“They Basically Reset My Brain” | Hacker News Reader

“They Basically Reset My Brain”

theplayerstribune.com

424 pointsaburan28140 comments

I am a geek, always have been. But my dad was an all state football player and a golden gloves boxer in the Army. Despite my "best efforts" I was muscular, and was (for real) forced to play football against my wishes. I played for 6 years, and finally stopped after an injury that crushed vertebra in my lower spine. Healing from that injury, I went from a weight of 210 to 135, and required therapy to learn to walk again. I took me 10 years after that before I was physically active again. Reading this article is reading symptoms I have. I think I need to go to this clinic...

I played 5 years of football in middle/high school as a defensive and offensive tackle. I played hard and hit hard but fortunately never had a serious injury. The only one I had was a torn rotator cuff in the last game of my senior year. I was ok with that because it got me out of wrestling camp.

I didn't want to play at first, and was forced in 9th grade (2nd year). Apparently my grades were better when I was busy after school. I got to like it after I improved.

I'm also a geek; have been since 3rd grade. I'm glad I did it though, it gave me much confidence and it's good to work and excel at completely different disciplines. It also showed me what hard work really feels like. As one coach said, if you can make it through practices, you can make it through anything. That's stayed with me and helped me get through a lot.

Go check out the clinic. At least get an evaluation. I wasn't aware these sort of things were treatable. After reading of all the problems with concussions that can affect any level of player, it would be silly not to, especially if you are experiencing symptoms. Your weight loss is startling. Good luck.

Good luck buddy, I'm rooting for you.

Are you back to a more balanced weight ? By physically active you mean soft sports or just able to leave the house without worry ?

Thanks to my wife, I work out 5 days a week now. It was a month of walking before I could run more than a block, but within a year I was jogging beside her for two miles five days a week. I'm at 165-170 now, with a real ease at bulking, which I don't really want. I saw chiropractors and acupuncturists quite a bit for the first 5 years I was active again. As my health returned to more-or-less athlete level my back / vertebra / neck and hips issues reduced and only happen if I miss workouts for more than 3 days. It's actually amazing what happens when I can't workout: not only do multiple joints slip, but my mental state just crashes. I can't code, can barely read, irritation at the tiniest things, pretty much a tunnel vision of perception takes place. I recognize the state now, get some protein and find a way to get a cardio hit that makes me pant, hard. That will head off a crash, both mental and my joints slipping. In many ways, I'm glad to be alive now, as places like this clinic are starting to appear. Previously, an injury such as mine put people into a disability state for the rest of their lives. Today, the dynamic nature of our bodies and advances in medical technology have brought forward a strong recovery attitude for many previously hopeless situations.

I remember feeling so much joint "safety" when working out. Everything seemed to fit and lock into place much better.

It seems that your mind is a bit stuck though. Having to exercise to be able to be "happy" in a way.

I find it interesting that at the end he doesn't blame american football in itself for the negative long term effects in his health as I thought he was heading to. He ends up (spoilers alert) coaching football.

I myself do not have a strong opinion on the matter of the ethics of creating a billionaire business around a game that is so dangerous to everyone that plays it seriously, from high school to pros. I am instinctively against, but as long as the issues are clear, transparent and everyone involved have all access to information needed to do their own informed choices, it seems correct.

That said, a very brave and insightful tale on how these personal struggles are. Very well written too. And glad to know that there are effective treatments out there that can help this kind of health problems.

>He ends up (spoilers alert) coaching football.

That is actually really sad.

Motor sport used to be very deadly half a century ago, and it took hard work from drivers to change that. Drivers that were often ridiculed for talking about the need for safety. Now professional motor sport is surprisingly safe, just take Scott Dixons crash at Indy 500 yesterday from which he escaped unscathed.

Football players have to demand their safety is taken seriously before any positive change is going to happen to the sport.

I think it's going to take more than just the players demanding their safety, mainly because as this article notes, it's not going to happen on it's own.

Why not align the incentives? Fans of the game should be putting pressure on the coaches about ensuring that their favorite players aren't injured, coaches should be pressuring the association to force better safety systems so their players don't get removed from the game, the contracts with players should value their long-term abilities more than their short-term wins, the association can start including more and more safety requirements and rules to make sure that the fans keep watching for their favorite stars.

This kind of thing needs to be attacked at all angles, make everyone involved WANT better safety by making it make beneficial to everyone involved.

I'm totally on board with you. But I think unfortunately that it has to start with the athletes, as they have most skin in the game.

In the documentary The Killer Years about the safety of old grand prix racing there is a clip with a fan. She is asked who her favourite driver is, and her answer is that he is dead. But she was still at a race supporting the sport as it was.

