Athletes and Brain Injuries

            Some sports are very violent, leading to severe, traumatic and sometimes permanent injuries. Most athletes will tell you they have never been diagnosed with a concussion and although this may be true a lot of the time, after receiving a blow to the head if you start to feel dizzy, nauseous if you can't remember the previous play, if you've blacked out, have double vision or anything along those lines it means you have a concussion. .
             In 2002, Dr. Bennet Omalu dissected the brain of former NFL center Mike Webster, finding that he had suffered chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the result of a brain injury that causes the brain to slowly break down from repetitive trauma. This injury is particularly hard to detect without dissecting the brain. .
             In 2009, the University Of Michigan did a study on retired NFL players asking them about there health & comparing it to the health of men who had not played in the NFL, overall the general health of the former players was pretty good, except when it came to memory problems where the rate for being diagnosed with memory related diseases such as Dementia or Alzheimer's was an alarming 19 times higher then it was in the average male who had not played professional football.
             Most athletes don't have a very good attitude towards concussions and sitting out of the game. New Orleans Saints defensive linemen Anthony Hargrove once said "I don't want to come out of games. I always feel that's some kind of weakness. Somebody hits me and takes me out of the game, I feel weak. So if something happens, I take a minute to try to re-gather myself and then go back." .
             Although leagues such as the NFL and the NHL are starting to take action towards making the sports safer by adding in rules to limit repetitive blows to the head that cause CTE. The rules that they put in place can sometimes be controversial. An example of some of the controversial rules is the new "crown of the helmet" rule in the NFL, this makes it so that the ball carrier cannot lower his head when going into contact outside of the tackle box.