Sports & Brain Diseases: The Relationship Of Sports And Brain Diseases

Sports and Brain Diseases: The Relationship Between the Two Imagine being able to see, hear and understand everything around you but not being able to do anything about it. That is what life is like for people suffering from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis). ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that wastes away all muscle in the body completely. ALS is commonly known as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy or, CTE for short, is also a brain disease. CTE’s cause memory loss, sudden outbursts of aggression, depression and dementia. Both diseases are linked together by repetitive head trauma and concussions. Failure to rest after a concussion increases the risk of permanent damage to the brain. An epidemic of young people being diagnosed with the incurable disease ALS and postmortemly discovering the person had CTE’s is at an all time high. Many

However, it does not affect the brain or the eyes. ALS patients lose the ability to swallow, move any limb, talk, and eventually lose the ability to breathe which causes them to suffocate. The average age of being diagnosed is from 40-70 years old. And the average life expectancy from the point of diagnosis is 2-5 years. Most patients do not realize what is happening to their body so the diagnosis is not given until much later after symptoms started, sometimes as long as a year after. Also, men are 20% more likely to be diagnosed with ALS than females, the reason being unknown. ALS is caused by a buildup of toxic proteins in the brain called Tao. These proteins seep in the spinal cord and after that start to attack the nervous system. It has been discovered that only 10% of the cases have been caused from genetics, the other 90% of people suffering from ALS, have gotten the disease from repetitive trauma to the brain. Because of the fact that the brain is not affected, the people suffering from ALS can understand everything that is going