Opinion: Brain damage has nothing to do with how many punches you take

[TheScorpionDude]

We need a medical sub-forum where we can share our scientific knowledge and discoveries.

 

[Texas]

Whilst there probably is a strong correlation between punches taken and likely hood of brain damage it really would be naieve to disregard a person’s genetic potential to recover or heal. Everyone is different

 

[JeffDredd]

.If we knew how a brain worked, like all of it, fully, completely, we could build one and have an artificial life form achieve consciousness.

And promptly kill us all.

 

[Sanctus]

Interesting article on how it was sparing in MFS

http://fightland.vice.com/blog/what...hting-systems-back-in-the-glory-days---part-1

 

[GreatWhiteBuffalo]

And probably infinitely more versed on the subject than you, give the man his props. Did you attend university? Were you dedicated enough to learn multiple majors, particularly as difficult as human anatomy and physics. I have a BA with a focus in supply chain management, I recognize the work put in to earn that, much less 3 majors. Dont be a hater dude

Someone randomly providing their “credentials” only to be a fucking b.s. is silly.

 

[screaminleeman]

It all deals with MONEY! FFS, this "new" CTE thing has been around for over a century! They used to call it Pugilistic Dementia. When Lawyers get involved they need a cute term to soak as much money from the leagues in court as is possible.

TS has a point. CTE IS the Boxing "punch drunk" disease! Notice how Boxers/ Kickboxers and MMA practitioners that take shots to the head as a regular part of their sport are being diagnosed with CTE at a tiny fraction of the percentage that American style football players are suffering from where head shots are banned!

It is all B.S. Fucking Lawyers I tell you.

 

[Headkicktoleg]

someone has been superpunched too much.

 

[Dana_is_your_GOD]

I love when Sherdogs think they’re doctors.

I'm a doctor bro

 

[Headkicktoleg]

Mmmm. Neurologists will admit themselves they don't know how the brain works and the folk studying CTE at Boston University can only see how much damage is done to a fighter, NFL, NHL player, etc, only when they're dead.

I believe they do actually have a way to see damage on a live patient now.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...onfirmed-in-living-person-20171115-story.html

 

[King Joffery]

I think a little bit of brain trauma is probably benefical as it kills off the weak brain cells and allows the fittest brain cells to reproduce in their place.

 

[That209]

I love when Sherdogs think they’re doctors.

He’s not wrong. Brain damage doesn’t always happen in fighting from a long career of taking shots. It can happen after just one.

 

[That209]

I think a little bit of brain trauma is probably benefical as it kills off the weak brain cells and allows the fittest brain cells to reproduce in their place.

Definitely something joffrey would say

 

[Shadowthrone]

Brain damage is caused by listening to rap music. The punching in the head thing seems random, a few do and most don't.

 

[tasticles]

There's a lot more work to be done in the field.

We have astroglial cells, which are self repairing in our brain.

The movie Concussion would be good to watch.

I think it was based on one of the first people to actively study how getting hit effects the brain, if I remember the synopsis correctly.

Even taking that into consideration, that's not a very long time to have a field open to study. That's still a very new window.

It seems to be more of a lottery or blessing on how well you heal. The brain can require over a period of 1 year and improve. Some people have a career in prize fighting, come out fine but meanwhile regular Joe takes 1 good hit and is never the same.

 

[tasticles]

Definitely something joffrey would say

He was also a product of inbreeding too hahah

 

[beastman]

I think that brain damage is mostly genetic. Your brain is either genetically programmed to repair itself after getting hit or it's not. I think that the amount of getting hit matters less than your brain's genetic ability to repair itself.

There are guys that have never even had a fight and have just trained in the gym but slur their speech. Then there are guys like Overeem who have been KOd just too many times and seems really smart. Guys like Muhammad Ali who gets Parkinsons and then guys like George Chuvalo who got his jawbone cracked in half by Frazier's left hook, fought Ali multiple times, fought Foreman, fought Jerry Quarry, fought Floyd Patterson, just ate the most brutal shots from the hardest punchers and most dangerous guys in history. Considered to have the best chin in history. Sounds completely lucid at 81 years old.

This is just my opinion, which is totally not a medical opinion and based on absolutely no knowledge of anything. What is your opinion?

The accumulation of sub-concussive blows is what leads to CTE. It isn't necessarily the knockout blow which does it, it is the accumulation of punishment over a long time. The guys who were going full bore everyday in the gym, sparring daily in the early 00's are probably the most likely candidates right now.