Fans might dislike loosing their favourite players. But for fans it is ultimately entertainment. So if your favourite player is injured/dies you feel sad, pick a new favourite and move on. You don't start investing your life in sport politics. It is compounded by safety measures often, at the face of it, makes things less extreme in a sport. And fans love the extreme and extraordinary.

For coaches and contracts, profit motives works against any bettering from their side. Why use money on safety, when you have a long line of young players ready to step up and carry on.

There is only so much safety when you're talking about 300 pounds meeting 250 pounds. The problem with football is physics.

Then change the rules of the game.

Racing did it, they regulated the max amount of fuel, they reduced the top speeds, they added safety barriers, etc...

Do it with football. Change their gear, change the allowed "hits", remove their cleats, etc... I don't actually watch football so I'm not sure what would help or wouldn't, but don't act like this is just impossible to resolve.

Yeah, people would probably hate these kinds of solutions right now, but if you get the public opinion on your side, and you start moving in that direction people will change, they will realize being able to watch a safer form of football with their favorite players in it beats being able to watch "current football" but with all their favorite players horribly injured with their lives ruined.

This is happening, although not as much as it could and probably should be. One example is moving kickoffs to a higher yard line so that the chance of a touchback (no return) is greater. Since kickoff returns are some of the more dangerous plays, it lessens the times returns actually happen. Helmet to helmet collision rules are another example. So is the rule for the horse collar tackle. Things are changing, but perhaps not enough or fast enough. Further, as a huge fan, these rules are minor changes and do not at all detract from the game, IMO.

I really don't know anything about American football, but in Rugby a lot of work has gone into this kind of thing. You can't tackle a player who has jumped to catch the ball until his feet touch the ground. If you pick a player up, you are responsible for putting them down. High tackles (around the neck) or not attempting to wrap your arms around a player when (so you 'clothes-line them) you tackle is much heavily penalized. All of these will result in 10 minutes in the sin-bin at least, maybe bans after the game. All head injuries result in the player being sent for 'assessment' by a doctor during the game, and a concussion protocol which enforces long breaks from the game. With regards to American football I have two questions

1) Is the impact to the brain higher because of the protective equipment? Would people tackle as ferociously without it? You are allowed very little of that gear in Rugby. Head clashes in particular are rare in Rugby, without the helmet you put your head to the side of someone when you tackle!

2) American football players seem to carry a lot of body mass for fast people. Is it possible that their advanced sports science is a bit too pharmaceutical in nature? I wouldn't want to suggest anything, but is there a chance steroid use is widespread? If this is the case then clamping down here would presumably lessen the hits?

It's likely that a bit of the size /bulking up is steroid based, but a lot more is just based on the relative size of the population pool and the kinds of exercise and diet regimens used with a focus on size and burst speed. Where some sports will stop at a certain level then focus on stamina and maintenance, US football may keep pushing for more bulk.

How much time would the average player actually spend on the pitch in American Football? It seems a lot of sprints and changes. Rugby players play for 80 minutes with one half-time break. I'm guessing that produces a more compromised physique.

> 1) Is the impact to the brain higher because of the protective equipment?

Yes.

> Would people tackle as ferociously without it?

No.

Back in the day, some ~100 years ago, American football wore leather "helmets", which weren't hard helmets as we think of them today.

From time to time, a player would die from a skull fracture after a rough tackle. Then they implemented hard helmets to prevent people from dying.

The unintended consequences of that was it allowed for rougher tackles and repetitive, regular brain trauma.

Same thing happened with boxing. Back in bare-knuckle days, human fists couldn't last too long against the skull. After they introduced gloves to protect hands and have the fights last longer, the weakest link became the brain.

My understanding for point #1 above is that the tackles are extremely violent and therefore the need for heavy helmets, not the other way around. The things you describe in the first paragraph as being illegal in rugby are all legal in American football (with the exception of grabbing the neck/head itself or a helmet to helmet collision; those are illegal though they still happen). There are frequent collisions with players who are not moving, players in the air, and players moving in opposite directions. There are also frequent gang tackles. Legs go one way, upper body another, and head another. Also, players are frequently running at top speed / acceleration when they make / get tackled. Not really sure how that compares to rugby. It's a sport I'd love to get into but I don't fully understand. As for #2, I wouldn't be surprised if there is widespread steroid use, but I don't know for sure.

Interestingly most of the things I described as illegal, became illegal in the last 20 years. Tackling at top speed, in groups, etc is all fair game in Rugby, and frequent. But since you are not wearing a helmet, you put your head to the side of a player when you tackle! As for getting into Rugby, there are a lot of subtle rules around contact which can make it seem quite complicated and inaccessible.

