Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player • Hacker News Board

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#201

Post by hyperbovine » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 12:14 AM UTC

brightball wrote: post #197

hyperbovine wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, what is the purpose of our universities spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year managing multiple athletic facilities, coaches, strength programs, trainers/medical support, practice facilities, etc.? How is that at all related to their core mission of research and educating young adults? If we as a society think that we should be devoting those sorts of resources to running what is essentially a shadow…

Do you see a purpose to the non-revenue sports?

It sure would make for a more interesting discussion if you'd actually respond to any of my questions, rather than just tossing out another one of your own. Anyways, I'm all for the scholar-athlete ideal provided there's balance between the two. Many sports on campus seem to do a reasonable job of that; off the top of my head, that would include track, tennis, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, crew, baseball, etc. But the "big money" sports (football & basketball) are a complete farce on the scholastic side -- ask anyone at an athletic powerhouse who has had a class with or taught these students if you don't believe me. The fact that these sports subsidize all the rest is not a compelling argument for their continued existence. If we desire to have student athletics on campus we should be prepared to finance it in the same way that we do research and teaching, through tuition and government aid -- not by running exploitative minor-leagues-in-disguise for the NFL and NBA.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#202

Post by Havoc » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 3:17 AM UTC

yesthrowaway234 wrote: post #112

Havoc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While the efforts made certainly help there is no getting around the fact that it is an impact sport. That combined with a culture of being tough means that few ‘good’ players escape completely injury free. Short of touch rugby there will still be head impacts and that will have an effect of varying degrees - just maybe not noticeable. Personally I find it difficult to understand how parents can let their kids play r…

I've hurt myself far less playing rugby than soccer, and had way more fun too. Yes, it's a high impact sport, and that's exactly why there are a lot of rules to prevent anyone from getting seriously injured. Also, the objective of Rugby is to get the "ball" at the other side of the camp while avoiding the most friction possible, not to hurt each other. In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possi…

>I've hurt myself far less playing rugby than soccer,

Respectfully, self-assessment is exactly the wrong approach here.

Play soccer, break a leg. Obvious - leg is broken. Play rugby, lose 5% mental ability - less obvious especially in a self(!)-assessment of one's mental ability.

>Also, the objective of Rugby

I've been on the receiving side of some nasty rugby tackles...including the type where I don't remember a lot about them. So yes I do understand the objective of Rugby and all that great stuff.

>In fact, we were often encouraged to avoid contact whenever possible and to pass the ball whenever we could.

If everyone plays a clean textbook version then that works out well. In my experience putting a bunch of determined testosterone fuelled guys on a field does not result in textbook clean though. Not even close.

Rugby/Boxing/NFL/whatever...consider this. 99% of NFL post mortems show CTE. Not just a few - 99%. Lets suppose Rugby is way better like literally halves the risk despite both similar contact sports but lets pretend Rugby is way better. Can you really "recommend the sport to anyone young enough" at 49% CTE risk? Telling me about training how to fall is just not going to cut it.

So yes "risky at best" is my assessment of the situation.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/25/health/cte-nfl-players-bra...

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#203

Post by majani » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 5:21 AM UTC

snomad wrote: post #111

Their is some measurable chance the NFL and football disappear w/in 30 years. Sooner or later a college / high school will lose a lawsuit for a player w/CTE, and schools will have no choice but to stop participation. Once that happens, talent level and interest in the sport will die off. Kinda silly cities are in such a rush to continue building new stadiums. The unspoken elephant whenever these studies come up is sk…

Boxing had a similar problem, but the solution was that they changed the rules and the fan base dwindled after that. "Football" will likely take a similar path.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#204

Post by pizza » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 5:29 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #199

adanto6840 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College with $50k+ of debt, if even able/eligible to get in -- versus "free" college. In many cases I suspect it's the "only chance" for some of these kids and, at best, it's extreme exhortation for most all of them.

I wasn't aware that people without college education in US suffer from mass starvation and getting it is a matter of life and death.

You jest, but I've been noticing over time that that kind of joke is, very gradually, but definitely, becoming less of a joke that gets as big a laugh as it might have in, say, 2006.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#205

Post by pizza » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 5:41 AM UTC

prodtorok wrote: post #142

outsideoflife wrote: post #89

For my American cousins I thought I would mention a little more about Rugby Union. Concussion is less of a problem in Rugby than in American football, and this is not an accident. Rugby is addressing this in several ways. 1) Years of rule changes, and stricter enforcement. Now a top level player who tackles someone above the shoulder, or tackles without attempting to hold on (so no clothes-linse or body checks) will…

I'm sorry but as someone in the U.S. who played competitive rugby for 7 years I have to completely disagree. In rugby I myself had experienced concussions from collisions at least once a season. Anyone I know who has played have experienced similar. Less protection to the head means lower g-force hits sure, but still I've seen players knocked unconscious by pure body collision hits or an accidental knee to the head (…

even if you hit your head really hard on the front, it's the back of your brain that ends up getting wrecked, due to the rippling of the kinetic energy through your skull-confined brain matter.

