Ask a mom what she thinks about her kid playing contact sports like hockey or football and you’re likely to see some worry on her face, because of the risk of concussion.
Perhaps you?ve read the recent media reports of scientific studies linking contact sports to a brain disease called CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. One such study published in January 2018 in the journal Brain found evidence of CTE in the brains of deceased athletes. Some media reports say that these results are evidence that repeated hits to the head can cause CTE, even in players who have never suffered a concussion.
This research follows soon after news of a study published in September 2017 in the Journal Translational Psychiatry. It found that kids who played tackle football before age 12 were more likely to have behavioural and cognitive problems later in life. But what does all this mean" Is the news as bad as it sounds" According to some doctors, maybe not.
According to Gerard Gioia, Neuropsychology Director at Children?s National Medical Center and founder of the Safe Concussion, Outcome & Recovery Education (SCORE) Program, these two studies don?t actually show the complete picture. ?These are what we call ?hypothesis generating? research,” she says. “They?re important studies. They give us a lot of good information. But they give us more questions than answers. They show us that we need to be doing more research in this area. But they don?t show a causal...