In the UK Rugby fills an interesting social space. In southern England Rugby Union is a game played by posh schools (and indeed named after one), and remained amateur(ish) until 1995, in Wales it was a working class game and a way-of-life. In northern England they play a completely different game called 'Rugby League' which was always professional, further north in Scotland they play rugby Union again. In Ireland again it is associated with posh schools and English occupation! Occasionally (as is the case this summer) all of the nations team up as the 'British and Irish Lions' to go and take on the mighty All-Blacks of New Zealand, or in other years Australia and South Africa. It does strike me that with several US sports you seem deprived of the drama of regular international competition...

I've definitely heard arguments along the lines of your (1) before. I personally think it's a promising route, but it would definitely need to be a slow one. Right now, if you just took everyone's gear away, the players would probably end up killing each other. Not purposefully; just out of rote training and muscle memory. It would be good to introduce the behavioral bans first, then eventually remove the gear.

Out of curiosity, how severe is the average injury in Rugby?

My general impression from playing a bit of Rugby and watching a fair but, with no statistical analysis at all..

I would say the most common injuries by far are related to muscle strains, tendons and ligaments etc like you could see in any sport. Cuts to the head are fairly common, as are the fabulous 'cauliflower ears' caused from bleeding inside your ear. But this is from being squashed and abraded, not hit. I haven't watched too much American football, but it seems a lot more stop-start, with considerably more changing of players. In Rugby you are running around for 80 minutes, so more athletic injuries rather than collision related. Perhaps having to pace yourself also lessens the hits? Spinal injuries seem very rare, and are much more likely due to some kind of contortion rather than impact.

Concussion does happen, but normally seems to be an accidental clash of heads or falling on a knee, perhaps. When it happened to me it was a result of me running to join a ruck (think lots of people pushing each other over a ball on the the floor after a player has been tackled), which kind of split in half and someones head slipped through to catch me in the face. In the top level, if the referee sees you suffer a head injury or get knocked out you are sent off to see the doctor for 10 minutes. If he suspects concussion you wont play again for two weeks. A Welsh international (George North, Wales is Rugby mad btw) got a concussion on his return from a concussion break and this resulted in him spending the best part of a year out of the game!

I don't think head on head hits are common at all. When you tackle in Rugby you have to attempt to wrap your arms around the player, and tackles are much more 'tacklers shoulder to midriff or legs'. I think being winded or hurting your stomach muscles is most likely. you certainly cannot tackle above shoulder high. Re: protective equipment, I wore non at all. Gum shields are common, as is electrical tape around your ears and some petroleum jelly on your eye-brows! Now a number of players where a 'scrum-cap' which is a close fitting lightly padded cloth device to help stop cuts and abrasion to your head. Professional players often wear a kind of shoulder pad designed to protect your collar bone, but it barely makes a dent in your shirt it is so small!

> "...is there a chance steroid use is widespread?"

Considering the level of competition in American football I would be surprised to find a significant number of players not taking steroids.

What kind of competition is that? Drug vs Drug? It is a bit like Robot-wars! Best technology wins. A decent drug testing regime could make a huge difference to the impact then...I thought anabolic steroids were completely trivial to test for.

On the "drug vs drug" question, are you implying that the competition is reduced to who takes the best or most drugs? I would have to disagree. These are professional; highly-trained athletes who work long and hard to be the best at what they do. Taking drugs makes them better, but they don't work any less hard. Drugs just raise the standards a little more.

As a general rule, the more elite your level of something, the lesser the difference in ability between you and your peers. Also, at the elite levels you get diminishing returns on your "investment" of more training.

Thus, at the level of, say, the NFL, can you really imagine an athlete turning down a drug that will boost his performance by, say, 5%, when he is training 100 hours per week to improve by 1%?

Also, athletes who do not take steroids are probably weeded out at the high school and college levels, so by the time you make it to the NFL you probably have few, if any, "natural" players.

W.r.t. steroid testing, I could be wrong but last time I read on the subject the tests used were easily circumvented.

They should just play flag football and skip that tackling stuff.

The history of the rules of football is a constant struggle between making the game less deadly while preserving the inherent bloodlust in it. Fans and players want the game to be violent. People were clamouring for safer rules from the very beginning in the history of the game. Concessions have been made, little by little. It's a huge struggle and debate each time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_American_football#V...

One idea I've heard would be to increase the number of games in a season (without significantly increasing the calendar length).

More games means coaches have to optimize for not injuring players.

More games = more potential for injury. People need time to rest and recover after those games, Monday & Thursday night games are already extremely demanding on their bodies.

Sports that play more games do naturally cycle through rosters of players to let some rest, and prevent injury to optimize for healthy players. Look at basketball. It's not uncommon to see star players not play for a few games in a row. With so many games played, a few games isn't statistically as much as a single football game in the normal season. At 16 games for a normal season, a single football game makes a huge difference, and it can be hard to sit out an overworked player when that may make the difference between a win and a loss.

