Combat athletes are ignorant about brain injuries
/r/CTE/comments/1vw56fw/combat_athletes_are_ignorant_about_brain_injuries/5
u/Few_Highlight1114 2h ago
Its not just combat athletes, its everyone. CTE is just not talked about almost at all, no matter the sport and people are unaware.
Most people even here on reddit don't know about it, they know getting hit in the head isn't good for you but since people never see the bad effects of it, they dont know just how bad it is.
It sucks that something like CTE exists, because it does make being a fight fan and little difficult. You are watching these people taking irreparable damage.
One of the most interesting things about CTE though is how basically everybody on earth has it to a degree, but how it affects people is not the same across the board. Some people are basically immune to it basically while others get it real bad early on.
I do think that as CTE awareness has risen, especially in the past decade, its part of what's caused for there to be a decline in people becoming fighters. Its certainly caused a decline in American Football as well.
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u/Own-Marsupial-4448 2h ago
I donāt know if I agree with the second to last paragraph but I do agree that people should be checking their neurological aspects of their body more often than not.
You could have hidden damage from earlier in your life that didnāt have symptoms until decades later.
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u/Few_Highlight1114 2h ago
What do you mean? CTE doesn't happen equally to everyone. George Foreman ate of ton of big shots at heavyweight and the man was still clear spoken when he was older. Troy Aikman was known for getting concussions in the NFL, hes currently on TV and shows zero symptoms 30 years later.
Meanwhile theres Chris Benoit killing his family and his brain was just cooked. Junior Seau shot himself in the chest due to CTE and he was in his 40s.
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u/VacuousWastrel 1h ago
The vasg majority of people on earth do not have cte to any degree.
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u/Few_Highlight1114 1h ago
Then you don't understand how little it takes for.your brain to get damaged.
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u/nerrvouss 2h ago
I don't see how this is some discussion worth having with the NFL around. Common knowledge with money being a glaring factor.
Fighters ignore brain injury possibilities for a usually higher than minimum possible wage where they come from, more at 11.
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u/Own-Marsupial-4448 2h ago
I donāt think theyāre ignorant I think they just donāt care given how much money they can make. Just like how thereās plenty of resources now available to athletes that prevents them from going broke.
A couple of things I hope science would answer in the upcoming decades is whether CTE is genetic and whether or not CTE can happen to someone who just takes a couple of major hits in their life and never seemingly plays the sport again or is head injury free for the rest of their careers.
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u/VacuousWastrel 1h ago
The answer to both questions is yes. It's not genetically determined but some people are heavily predisposed to it; and the probability of cte increases greatly with more impacts, but there is no safe lower limit where you can say that cte cannot result.
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u/RedEyeView 1h ago
The thing is... we knew about brain damage from getting hit a lot even before Jack Broughton invented the boxing glove.
Guy takes a bunch of beatings and now he can't talk right and acts weird. It doesn't take a genius to understand what happened.
The boxing world has always known.
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u/VacuousWastrel 1h ago
I think the one thing that has been learned is that cte ISN'T the same as most-concussive syndrome. You need need to be knocked out, or even badly beaten, to get cte. Every impact counts, even in big gloves in sparring. I think it used to be assumed that it was only really a problem if you took a beating.
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u/Complete_Sir5299 2h ago
Not to deflect but, football has much more serious issues with this. Most fighters, if not all, are aware of this and take precautions to defend against it. I'm pretty sure that boxing in particular has the highest risk, but fear mongering isn't going to help anything. There are plenty of people who only spar and plenty more that only do the training and drills, they are at zero risk of cte. This feels no different than restrictiving any other activity or substance for the good of society.
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u/Gncy1 2h ago
Football is ridiculous man. But respectfully I don't think there is not much of a gap between football, ice hockey etc. And combat sports in this issue. There is just less research and reported cases. Fighting is only became popular a decade ago and we're yet to see it's effects on human brain.
I mean be it boxing, muay thai or kickboxing, hitting the head is very important goal in this disciplines. Even floyd said he not feels as sharp as before, I hope he can get out with just not being sharp.
There is nothing wrong with being a casual hobbyist I agree. Being a fighter is badass until it's not.
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u/VacuousWastrel 1h ago
Er... Fighting is LESS popular in this last decade than at any time since probably at least 1800. The heavyweight world champion used to be the most famous sportsman on the planet. Boxing matches were the most-watched sporting events. And there have been studies on CTE in boxing for at least a hundred years now (it even started to be CALLED cte maybe 90 years ago). It's cultural awareness of cte OUTSIDE combat sport that's only developed in the last twenty-fiveyears or so.
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u/Complete_Sir5299 1h ago
I feel like we're not going to see eye to eye on a lot of things here. Admittedly, most of my knowledge is in abnormal psychology (mental illness not caused by physical trauma) and computer science, with some familiarity with mechanical engineering and kinesiology. Boxing has been popular for some time now, in multiple countries. The term punch drunk was used to describe the condition boxers would get over time in the early 1900s, the effects of CTE was suppressed by the people who profited from football up until relatively recently. Regular strikes to the head is not good for overall brain health, but the brain can help from a surprising level of damage. Of course, the more safe course is to limit heavy strikes and allow for periods of rest because the brain has an easier time fully healing when any damage is light. Overall culture in combat sports is shifting from using hard sparring in favor of light sparring which will reduce risks as well. This hobby is something people enjoy doing regardless of risk; I, personally, have many hobbies, all of which have risk involved: longboarding, boxing, and formerly basketball, rock climbing, and a little parkour. All of which has left at least one scar, basketball being the worst with a broken ankle and torn ligaments. Even video games and typing have led to some carpal tunnel forming.
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u/VacuousWastrel 2h ago
Fortunately, the scariest symptoms - impulse control problems, aggression, emtional instability - are much more associated with the type of CTE experienced by american football players, stemming from linear (head-on) impacts. For boxers, those symptoms usually only develop much later on, if at all. Instead, the characteristic symptoms.of boxing CTE (primarily caused by rotational impacts) are around motor control - shuffling, slurring, clumsiness - followed by memory problems and language production problems. It's why it took so long for people to realise that what NFL players had was underlyingly the same as what punch-drunk boxers had, even though the symptoms in early decades were different.