HJAR Jul/Aug 2024

HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS I  JUL / AUG 2024 11 encephalopathy (CTE), ALS, Parkinson’s, and early onset dementia. Even with recent rule changes, the average high school tackle football players gets 345 head-impact exposures per season. 6,7 College players take 1,000 or more hits per season; some coaches think this number is closer to 10,000 per season. The following paper delves into the alarming reality revealed by recent MRI studies, showing profound brain changes in high school players after just one season of tackle football. It makes sense, since high school boys play the same game as the men. Well, except for a few things like the NFL Players Association and now Ivy League schools have restricted helmeted practices to once a week. When the NCAA medical director was asked if the colleges would follow suite, he said the NFL can afford less full-contact practice than college football because pro players are better trained in fundamentals. 8 And while the NFL has three concussion spotters and an independent neurologist at each game, high schools in our area are lucky to even have an athletic trainer to spot a kid who is wobbly from a concussion. Seventy percent of high schools do not have an athletic trainer. They say they cannot afford one. I realize football is a tradition, but it is not sacred. There is nothing sacrosanct about a game that causes neurodegeneration. We, as a healthcare industry, freak out about a few measles cases. Why aren’t we about this? I think parents think football is “okay” because our school systems promote it. Parents and students trust their educators to do right by them, educate our children, make them smarter, and help them become part of society. But either through ignorance, tradition, or greed, education systems are not counting the neuro costs the game has on current and former players. High school tackle football is the most likely group to get concussions. 7 The “new” helmets, which sound like breakthroughs from the tobacco companies, are incapable of stopping a brain from shearing or neurons from breaking when the head is hit — just like filtered cigarettes do not stop lung cancer. Helmets today may do a great job protecting the skull, but they still do a crappy job protecting the brain. Ask any neurologist not on the NFL or NCAA payroll, or simply read the warning label. And, like smokers were initially deceived that menthol protected their lungs so they would continue smoking, most parents today still don’t realize that “concussion protocols” don’t prevent a concussion from happening; they just offer guidance to parents and educators dealing with a kid with mild traumatic brain injury, have him assessed by a provider with very few solutions for mTBI, and offer space between “It makes you wonder when the damage starts. One tackle football hit can cause a concussion. ... One concussion, a form of traumatic brain injury, gives you a 40% increased risk of developing a mental health issue and makes you three times more likely to have another concussion.”