That's why it's found in the brains of NFL players of the 70's-80's. They hit full throttle in practice 5 days a week for the first 2 months of the year and then had the games. They took so many hits to the head.

 

[Hoop]

I believe they do actually have a way to see damage on a live patient now.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...onfirmed-in-living-person-20171115-story.html

Thanks, man. Site is anti European and won't let me go on to their page.

Any chance you could post the article here?

 

[Headkicktoleg]

Thanks, man. Site is anti European and won't let me go on to their page.

Any chance you could post the article here?

CTE confirmed for 1st time in live person, according to exam of ex-NFL player
John KeilmanContact ReporterChicago Tribune
Four years ago, researchers from Evanston’s NorthShore University HealthSystem and other scientific organizations announced they had used brain scans to detect the hallmark of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in ex-NFL players while they were still alive — a technique that promised to spur more accurate diagnoses, and possibly new treatments.

The scans indicated the presence of tau, a protein that builds up over damaged brain cells. But the scientists cautioned that the results needed to be confirmed, because CTE, a dementia-like disease linked to repetitive head trauma, can be definitively diagnosed only by examining brain tissue after a person’s death.
The Neurosurgery paper says its subject played football for 22 years, including 12 in the NFL. He had only one reported concussion, suffered when he was in college, and didn’t even have his “bell rung” very often.

When he was done playing, he went through law school, joined a firm and became partner. A few years after that, though, he was dismissed for poor performance. The same thing happened at least twice more until he finally stopped practicing law and filed for bankruptcy.
By the time he was 59, he was showing distressing behavioral traits researchers believe are signs of CTE: memory loss, depression, a lack of impulse control and a bad temper. Two years later, his motor skills deteriorated until he couldn’t feed himself.

Toward the end of his life, McNeill was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a disease that causes muscles to weaken and waste away, along with presumptive CTE. He died at 63.

Brain scans are just one diagnostic tool scientists are trying to develop to combat CTE. Researchers at Boston University announced in September they had found higher levels of a protein called CCL11 in the brains of people diagnosed with CTE, and that it might be possible to use that as a biomarker to detect the disease in the living.

But Dr. Lili-Naz Hazrati, a neuroscience researcher at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, said no matter the technology, reliable CTE detection still appears far away.

She said the tissue images included in the Neurosurgery paper did not convince her that the ex-NFL player actually was suffering from CTE. Tau is associated with other neurological diseases, including Alzheimer’s, and can also be present in healthy brains, she said.

Figuring out a way to definitively diagnose the disease in living people is important because early detection improves the odds of successful treatment, she said. But she said scientists have yet to find biomarkers that identify Alzheimer’s — a disease that has been studied for more than a century — and CTE will likely prove no easier.

“When there’s such a diversity (of diagnostic techniques) and no one seems to be finding the same thing, it’s really hard to validate the findings,” she said.

Dr. Julian Bailes, a NorthShore neurosurgeon, said Wednesday that confirmation has arrived.

In a paper published last week in the journal Neurosurgery, Bailes and other researchers reported that one of the former players who underwent a scan had his brain examined after he died — and sure enough, the tissue revealed he had been suffering from CTE.

Minnesota Vikings who died in 2015.


Four years ago, researchers announced that they had used brain scans to detect the hallmark of CTE. (Nov. 16, 2017)

Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pioneering CTE researcher portrayed by actor Will Smith in the 2015 movie “Concussion,” is the lead author on the Neurosurgery paper. Last year Omalu told CNN that McNeill underwent the tau-detecting brain scan. After McNeill’s death, Omalu said he found signs of CTE in the athlete’s brain tissue.

[email protected]

Twitter @JohnKeilman

 

[Hoop]

That's why it's found in the brains of NFL players of the 70's-80's. They hit full throttle in practice 5 days a week for the first 2 months of the year and then had the games. They took so many hits to the head.

The noise of those helmets smashing against one another is frightening.

I'd read that because the players are wearing the helmets and they have an impact, the head/brain is more exposed as such because when they take a hit, the head is literally rattling around in the helmet.

 

[OverhandLoop]

There’s overwhelming research suggesting that repeated trauma causes CTE across several sports and in combat. Whether a select few are able to withstand head trauma or recover more quickly doesn’t mean trauma doesn’t cause irreversible brain damage.