The thing about concussion is that it's not the first impact that does the most damage - it's your brain sloshing and shearing/splitting itself, near the rear, against the inside of your skull as the recoil causes neuronal connections to essentially splinter..

like if you were to grab a dish-washing sponge with both hands, and tear it apart by pulling it apart by stretching it (a downwards-rolling wrist motion) you would notice the unfurling and disintegration of the middle section. essentially that's what happens during concussion; a 3 dimensional shearing tensor that is kind of like plunging your thumb into a ball of playdoh..

that's why even the mildest concussions are a seriously underrated danger

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#206

Post by pizza » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 5:52 AM UTC

sli wrote: post #195

bronson wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're wrong about exercise (ask any water polo player...) > cigarettes did not leave me feeling well most of the time. Sounds like an easy habit to kick!

> Sounds like an easy habit to kick! This is an odd view on the nature of physical addiction. I personally know more smokers that hate their smoking than smokers who are ambivalent or actually enjoy it.

I think addiction itself acts as a vastly profitable and effortlessly marketable boogeyman today, moreso than a Sisyphean defect of the human condition, if you catch my drift...

> "[...] the wound itself is its own healing when seen from another standpoint." [0]

> "As for smoking tobacco, Shapiro argues that quitting is hard because smoking does not disrupt the smoker's life, not because of the mild effects of nicotine on the brain" [1]

etc. I expect up-in-arms responses to views like mine, but even neuropharmacologically, speaking there is really less of a danger to ~"the disease known as addiction"~ than there is to codifying addiction as a metonym for "sepulcher for all the lost people". I say this for all substances, even something as malicious and unforgiving as carfentanil..

[0] https://socialecologies.wordpress.com/2014/11/19/slavoj-zize...

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=dcK6-h1ngtcC&pg=PA281&lpg=...

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#207

Post by brightball » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:41 PM UTC

hyperbovine wrote: post #201

brightball wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see a purpose to the non-revenue sports?

It sure would make for a more interesting discussion if you'd actually respond to any of my questions, rather than just tossing out another one of your own. Anyways, I'm all for the scholar-athlete ideal provided there's balance between the two. Many sports on campus seem to do a reasonable job of that; off the top of my head, that would include track, tennis, lacrosse, soccer, wrestling, crew, baseball, etc. But the…

The solution to that is to actually enforce the academic requirements. Clemson actually tried this in the mid-2000s with an academic review committee called (AARC) who would tell the coaches if they didn’t think a potential recruit could succeed on his own academically and disallow them from recruiting him. This all blew up when a top wide receiver prospect who we weren’t allowed to recruit turned around and signed with UNC, who was supposed to be a higher rated academic school. Years later we found out how much academic fraud was happening there and it made more sense.

IMO that stuff should be heavily policed to the point that doing so jeopardizes accreditation.

Fans of the school will turn out to watch walkons playing as long as the field is level with all of the other teams.

One of the reasons Dabo was hired is because he understood that Clemson’s administration didn’t want to go back to the win-at-all-cost mentality of the 80s and he was actually the staff member under Tommy Bowden who attended all of those AARC reviews.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#208

Post by code_duck » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 7:39 PM UTC

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #117

code_duck wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is that both activities were always clearly likely to be harmful, if you took a step back from the cultural perspective that accepted them so thoroughly. Smoking tobacco is inhaling an acrid a mix of chemicals that makes you cough, kind of feel sick and lightheaded, smells awful and leaves a tan stain - it’s not hard to guess that it’s not healthy. Remember that half of people who die from tobacco die from…

Edit to add, It’s a bit frustrating, because surely if one was to stand up 30 years ago and say “hey, I don’t think this high school football program is a good idea because I’m worried about all these young people knocking their heads together with full force”... The response would have been to mock you and dispute it, if they paid any attention at all. 30 years ago? I bet you’d get this reaction today in large swath…

Quite true, some of the stuff I was reading related to the study includes some coaches currently telling parents that they are overprotective fools if they are concerned about letting their children play football.

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#209

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 8:24 PM UTC

wdewind wrote: post #6

I didn't grow up playing or really understanding sports. I was one of those guys who joked about "sportsball" and stuff like that. When I started really taking weight training seriously I started having a frame of reference for understanding sports and started really appreciating them. Football is a sport that is designed to really allow people to showcase the limits of the human body. The most impressive athletes in…

> "The Catch" is one of the most impressive things in the history of sports period.

So I finally got around to watching the catch. Cool catch, but isn't the catching ability of a receiver augmented by tact gloves?[1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protective_equipment_in_gridir...

Re: Concussion doctor says he found CTE in living NFL player

#210

Post by logicchains » Sun, Dec 31, 2017, 8:15 AM UTC

Anon1096 wrote: post #161

logicchains wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Riding in a car is a necessary part of daily life. That's a very America-centric point of view, and completely not true if you live in a city designed to accommodate high-density living (or at the very least one without terrible public transport).

This comment is pedantic and unnecessary. For people that have to ride in a car to go places, it absolutely is necessary.

It shows that it's possible to structure your life to not need a car, so you can significantly reduce the risk of a traffic accident.