Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE)

Throughout the years in sports, many athletes have come down with and are still continuing to be diagnosed with brain altering diseases such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis and Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. These life altering diseases are now known to originate from multiple minor concussions. Over the years, these diseases have become greatly known in the sports industry and to its audience. Since professionals now know what these contact sports can cause they are making changes to the uniforms and rules for some sports. Despite this, some fans of these sports are upset with the changes because they believe these new rules are changing the sport. The other half believes contact sports should overall be changed to provide safety to the …show more content…
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy broken down can be defined as a re-occuring injury that afflicts the structure of one’s brain. This neurodegenerative disease is caused by repeated concussions and head trauma throughout a person’s life. Although an individual can be diagnosed with CTE due to repeated brain injuries, it can also be genetically inherited. When a person is diagnosed with CTE, it is because as the brain deteriorates, it starts to produce an excessive amount of tau. Tau is a protein which lines up in the inside of a nerve cell to stabilize and regulate the cell. When a huge amount of these proteins are produced they make up a unique pattern throughout the brain. In the early stages of CTE, some ailments include: memory loss, difficulty in controlling erratic and impulsive behavior, impaired judgement, and a gradual onset of dementia. These ailments can eventually lead up to more serious illnesses like Alzheimer's, parkinsons, huntingtons disease, or even ALS. All of these progressive diseases are types of CTE’s because they cause the brain to slowly deteriorate by attacking the nervous system, and each of these diseases contains the toxic protein Tau. The most common type of people diagnosed with CTE are athletes. Athletes are more likely to be diagnosed with this disease than other people because of their long histories of repeated head trauma throughout the …show more content…
If the industry starts changing the rules to certain sports such as these, then the overall spirit of the game will be lost. As neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS, and CTE’s are becoming more widely known to the sport community, it would be better if they educated the athletes on all the possible risks there is when participating in a contact sport. This allows them to be aware of all the possible outcomes when participating in an impact sport, but also allowing them to decide for themselves if they are willing to take this risk. For those athletes who decide to still take part in impact sports, even after being warned of all the possible results, it gives them time to start saving and preparing if they do end up getting a degenerative disease. In addition, the industry should also take into consideration some of the most dangerous aspects of impact sports, and tweaking them to be more safe for the players. Overall, the sports industry should not drastically change any of today’s sports by creating new rules. If the industry overviewed every possible negative outcome with the players instead, sports would still remain interesting, and intense for their

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