Comparing injury rates between sports without acknowledging the fundamental differences in the games and how physical they are is an incorrect way to view the problem.

Attempting to force teams to bench their best players for injury prevention / adding games to the schedule that will be played by the bench players will also lower the quality of pro games, and turn off even more fans to the NFL - which is already not doing great.

I wasn't comparing injury rates, I was comparing the willingness of a coach to sit out a player, and attributing some level of influence on that decision based on how many games are in a season (and thus how important every individual game is).

Additionally, nobody was talking about forcing coaches to bench players, we're talking about setting up the system such that coaches feel it's in the best interest of the team to occasionally bench (rest) players. Also, you don't send an entire team of lower quality players out at once, you cycle them through such that you're still always playing at a high level, just maybe not the peak possible (which you often aren't because of injuries anyway). There may be additional benefit to running more games when it comes to fan viewing and involvement, I'm not sure, but there's probably good data on it for many other sports.

Grand Prix racing involves a 1500 pound car hitting a wall at +200 mph, with fuel. Death used to be guaranteed during the course of a season, but now any serious injury is rare.

Dismissing safety as impossible "because physics" is just silly. Technical solutions are the easy part. It's the culture change that is difficult.

You might be surprised, while mandating full exoskeletons is off the table there is quite a bit more we could do,

You can for example mandate braces which would prevent most joint injury. The added weight while minor slightly reduces performance so it can't catch on at an individual or team level.

There seems to be a fair amount of body armour (helmets, padding etc) involved already. I'd imagine there was a lot of resistance when that was introduced, but it's normal now.

To a certain extent sure, but there's a full spectrum. Football does have safer rules than it did a couple decades ago, so obviously there is and has been room for change. Rugby has similar sized guys (not quite as big, but big) and don't even wear protective gear (not that rugby players are immune to concussions). There's a big spectrum of rules in similar games, and football is still pretty far on the dangerous end of that spectrum.

One of the issues with football is that because they're wearing helmets they think that contact on the head is safe. It's incredibly not.

Rugby Union does a lot to regulate how contact happens. Rugby League (actually a different sport) has a combination of the lack of protection of Union and the outright violence of American Football. I don't follow League enough to know whether the lack of protection tends to lessen injuries. I understand it to be a game with a short shelf life for top players.

> Football players have to demand their safety is taken seriously before any positive change is going to happen to the sport.

Keep in mind that there are many viewers who are not really interested in the sport itself but explosions, injuries and other accidents. For them, the lack of safety is a "feature." You can easily check the view counts of videos for "big football hits" or "nascar crashes" on youtube to see that it's not a small audience.

There's also the fact that having additional protection makes people feel more confident and take more risks than they normally would. With all the additional padding, there are a lot fewer minor injuries but more of the serious (and less frequent) injuries.

> Football players have to demand their safety is taken seriously before any positive change is going to happen to the sport.

In the NFL, the players don't have much authority past their players union, and it's been documented that most of the players who hold power are the NFL stars, who's comp structures don't incentivize participation in CBA's.

Pro Football players live on average more than the average american male.

https://blogs.cdc.gov/niosh-science-blog/2012/01/30/nfl/

Anyone see the movie Concussion with Will Smith? It's all about this.

Boxers still coach boxing though. This is just a smaller version of the mentality of people watching gladiators.

Justin Wilson wasn't as lucky a couple of years ago. He was a great guy and had two young kids. Tragic.

Here's some more articles about football health effects:

– "Football, dogfighting and brain damage"[1] by Malcolm Gladwell.

– "Football continues to dominate high school sports despite concussion risk"[2]

– "What Happened Within This Player’s Skull"[3], which examines acceleration/etc from each hit

[1]:http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play

[2]:http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/09/08/football-continues-...

[3]:https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/01/09/sports/footba...

"League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis" covered this well... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/

Here are some interesting perspectives from NFL players on that thought:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2705935-joe-thomas-says-h...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/sports/wp/2016/06/07/chr...

Thanks! Impressed how smart and well articulated these players are. Impressive interview from this Chris Borland.

I am used to follow soccer. Soccer players in Brazil don't usually finish school properly and come from very poor background where education is awful even if you finish school. It is a sad state of basic understanding of the world and autonomous thinking.

In the NFL they've all gone to college, and the game selects for mental ability quite strongly. They'll tell you the locker room is not unlike any other professional workplace (except perhaps more fun and with more unity), and while I've never been there, I believe it.

Arian Foster was on the Joe Rogan podcast a while back, they were talking a lot about head trauma, how it affects people and how they're dealing with it in NFL. Very interesting to watch/listen to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neVsniQdOnM

> He ends up (spoilers alert) coaching football.

Jesus. It's like one of those generational cycle of abuse stories.

