Contact Sports and Degenerative Brain Disease

            Degenerative brain diseases and contact sports go hand in hand. The sudden tremendous impacts that contact sports are associated with, in many cases causes brain trauma. Degenerative brain diseases consist of Alzheimer's disease, dementia, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, etc. These diseases affect millions of people worldwide and sometimes are often detected too late. Degenerative brain diseases are the result of abnormal proteins that interfere with normal brain functions and then spread throughout the entire brain. Degenerative brain disease has the ability to be caused by means of the tremendous roughness that occurs in contact sports. A degenerative disease is a disease in which the function or structure of the affected tissues or organs will increasingly deteriorate over time. Since we are talking in regards to the brain, a degenerative brain disease is when the tissues in and around the brain begin to be destroyed leaving the brain unstable. "Contact sports consisting of years of blows to the head are directly linked to a pattern of brain damage starting with an athlete having trouble focusing, followed by means of aggression and eventually dementia" (Fitzgerald). There is ever growing evidence in the link between head trauma and long-term, degenerative brain disease. After lots of research was performed on contact sport athletes, the connection between head trauma and brain disease was undeniable.
             The degenerative brain disease most associated with contact sports is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). Originally called "punch drunk", this disorder was first described as so in 1928 in boxers due to the fact boxers often suffer from slowed movements, confusion, speech problems, and tremors (Martland, HS). This syndrome was also originally termed "dementia pugilistica" (Sports Legacy) and "the psychopathic deterioration of pugilists"(Courville, CB); but was later renamed chronic traumatic encephalopathy for the purpose of the preferred medical term and was first documented as chronic traumatic encephalopathy in 1996.