussions in football while retaining the high-speed nature of the sport would be to make better helmets which increase the time of collision. This can be done by adding more padding, or by introducing more inelastic materials into football helmets and pads.
Once again, after a successful season, Shadle Park was defeated by a Big 9 school in the first game of the regional tournament. This reoccurring event has led many to believe that the four year football program puts GSL students at a disadvantage compared to other districts. A junior high school football program would not only increase the competitiveness of the students but also have more important consequences.
In a CNN article, Kelly Wallace said that more than 3.5 million children younger than fourteen need treatment for sports related injuries (1). Many children are getting hurt in sports, and the benefits , may not be worth the countless concussions. The brains of young children have not fully developed and hard hits to the head can be life-threatening. The Roque News wrote an article on students playing sports, and they said, “In 2009 two high school students died from multiple hits to the head…”(McGough 1). Now innocent teenagers died from a contact sport. The constant jarring of the head finally killed two high schools students providing sports can be extremely dangerous. There are some downsides that make school sports an inadequate decision.