Eh, we don't know that. Maybe he goes back, trains players better to avoid injuries, and prioritizes their safety.

> ...as long as the issues are clear, transparent and everyone involved have all access to information needed to do their own informed choices, it seems correct.

That's a tall order though. I don't think all those conditions are necessarily being met!

I'm 33 and played sports my whole life.

This includes:

- Hundreds of competitive basketball games - youth, AAU, high school, etc.

- Thousands of running miles - including completing (and winning) trail/mountain ultra marathons

- Dozens of soccer games at mixed levels

- Training and sparring at a boxing gym for 4-5 days a week for a year

And none of this has caused any major injury.

The two years I played high school football? A separated shoulder, and a torn MCL. Not to mention having my bell rung many times. I could measure the amount of football games I actually played in like under an hour worth of actual time.

I'm from Brazil, a soccer crazy country. All of my friends that continued to play soccer for fun started to get injuries after they were 35yo.

Soccer has funny "simulation" thing that professional players often do. It was funny until I realized from short article on it, that players have to do that when sports game turns into potentially harmful attacks. Lots of them simulate too much of course, but if they'd never do that, injuries were unavoidable. It looks like non-maleworthy clowning, but actually it saves them from partial life-long disabilities way before these happen. Expression is there only to get an attention. It has nothing to do with cheating when done at the right times.

Amateur soccer is mostly played without a referee -so it usually doesn't punish aggressive players-, and there are no paramedics next to the field to immediately treat any injury/pain, plus little to no aftercare for the muscles/ligaments. So what I mean is that professional and amateur are a lot different, at least in football soccer.

But of course as you get old your body is gonna break more easily, that's what aging after 25 means: decay.

And then there are amateur and amateur games: ones where people take it too seriously (and get hurt) and the ones where everybody is just to enjoy. Do a rough play in the last one and your punishment is to never be invited again by the same people.

And I thought the shoulder thing would protect.. now I wonder if it's not worsening things.

"now I wonder if it's not worsening things"

I wouldn't be surprised if it does. If I remember correctly, a boxer hits harder with a gloved hand than without. Weirdly, this is generally because with the glove on, a harder punch doesn't hurt the hand as much than a punch without it. I'd not be surprised if it is similar in football.

It's the gloves and the wraps. They let you hit the hard parts of your opponent's body with less risk of breaking your hands.

I believe gloves weren't for opponent safety but for the show, it made people able to fight longer before hand fractures. The wraps clearly make your fist stronger.

As a person who works with their mind all day long, concussions scare me. They scare me more than injuries to my hands do. I took a good hit to my head in a really slow lowside on my motorcycle (I, to this day, don't remember the incident itself, but I'm pretty sure it was a combination of loose gravel and rolling onto the throttle early). For months after that hit, I had more trouble than usual understanding complex concepts; had trouble building that mental model which lets us work.

Concussions result from your brain rattling around inside your skull like Jello. It's hard to write them off as minor inconveniences when you look at it like that. I recommend watching the "beer bottle to the head" episode of Mythbusters; those slow motion shots are scary (though exaggerated).

If you're still at risk for getting a concussion and worry about your future career etc, it might be worthwhile getting an insurance just like this guy did. I mean there's more in the world than what you're currently doing, but it may not be as profitable.

How exactly can you get insurance for a concussion as a software developer? How would you even prove that you can't do the job anymore?

I am also interested in the answer to this question. I am curious about something that isn't 'life insurance', but more 'something bizarre happened to my brain so I can't function at a high-level anymore'-insurance?

I am a freelancer, so I need to protect myself much more than a regular European employee would.

On top of regular public healthcare and pension, I have three policies:

1) sickness daily allowance (the dictionary says this is what it's called in English). This will kick in after 20 (half sum) and 40 (full sum) days of continued (but temporary) inability to work, and should be enough to keep the lights on. IIRC it stops paying if I turn out to be permanently unable to work.

2) occupational disablement insurance (again, according to dictionary). This will pay out a monthly allowance for the rest of my life if it is determined that I am permanently unable to perform my profession for health reasons (including mental health).

3) "dread disease" insurance, which pays a six-figure lump sum if I contract one of a finite list of common dangerous diseases (cancer, heart attack, stroke, ...) Keep in mind that I won't need this money for healthcare as I would be protected by health insurance. This is really to protect my family's and my lifestyle and future.

BTW both 2) and 3) have a contractual clause to pay me out first, and then go to court if they disagree with the assessment. That way their lawyers can't just starve me while I enjoy my chemo or something.

Talk to your insurance broker. They will have options for you.

Disability insurance.

You stop working, whether voluntarily or not, due to an injury.

