Sports have always been a kind of national pride for American citizens and an important part of the culture, however, in the early years of the Twentieth Century, there were cases of a strange disease that athletes were contracting. This disease, now known as ALS or Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, was known then as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, dubbed after the famous baseball player who contracted, and eventually died of this disease while in his prime years. While ALS has been a prime assailant in the athletic world, Lou Gehrig’s case was the first big eye opener to America about how deadly this strange disease really was.
Since those days, many other athletes have contracted and succumbed to ALS. Because of the deadliness of this disease, there are big questions being raised in the sports world about ways to prevent players from contracting it. Rules in a sport would need to be altered to make it safer and lower the percentage of athletes that become diagnosed. This leads to the athletes complaining that adding extensive safety rules, completely changes the game and takes away the spirit of it. It is also believed that by changing the rules about certain sports, doors to new types of injuries in that sport are being opened.
The athletic world should thoroughly educate the athletes of a sport about the types of diseases that they could be diagnosed with as a result of playing that specific sport, and then leave it to the individual to decide if they want to take the risks involved in playing that sport. As mentioned earlier, ALS stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, and it is a progressive neurodegenerative disease, this means that it deteriorates the brain cells, and that it can spread throughout the body.
Recent studies have found that athletes are contracting ALS at a much younger age compared to the age most normal people are diagnosed with it. Scientists have been working day and night to find the answers to this. The results, have shown that repeated blows to the head can cause a toxic protein to leak across the brain which is what deteriorates the brain cells. Since this toxic protein can spread throughout the body, once it reaches the spinal cord, it begins to make the nerve cells wither away. A big factor of the toxic protein leaking, is repeated blows to the head, or repeated concussions without fully resting.
Athletes are at the highest risk of getting ALS because they are constantly getting hit in the head multiple times a game and could end up getting multiple concussions per game, and maybe not realizing that they even have a concussion, since not everyone will pass out from getting one which usually makes people believe that they’re perfectly fine, but in reality their brain has been injured, however that is an internal injury, so it’s impossible to be sure. There are a multitude of other factors that can be associated with explaining why so many athletes are being diagnosed with ALS.
One of the biggest factors, is the amount of rest an athlete is getting after receiving a concussion or just a severe head injury in general. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or CTE for short, was formerly known as Dementia Pugilistica since it was believed to only exist in the sport of boxing. It is a progressive degenerative disease much like ALS, that is primarily found in athletes with a long history of repeated head trauma. The word Encephalopathy comes from the Ancient Greek words en, kephale, and patheia, which when combined mean “In head suffering”.
There are many different types of CTEs in the world, excluding ALS, there are four other big ones: Dementia, Alzheimer’s Disease (commonly known as Old Timer’s Disease), Parkinson’s Disease, and Huntington’s Disease. Along with theses diseases, there are a multitude of symptoms, with some being unique to that specific disease, for example Parkinson’s Disease causes the patient to shake quite a lot and strong medicine is required to keep the shaking to a manageable level, while Huntington’s Disease is usually inherited, unlike the other major CTEs.
Athletes suffer from CTES ore than any other person because they receive significantly more head trauma than most others, and therefore are at a much higher risk of getting a CTE than most non-athletes. Dementia affects a person’s memory but they still retain the knowledge of everyday functions. Alzheimer’s is much worse than Dementia because of the fact that it slowly takes away everything the victim knows how to do until they become nothing but a hollow shell of a human being and eventually die. So, based on the information presented so far, ALS and CTES share a very noticeable connection to concussions and head trauma.
This can be inferred because of the fact that most athletes that become diagnosed with these diseases have experienced several cases of head trauma and concussions throughout their athletic career. Although concussions and head trauma may sound like they mean the same thing, there are actually very stark differences between the two, one of which being that head trauma usually results from the brain rattling against the skull. Another major difference is that a concussion can occur from just a single blow that has enough force behind it.
Gender also plays an important role when dealing with concussions and head trauma since males have stronger, more developed neck muscles they are less likely to receive a concussion from a blow than a female. This has raised many questions in the women’s sports world about what measures should be taken to prevent more victims of ALS and CTEs among athletes. One of the sports that is expected to change the most, is women’s soccer since it is one of the sports with the highest number of blows to the head received per game.
There are many concerns as to how this will affect women’s sports and just how drastically the rules may change for all women’s sports in the future. In recent times, this has become a big issue in the sports world, and as such, there are constant discussions about ways to reduce the number of athletes that are being diagnosed with these diseases. Some of the measures that are being taken, is to increase the amount of padding in the helmet in order to soften the blows that are received there and have players aim for the torso or leg region.
However many of the athletes argue that these new rules bring about new problems, such as season-ending injuries like broken legs, or that the “spirit” of the game is being taken away. Former Green Bay Packers Quarterback Brett Favre is now showing signs of the symptoms of ALS, even after being retired for quite some time now. Because of this, a desire to raise awareness about this to the sports world and influence them to make the sports safer for the players has arisen within him.
Currently, the NFL pays for anything required to support an ALS victim, however this was not always the case, and only after extensive complaints from the athletes themselves, did the NFL agree to cover all costs. However, the NFL is the only big sports company that really have done anything in terms of supporting ALS/CTE victims financial wise. This shows a lack of concern for the athletes of the world and it is absolutely abhorrent that the sports world has done so little as a whole, to care for the safety of it’s athletes and something needs to be done to avert this inevitable disaster.