Symptoms Of Concussions In Football

Abstract

With Football becoming the most popular sport in society today, injuries are bound to occur despite all the safety measures taken. As a result, Concussions are one of the most common injuries football players receive throughout their careers. This review of literature will take a look at symptoms of concussion’s, and their effect on retired NFL players later on in life. The research will show that players who receive concussions during their career will show signs of depression, Alzheimers disease, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), and even suicide in some cases. There are three stages of concussions such as mild, moderate, and severe all with the potential to affect overall cognitive abilities later on in life. Along with

With all the studies performed and medical discovery about this concussions, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, and Neurological Brain disease’s proving to cause symptoms of depression, suicide, and cognitive abilities later in life, there needs to be measures taken to help ensure safety of former and current football players.

Introduction

Over one million people are projected to play football in today’s society. With that being said, football may possibly be the most popular sport in America. The game of football has a violent nature that takes a toll on person’s body, physically and mentally. In Today’s game with athletes becoming bigger, faster, and stronger injuries are inevitable, especially concussions. A concussion is a traumatic brain injury sustained from a blow to the head that causes the brain to rapidly bounce back and forth creating a chemical change to the brain ultimately causing a loss of vision and cognitive functions (CDC, 2017). In terms of concussion’s, they are graded on a scale of mild, moderate, and severe with most concussion’s appearing to be mild. Symptoms of a mild, or grade 1 concussion, are signs of disorientation for nearly fifteen minutes or less with no loss of

In recent years, a number of studies have been conducted with former NFL players with emerging evidence that shows some former NFL players have mild cognitive impairment, neuroimaging abnormalities, and differences in brain metabolism’s while autopsies of former football players show diverse forms of neuropathology showing the protein P-tau has infiltrated the brain and spread, killing brain cells (Manley, GT, et al., 2017). Through numerous studies, neuroimaging, structural imaging, magnetic response spectroscopy, and neuropathology autopsies, evidence is shown that concussions have lingering effects on former NFL player’s daily lives years after they stop playing football. Neuroimaging cases showed that although players brain showed sign of abnormalities, there was no signs of neurological effects long term to study participants. Studies on cognitive function and mental health have shown there is a frequency response relationship with cognitive impairments to those with constant exposure to concussions (Manley, GT, 2017). Of 3819 studies, Guskiwietz and colleagues surveyed 2552 retired football players, more than half of the participants, and found that a physician had a diagnosis of Alzheimers disease. This is significant because 1.3% of players with Alzheimers is actually a pretty low number, contrasting