It's not that simple unfortunately. Some disabilities are "invisible" (as in "we don't know how to measure it with medical equipment"), which brings the challenges to a whole new level as the patient cannot prove that s/he suffers from that disability: the patient may simply be "making it up" to get disability pay. I wish I didn't know this all too well.

As for proof, I don't know how assessment works, but there are types of income protection insurance that do cover accident, injury, illness.

Wouldn't generic long-term-disability cover concussion?

Generic own-occupation LTD certainly would. The own-occupation part is important, because without it most LTD policies only cover you if you can't work at all. Even then, quite a few generic LTD policies only covers own-occupation for a few years. Own-occupation to social security normal retirement age coverage is surprisingly expensive.

I would expect there to be quite a bit of moral hazard involved, therefore it would have to be expensive otherwise insurance companies would be taking a loss.

Might be worth not riding a motorcycle.

I've done more than 100,000km, NOT-accident-free, on motorcycles. I'd rather give up my life than give up riding one. I only fear a life where an injury disables me and prevents me from riding. I don't fear death.

If you love riding a motorcycle, the risk is a cost you accept. I know the risks and I try to minimise them by riding defensively and riding with full gear all the time. I do not kid myself, however, that this will save me if there's a crash on a motorway.

However, I take this risk because I get so much joy out of the activity.

Ride safe fellow riders!

It's absolutely worth it.

I got hit head-on, suffered several broken bones, now have a bunch of metal in my body, and couldn't walk for a few months (and I know several people who have been killed), but I got right back to riding as soon as I could.

I think you left out the part where it brings enough joy and excitement to your life that you feel it is worth the risk of dying.

This is a valid personal choice. But with what you've written above, you're just convincing me to never ride a motorcycle. This is coming from a bicyclist who enjoys good downhills on my road bike at speeds in excess of 40mph (fast for a bicycle and little armor). So I get the thrill, but I've never experienced the number of issues and extreme physical trauma that I read about people on motorcycles.

What happened to me could easily happen to a bicyclist. I wasn't going that fast, maybe 5-8 MPH in a turn from one road to another. It was an unlucky fall. I had a full-face helmet, full riding armor, and the bike was in great repair.

I daresay a bicyclist would have come off worse than I did (hello, road rash) - especially if they hadn't worn a helmet (Montana doesn't have a helmet law for anyone over 18).

EDIT: The risk of dying is higher than that of being in an automobile by the pure statistics of it, but by riding smart you can easily bring them down significantly - there's a lot of idiot riders out there wearing flipflops and shorts, with no helmet to pump those statistics up.

Wear a helmet. Wear leathers or their synthetic equivalent. Wear armor to protect your joints (usually built into riding gear). Keep your bike in good maintenance. Don't ride beyond your limits.

Yes, I feel a bit hypocritical saying this after discussing my own concussion, but damn it, it's fun. As freeing as a bicycle, but faster.

And if you're going to ride like an idiot, please be sure you're registered as an organ donor. I know I've heard of sport bikes being referred to as "donor cycles" (according to the med student relating it) due to the number of young bodies in relatively good shape except for massive head trauma that they saw.

Most fun from motorcycles comes from accelerating and turning. You can accelerate and turn on something other than a motorcycle and preferably not around cars.

Most of the problems encountered by motorcyclists are encountered by bicyclists. Cagers who aren't paying attention, gravel on the corner, hitting stationary objects with your rag-doll body, and overestimating your skill. Motorcycles just add more speed to the equation, and have to play in the same arena as cars.

    Motorcycles just add more speed to the equation, 
    and have to play in the same arena as cars.

aren't these two points a pretty big deal?

Key takeaway:

> They had all kinds of neuro training exercises and routines they put me through, but a lot of it was centered around meditation and intense emotional therapy sessions. The exercises and therapy were to stimulate the parts of my brain that were running slow, and the mediation was to slow down the parts of my brain that were going a mile a minute.

I guess that is how they reset his brain. I need the same thing. Three years and still recovering, I have counted five bottlenecks in getting there.

1. Fear of memories, 2. Ego/arrogance, 3. Imbalanced thought pattern, 4. Mental unrest, 5. Lack of stimulating activities.

Now that I think of it, the author has described the same thing. Meditation has worked wonders. I have combined it with philosophy and reasoning. I am also trying to identify and reduce areas of ego. Stimulating activities is a recent discovery but I am still working at finding stuff for it.

And the results are interesting: before my mind was on infinite replay, then had a hard time remembering stuff, and now memories from when I was one years old are coming back like it happened yesterday. That never happened!

Do you have a routine you follow? Any chance of getting a more detailed account of what activities you're doing for each?

I'll second this, especially the bit about bringing memories back. I haven't had much head trauma but don't really have any memories from longer than 5 years previous.

