Concussions And Concussions In Football

Football is a tough sport, as is soccer, hockey, and wrestling, in addition to the other 85 different programs the NCAA has to offer. Student athletes on average have higher grade point averages than their non-athlete counterparts, and being one is a general indicator for overall health and fitness. The added responsibilities of being a student athlete are great ways to prepare for the rigors of life after school. However, parents are starting to take their children out of youth sports, due to concern for one of the biggest health concerns of the past few years: traumatic brain injuries, better known as concussions. Research in traumatic brain injuries and their long term effects has recently shown the potentially life altering symptoms

When there is direct contact with the head, the brain sloshes through the spinal fluid in the skull and eventually hits the side of the skull opposite the site of impact. This causes an indiscriminate amount of neurotransmitters to be released and vital ion balances to be disrupted. The intracellular pumps now to have to work overtime, which requires the cells to take in as much energy as they can. In the environment of a concussion, where blood and oxygen are more scarce, coupled with the spike in need of energy to restore ion balances, there is an imbalance of energy needed and energy supplied, leading to deficits. The brain is therefore now more vulnerable as it attempts to recover from the ion imbalance, which makes it increasingly dangerous to suffer from more head trauma. These ion imbalances and neurotransmitter spikes are likely the causes for the common short-term symptoms, such as headache, mood swings, nausea, and memory loss. The increased vulnerability of the brain is the generally accepted cause for perhaps the most serious short-term symptom, second impact syndrome (SIS), which, although rare, has a 90% mortality rate. Despite all of these changes in the brain biochemistry, CT and MRI scans are currently unable to detect concussions with current technology. (Journal of

Efforts in educating coaches and players in the severity and long term effects of concussions has proven fruitless, so far. The Think First Prevention Foundation in addition to people from the National Hockey League Players Association, Hockey Canada, and the Canadian Academy of Sport and Exercise Medicine all collaborated to create a video titled ‘Smart Hockey: More Safety, More Fun’ highlighting information on concussion disclosure and symptoms, directed towards youth hockey players. The video was instantly successful and knowledge of concussions increased dramatically for about a month. After two months, based on a questionnaire given to the group who received the video and a control group, there was no significant difference. (British Journal of Sports Medicine) Similarly, in a study measuring the effectiveness of providing collegiate ice hockey players with resources about concussions, they found that players were not more willing to disclose possible traumatic brain injuries. (British Journal of Sports