Recognizing concussion symptoms may save your life.
For generations, athletes took blows to the head and kept right on playing. It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of the game. Coaches, teammates and fans may depend on you. But getting hit again and again can permanently damage your brain. It can even kill you. Continue reading Recognize Concussion Symptoms
UPDATE: Referees may stop soccer matches for up to three minutes while the team doctor decides if a player can stay in the game in European competitions, wire services are reported on Thursday.
Gianni Infantino, the secretary general of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), said the policy was approved by the organization’s executive committee and will take effect immediately, according to Reuters.
Should referees stop a soccer game if a player gets hit hard in the head? Should team doctors should overrule coaches in deciding if a player stays in the game?
The answers to both questions seem obvious, but they are only now trickling into the minds of soccer’s governing body.
Leaders of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) last week put the notions forward, but Continue reading Update: Soccer Leaders Institute Concussion Rule
California took a step forward yesterday when Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law limiting contact in American tackle football practices. One provision of the law could affect soccer, hockey and other contact sports as well as football. But it doesn’t go far enough.
California’s new law restricts full contact in high school and middle school tackle football practices to two sessions of 90 minutes each per week during the season. It prohibits these practices off season.
It also requires that any high-school or middle-school athlete (not just a football player) “suspected of sustaining a concussion or head injury” be removed from play until evaluated by a healthcare professional. Continue reading California’s New Sports Concussion Law Doesn’t Go Far Enough
As a soccer coach, I’ve often yelled at my players to head the ball before it reaches the ground.
And anyone who has watched the World Cup this year knows what a beautiful role heading plays in the game, with Robin van Persie’s goal in the Netherlands vs. Spain game a prime example.
But given the latest medical reports, I’m beginning to wonder how much I should push my team of 16-year-olds to hit the ball with their heads. Today, former U.S. women’s team star Brandi Chastain joined a couple of nonprofit advocacy groups in calling on new rules to restrict the use of heading among young players.
“I believe that the benefits of developing heading skills as children are not worth the thousands of additional concussions that youth soccer players will suffer,” said Chastain in a press release.
Continue reading Does Soccer Heading Cause Brain Damage?
I used to love tackle football. Big for my age, I enjoyed the collision with other bodies. I never played on a team, just with a bunch of high school friends. We had no helmets or pads. We couldn’t hit each other too hard, or we’d get hurt ourselves, and we certainly never used our heads as weapons.
I wonder what would be the incidence of concussion now if that’s how people played competitive football. Studies in rugby have generally shown that helmets don’t prevent concussion in that sport.
The research on concussions is pretty mixed as it is. I covered an interesting study on this for Medscape and Healthline when I was in New Orleans in March for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual meeting. Gregory W. Stewart, chief of physical medicine and rehabilitation at Tulane University School of Medicine told me high school football players he studied didn’t seem to be sustaining serious injuries.
Tracking 1,289 Louisiana high school football players from 1997 to 2000, he and his colleagues found that the more time the teenagers spent on the field, the better they did on tests of their mental abilities.
The finding contradicts earlier reports of brain damage in football players at all levels of the sport. “The concussive forces may not be quite as bad as we think,” he said. Continue reading How We Can Stop Football Concussions
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