This is difficult to answer in a post like this, but I will try. The problem is that for every technique or idea I put here, there will be a dozen who disagree, but I won't care.

Meditation: Put yourself in an uncomfortable balancing position, like tip toeing. Any trembling is a symptom of subconscious issues, so clear your mind and you will be able to balance without much effort. Add stress to the balancing act to uncover the more subtle subconscious problems. This should begin the healing process. The issues were pulling at you even when you least realize it and cause much damage and tension to the brain. Meditation reduces bottlenecks 1, 3, 4.

Philosophy/Reasoning: Watching dog whisperer, I am learning calm assertive energy techniques. Reduce your hyper self. Don't take action from a fearful, frustrated, angry, or low-self estem position. Because then you are in a compromised state. Don't react, and if you do, know that nothing you do when you are reacting counts. Reaction is not bad by itself. It just causes actions that would not have happened in a calm state. In moments of a highly reactive state, remove yourself from the situation and clear your mind. Try to figure what frustrates you or makes you fearful and disassemble it into small manageable parts that you reason through one by one.

Reduce your ego: Meditation is clearing your mind. Philosophy and Reasoning loosens the viscosity of the toxic liquid. Ego is the shell that protects it and keeps you in an entangled state. Although ego is normal and makes you human, too much ego puts you into a state of arrogance. Loosen the arrogance. Eliminate the arrogance. Remind yourself that nothing you do is amazing and all that you have is a priveledge and was given to you and was never yours to begin with. Then reduce your ego. Think of all your skills and abilities as something you have done a thousand times, a million times, and it lost its awe. Do you have ego in your ability to walk? So why do you have ego in everything else?

Stimulating activities: I am new at this, so I am still trying to figure this one out. PH.D. research stuff and logic gets me excited. (It also brings back ego, arrogance, fear, etc.) Problem solving gets me excited. Being better than everyone else gets me excited. (THE conundrum!). If I can preserve the first three steps, or the longer I can mantain it, the more I benefit from a stimulating activity.

So that is my attempt and my mind is somewhat healing. I hope you make it out alright.

A few things on the side: a messy room, or a messy essay, or a messy thought process is a reflection of your state of mind. Coming to terms with your inabilities brings rest to your mind. Collapsing from a highly skilled intellectual position means you have to rebuild yourself up. If the skills and confidence you developed was scaffolded with one on top of another, then your recovery will be painful. Don't scaffold again this time. Hope all this helps.

Very interesting, thanks for writing it up.

Did you learn this approach through trial and error or were you following some teachings?

> Stimulating activities is a recent discovery but I am still working at finding stuff for it.

Listen to music and learn an instrument, play chess, learn new languages, memory exercises, physical exercise, meditation. I think that hits most of the high points I've read about cognitive stimulation.

Glad to see The Players Tribune on here. If you haven't read it before, it has some amazing content - not just from pro athletes, but college athletes you've never heard of.

The perspectives are often fascinating. Here's another great one from Bronson Koenig, a Native American and one hell of a basketball player, on his experience at Standing Rock: https://www.theplayerstribune.com/bronson-koenig-wisconsin-b....

Have never seen the site before, but +1 to this after browsing casually.

It's great to see profiles, nuance, perspectives, and discussion from players - not the league or talking heads on ESPN who won't even really touch a lot of issues with or tangential to sports with a 10-foot pole. Sports don't have to be separated from other parts of culture.

Yeah! That site is a treasure. Everything there is very well-written, and would (I think) be interesting even to those uninterested in sports.

FWIW, some articles are written by the athletes themselves, and others are ghostwritten in close conjunction with the athletes. (I have no problem with this at all; it's still the athletes' stories)

A friend of mine has been working on an app (based on research from Dr. David Eagleman) to help you track any cognitive declines from, among other things, participating in contact heavy sports.

One use is for coaches to mandate players retake it periodically, so players can stop playing before the point of no return.

https://braincheck.com/

https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/27/braincheck-raises-3-millio...

http://www.tmc.edu/innovation/companies/brain-check/

Interesting, I wonder if this could also be applicable to that other article regarding sleep deprivation.

The entire history of the NFL and concussions is incredibly damning, including the league denying the damage concussions cause and the league buying their way into medical journals to push "studies" that supported that position. If you want to know more "League of Denial" is a phenomenal book. PBS also created a two hour documentary with the authors that has the same name.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Denial

> So today, I put on football camps and work with kids in the small town of Aledo, Texas, where I live, and I work with my own boys, coaching them up, too.

This is a fantastic story, and a wonderful recovery, but getting to the end of it and coming across this line... it's great that he's helping coach these kids, but it would be even better to steer them in a direction where they won't end up with the same story, or worse. Never making it, but still having the same symptoms. There are other sports, way less impact.

