Tuesday, January 19, 2016

College Football Player's Autopsy May Offer Clues to Brain Trauma

Did you know that 87 of 91 deceased football players were tested positive to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE)?  Well first of all I bet no one reading this even knows what CTE is, right? Let me explain, CTE is a disease found in most football players, including Micheal Keck, (I will get to him later) who have or has had multiple hits to the head. Making football players the perfect candidates. Now you are probably wondering what it actually does to you, it contributes to memory loss, confusion, impaired judgement, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and in the end even dementia. Why is this a big deal is now what you are probably wondering, so I’m going to tell you, 96% of previous NFL players died of/ or with CTE.
Michael Keck never even played in the NFL, yet, in the end it was CTE with the tackle. Michael Keck died at the age of 25 with a wife and a son. Michael played football at the Missouri State as a linebacker. One day at practice Michael was knocked unconscious in practice back in 2009, “After that, things changed for him,” said his wife Cassandra to the press. His vision, memory, and ability to sleep all went down in level. He took medicine to take care of the head pain, and became moody. After practice when he got the concussion test they asked him to count back words from 20 by threes a couple of his teammates could not do it either so the test giver said that football players are dumb. CTE can only be diagnosed after death, suspecting that he had CTE Keck volunteered to undergo neuropsychological evaluation at age 24. In the end it turns out that he was right.
The first time I read this article I was shocked,  the second time sad, and the third time, understanding. I believe that the reason this article was written was because the knowledge of this topic is to little. People in and around the football community need to be more aware of this devastating disease, not just for them, but for the people around them.

1 comment:

  1. This really interesting. You did a really nice job giving a real life example.

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