Free e-book: Concussions, CTE and Football

From the Introduction:

When You Watch Your Next Football Game...

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From high school to college to professional levels, football dominates American sports and exposes millions to head traumas on practically every play.

It is a paradox of wide proportions. From opening day in September to the Super Bowl in February, the National Football League (NFL) dominates American sports and wins television ratings far beyond any other program--sports or otherwise.

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Increasingly, though, discussions of football (and other sports) include the medical terms concussion and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a long-term degenerative and incurable brain disease. Although military personnel and others are vulnerable to the disease, the highest risk is among athletes involved in contact sports in which hits to the head are considered “part of the game.”

Ten years ago, few would have predicted that the movie “Concussion” starring Will Smith would be made. Fewer would have predicted that brain injuries would one day dominate the sports headlines. When former NFL star Junior Seau committed suicide in May 2012, the media focused almost entirely on whether the thousands of head blows he endured during his 19-year career as a middle linebacker were a contributing factor.

More than 3,000 former NFL players sued the league for allegedly misleading them about the risks of brain injury. The players and the league settled for more than $1 billion in damages. New policies and studies aimed at protecting the brains of athletes seem to be announced every week. But it’s not just professional athletes who are the focus of attention. No fewer than 40 states have passed laws requiring athletes in schools and recreational programs to schedule a doctor’s appointment when a concussion is suspected.

A progressive, degenerative brain disease, CTE can present itself  in athletes and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma months, years, or even decades after injury. Memory loss, confusion, depression, aggression, impaired judgment or impulse control, and, eventually, progressive dementia may result.

With this increasing awareness about the dangers of concussion, parents face tough choices about which sports their children should be allowed to play. Some of the more

New rules have since been designed to lessen brain trauma; but with every new horror story that emerges on the sports pages, parents worry even more.

dangerous sports for the brain, such as football, soccer, ice hockey, and lacrosse, are also the most popular. Although everyone agrees that brain trauma may have lasting and debilitating effects, and science continues to make slow progress toward understanding the disease, we cannot yet entirely quantify those effects. As a result, parents and even medical professionals are left to search their hearts and scour Web sites for answers. But a decade’s worth of research has made one thing clear: We need to find better ways to protect the brains of athletes.

Difficult to Measure

Concussions suffer from a perception problem. On the surface, they might not seem to have a lasting, serious impact. (In fact, sports programs and commentators continue to celebrate the most impactful “hits,” using euphemisms such as “getting your bell rung.”) They are an invisible injury: There is no blood, there are no displaced bones, and the patient rarely complains. Even when an athlete is knocked unconscious and observers react with panic, the concern quickly fades. Ninety-nine percent of concussed athletes wake up in seconds or minutes and then seem fine. When symptoms persist beyond the day of injury, in the vast majority of cases they dissipate within a month. The injury seems as if it is gone forever, leaving no scars or overt indication that it ever happened.

Children at Risk

Most brain trauma in the industrialized world occurs in children playing sports. Since participation is voluntary, and the rules of recreational sports are malleable, it seems reasonable to make every effort to reform each individual sport....

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Post-partum depression...in fathers?

Testosterone levels are a key factor in a family's health and happiness after a newborn arrives. Researchers have found that a drop can signal postpartum depression in dad, and a spike may be a sign of aggression.

Postpartum depression is often associated with mothers, but a new study shows that fathers face a higher risk of experiencing it themselves if their testosterone levels drop nine months after their children are born.

The same study revealed that a father's low testosterone may also affect his partner -- but in an unexpectedly positive way. Women whose partners had lower levels of testosterone postpartum reported fewer symptoms of depression themselves nine and 15 months after birth.

High testosterone levels had the opposite effect. Fathers whose levels spiked faced a greater risk of experiencing stress due to parenting and a greater risk of acting hostile- such as showing emotional, verbal or physical aggression -- toward their partners.

The study was published in the journal Hormones and Behavior on Sept. 1. The findings support prior studies that show men have biological responses to fatherhood, said Darby Saxbe, the study's lead author and an assistant professor of psychology at USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

"We often think of motherhood as biologically driven because many mothers have biological connections to their babies through breastfeeding and pregnancy." Saxbe said. "We don't usually think of fatherhood in the same biological terms. We are still figuring out the biology of what makes dads tick.

"We know that fathers contribute a lot to child-rearing and that on the whole, kids do better if they are raised in households with a father present," she added. "So, it is important to figure out how to support fathers and what factors explain why some fathers are very involved in raising their children while some are absent."

Saxbe worked with a team of researchers from USC, University of California at Los Angeles and Northwestern University.

A snapshot of paternal postpartum depression

For the study, the researchers examined data from 149 couples in the Community Child Health Research Network. The study by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development involves sites across the country, but the data for this study came from Lake County, Illinois, north of Chicago.

Mothers in the study were 18 to 40 years old; African-American, white or Latina; and low-income. They were recruited when they gave birth to their first, second or third child. Mothers could invite the baby's father to participate in the study as well. Of the fathers who participated and provided testosterone data, 95 percent were living with the mothers.

University of Southern California

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