chronic traumatic encephalopathy a brain disease caused by repetitive hits to the

head it can be deadly it's much more common than people here are the facts

chronic traumatic encephalopathy is a progressive neurodegenerative brain

disease that means symptoms don't begin until years after the injuries and can

often get worse over time causing dementia and here's the kicker you can

only find out if you had it if you are dead when your head gets hit nerve cells

are damaged and a protein called tau gets released repeated hits to the head

lead to more towel when nerve cells are damaged tau comes often starts clumping

up becoming tangled tau can kill brain cells if enough builds up over time high

levels of Talon brain fluid are linked to poor recovery and neuro degeneration

after head trauma the origins of the disease trace back nearly a century ago

when it was labeled pugilistic dementia a syndrome that was originally studied

in boxers forensic pathologist dr. harrison stanford Martland described the

disease in 1928 through his study a journal of the American Medical

Association he noted tremors slowed movement confusion and speech problems

being typical of the condition the disease was brought up again in 1949 via

British neurologist who published a study in a paper titled punch-drunk

syndrome chronic traumatic encephalopathy of boxers but it later

became clear that the disease was appearing in athletes who never donned a

pair of boxing gloves

ZTE appeared in the limelight in the early 2000s when Nigerian neuro

pathologist Bennet Omalu worked on a case with former Hall of Fame NFL player

Mike Webster who played for the Pittsburgh Steelers after retirement

Webster began to show signs of depression extreme mood swings and

eventually dementia footage from the documentary League of denial shows

Webster being interviewed in stopping mid-sentence the things we do to one

another ok hell I don't know what I'm saying I'm just tired you're confused

right now that's why I say I can't really I can't say it the way I want to

say it I get if I could sack it answered it's really easy at other times but

right now I'm just tired Webster had CTE and was the first NFL player diagnosed

with the degenerative brain disease AMA Lou's discovery led researchers to study

the potential link of brain trauma in football in CTE further in 2017 neuro

pathologist Ann McKie released her own study in the Journal of American Medical

Association McKee and her researchers studied a hundred and eleven former NFL

players whose brains were donated for research and discovered that a hundred

and ten of them had CTE we're really I'm starting to understand the earliest

manifestations of this disease and of course our main objective our

overarching goal is to help the people that are living be able to diagnose this

disease during life so we can bring some hope and optimism to these people if we

can diagnose it we can also monitor it and we can test different therapies to

see if they're effective in treating the disease in the early stages of CTE

researchers found the most common cause of death among those with mild levels of

CTE was suicide one of the highest profile examples was the case of Aaron

Hernandez a former New England Patriots star who was convicted of first-degree

murder in 2013 he murdered Odin Lloyd a former friend who dated Hernandez's

fiancee sister guilty of murder in the first degree

Madame foreperson committed to the MC I've seen her Junction for the term of

your natural life I knew is gonna have to do because you just don't get that

amount of damage without seeing that changes under the microscope and while

in prison Hernandez committed suicide for those in

later stages dementia and Parkinson's disease was the leading cause of death

and it's estimated that you know the average football player gets between

hundreds to a thousand hits per season if you played for ten years you can

imagine that's ten thousand hits that's what we're trying to get more awareness

about we need to limit the amount of contact in football and collision sports

among 27 participants that were found to have mild CTE 26 had behavioral or mood

issues before their deaths of the 84 disease players with more severe cases

89% had behavioral or mood symptoms we're over 500 brains I think it's about

550 at this point it may not be quite that many and we're well over 360 with

the diagnosis of CTE it's not just professional athletes or military

soldiers that are being affected younger athletes are at risk for long-term

consequences for later in life scientists have found that on average

playing tackle football before the age of 12 we do to cognitive issues thirteen

point three nine years earlier behavioral and mood problems would arise

thirteen point two eight years earlier for those who began to play at twelve or

older not only are young individuals at the forefront of CTE research animals

prone to brain injuries are also being studied as well Gregory Meyer director

of research in Sports Medicine at Cincinnati's Children's Hospital Medical

Center offered his take in this New York Times article bighorn sheep rammed their

heads into each other and woodpeckers slammed their head against trees

thousands of times a day Myers research has suggested that both

of these animals brains are well protected against concussions due to a

phenomenon called the bubble wrap effect. "Their brains are naturally protected

with mechanisms that slow the return of blood from the hedge to the body

increasing blood volume that fills their brains vascular tree." outside of football

other sports have introduced concussion protocols they're designed to keep

players who may have sustained a traumatic brain injury from returning to

the game and players no longer practice as much in

pads during the week and during training camp so the NFL has changed rules in

terms of where a player can be hit whether you can use your head as a

battering ram and you no longer can but that used to be a staple of NFL defenses

while safety reforms have been made to player concussion NFL officials and

college football coaches have often been criticized for questioning the research

between football and CTE it's clear that there is a link so why they're denying

it I don't know but there will come a time hopefully sooner rather than later

that we will have a living diagnosis and at that point leagues will no longer be

able to say oh we're you know we still need more science the science will be

there legislators across the US have offered bills that would ban tackle

football before the age of 12 but they seen little traction becoming law and

well the push for legislation comes as youth tackle football has seen a decline

in participation interesting enough it's a decline that's been seen at a regional

level the fears about CTE and the fears about the long-term damage to a child's

health is a concern for any parent and we're seeing parents ask more questions

we're seeing parents raise more concern until we have something like a living

diagnosis where then we'll be able to say okay this person is predisposed to

genetically or you know we can monitor a teenager as they play