OT: Aaron Hernandez CTE Results

[UConnNick]

I'm really happy that my son played basketball, baseball and volleyball and didn't spend time on the gridiron, I'm even happier he stayed away from the gang life of nearby Springfield.

I mean reality is that he seemed to be a nice kid while playing at Bristol Central, not who he turned out to be. Was it CTE, did he start already with gangs or did the Florida experience with different cultures change some things as well? CTE is scary but no one really knows the answer here despite these findings.

A relative of mine had both DJ and Aaron as students in school classes. Speaks very highly of both when they were kids in school. For quite some time after he was first arrested, many folks in Bristol who knew him were in total denial. A lot of them didn't think he was capable of doing things like that.

 

[selles]

A relative of mine had both DJ and Aaron as students in school classes. Speaks very highly of both when they were kids in school. For quite some time after he was first arrested, many folks in Bristol who knew him were in total denial. A lot of them didn't think he was capable of doing things like that.

That's true of a lot of murderers.

I've had close relatives deal with Alzheimers and one thing that amazed me during the process was how very little we understand the brain. So color me skeptical about the certainty that seems to be present in discussions about CTE, especially when it comes out of BU, which has sought to make itself CTE central.

 

[TheChamps990411]

Totally hear what you’re saying. But there is a continuum I believe where you have your low-contact sports (soccer, basketball, baseball), contact sports (lacrosse, hockey), collision sports (football and rugby), then you have combat sports such as boxing and MMA. You’d have a hard time convincing me a collision sport, where the object is bringing a man to the ground, is more dangerous than a combat sport, in which the object is to inflict damage and/or beat someone unconscious.

The first point I would make is: how many on-field deaths per 16-game season occur in football, vs how many deaths in-ring or post-fight occur in a 1-2 bout year in MMA?

"In 2013 eight players died from injuries sustained on the field, a rate of .73 deaths per 100,000, while last year five high school and one college player died, a rate of 0.45 per 100,000."
Some may disagree with you. two guys who weight the same punching each other with padded gloves twice a year while dangerous and damaging is no more dangerous than two 250lb men hitting each other at full speed repeatedly every week for 6 months.

 

[intlzncster]

Absolutely but from my understanding it doesn't mimic the effects of CTE in the brain. My guess is he started using dust because of his already damaged brain but none of us know. Only docs who study the brain have any sort of grasp on what's really going on.

CTE can absolutely lead to more drug use, given the general affects of the condition. Not my opinion, just what I've read from doctors who study this.

I would not be the least bit surprised if his PCP use, as a very successful, rich professional football player, along with being a new father, was heavily influence by his relative cognitive function.

I agree with Rock that these drugs do increase degeneration of the brain in some form or fashion. They are effectively poison. No idea what brain centers they affect the most, so obviously don't have a clue if it mimics or exacerbates the CTE damage/effects.

 

[Rocktheworld]

They are effectively poison. No idea what brain centers they affect the most, so obviously don't have a clue if it mimics or exacerbates the CTE damage/effects.

Drugs ultimately course through the blood, which flows through the entire brain. PCP use on its own “affects” all regions of the brain essentially equally in its toxicity. I imagine that’s why a more global cognitive impairment, rather than a kind of “component” impairment (in specifically attention, or spatial processing, or language, etc.) in those with a histories of lengthy substance abuse.

But when you superimpose that on to pre-exposure damage in the brain, said damaged areas (and again this just makes intuitive sense to me) should be extra-susceptible to those toxins to where at the very least recovery at the anatomical level will be reduced. Then you think about how the C part of CTE necessitates repeated trauma, you get an exacerbated compounding effect where concussion 4 for Hernandez could be way worse than concussion 4 for a non-user

But of course there are other factors related to the injuries themselves as well