Disturbing
I would normally save this for Friday, but it was so interesting that I couldn't wait. Apparently, Lou Gehrig might not have died from the disease named after him:Gehrig’s demise — and that of some other athletes and soldiers given a diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease — might have been catalyzed by injuries only now becoming understood: concussions and other brain trauma.
...Doctors at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Bedford, Mass., and the Boston University School of Medicine, the primary researchers of brain damage among deceased National Football League players, said that markings in the spinal cords of two players and one boxer who also received a diagnosis of A.L.S. indicate that those men did not have A.L.S. at all. They had a different fatal disease, doctors said, caused by concussionlike trauma, that erodes the central nervous system in similar ways.
Given the research that has emerged in the last five years regarding brain trauma in NFL athletes after repeated concussions, it's not surprising that there are other forms of collateral damage. But now it seems like the consequences can be even grimmer and more frightening.
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