I grew up playing soccer, and even there they, at least in the US, as I understand it from my nephews, heading the ball is illegal until high school.

Concussions are problems in all sports, but American Football is just about the worst, and on top of that does so much other damage from the heavy hits. Concussions are perhaps the most prevalent and biggest problem.

I played a bunch of high school football, and had a very severe back fracture that I'll be living with forever. I'm functional, but have to keep very on top of things to not suffer chronic pain.

I used to be absolutely obsessed about football, and getting used to not playing anymore was a real challenge to my identity.

I look back on it now though (that was > 20 years ago now), and I wouldn't choose to play the game again. It was an amazing way to push myself, and I learned a lot about character and determination. The cost really isn't worth it though, and I've seen a bunch of people pay even higher costs than me.

I also think - if I had kids, I wouldn't want them to play the game. It's just too dangerous, and that danger is built into how the game is played. People in the business often say "don't hit with your head" but watch any game, and you'll see lots of head contact on every play. The cumulative effects of that alone, not even counting the big hits - I think is quite substantial.

Unfortunately I don't see the game or the protective gear actually changing much to lessen the degree to which these (predictable) injuries happen. And to a great extent, more protective equipment means people just hit that much harder - often times still injuring, but in ways that are harder to see.

> I grew up playing soccer, and even there they, at least in the US, as I understand it from my nephews, heading the ball is illegal until high school.

Maybe in a Rec league, but if it's any level of competitive play then they'd have been heading the ball since grade school.

Right. I found this dissonance a really unexpected ending to the story.

That agent is a hero for insisting on that insurance policy.

This kind of thing (a friendly intervention) seems to happen more often than you'd think - Allen Iverson is still solvent only because his friends talked him into taking $30 million or so of his last shoe deal as a trust fund that he can't access until he's 55.

Quite a few negative reactions regarding the decision to go back to coaching in retirement. I think change has to start at the coaching level, as boycotting the sport will do little to change the status quo, especially in the immediate.

A few thoughts -

In my own experience in playing contact sports (lacrosse, not football), it's a trained behavior to shake off injuries, avoid trainers, and otherwise ignore your body's warnings of potential harm. This is taught by the coach [or worse, parents]. The encouragement to push yourself beyond natural limits only increases as you progress to the collegiate and professional levels.

The unfortunate effects of competition are that coaches skirt a dangerous line of balancing the star player[s] safety and winning the game, and this behavior is clear to the players lower in the depth chart who wish to become the next star.

Some of the more disturbing things openly shared were how to pass the concussion protocol, that coach will let you take off a week of practice after a hard head hit so don't go to the trainers, and to shake off any and all injuries as you will be rewarded for being tough. I, and any number of my ex-teammates, agree we experienced what are now known as "minor concussions" constantly throughout our season. Only major concussions would go reported. Being able to walk off the field typically meant you had only a minor injury, and could go back in once getting some wind.

The fact that so many are injured during practice goes to show, it's coming from the coach's inaction and not just during the heat of the game.

Under this light, I think Finley is taking a proactive approach to change by inserting himself on the front lines.

> This is taught by the coach

Absolutely. Personal experience FWIW -- 30 years ago, different sport (wrestling), different country, different culture, very low amateurish level, but typically the same attitude. First time I got a moderately serious injury (torn acromial ligament, couldn't move the arm for 6 months), I basically got yelled at by the coach saying either I continue to came to training and work with the other hand, or I split off. So the next time (I landed almost vertically on the top of my head instead of flatly on the back -- now he was afraid, but I was so proud of myself, didn't even want to interrupt the exercise.

Fast forward 30 years. I realise now that in some sports, people who didn't make it "to the top", are sometimes left with what seems like small stuff when you're 16 -- damaged teeth, torn ligaments, broken ribs -- but which age much, much worse than the rest of the body.

No one has mentioned the movie, Concussion, with Will Smith, who portray Dr. Bennet Omalu. According to wikipedia, he "was the first to discover and publish findings of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in American football players." Seeing the injuries dramatized, the effects those injuries have on football players, really drives home how serious concussions are.

Football ruins this guy's life and when he finally gets better he coaches kids' football. It sounds like he has an abusive relationship with football.

Multimillionaire retired at 27. I don't think you can call his life ruined.

I wonder how the health damage of sitting at a desk for years compares.

>I wonder how the health damage of sitting at a desk for years compares.

Not comparable, the only real risks of brain damage sustained while working a cushy software job are injuries sustained while commuting and reading really bad HN comments.

Working with legacy C++ code at work is a serious risk for my brain. It hurts physically to read some of these lines of code.

Money is no substitute for health. It will just sound like a "philosophical tidbit" until you get hit by a health issue for which you'd give everything you own to get rid of. Then you'll really understand the meaning of it: no matter how rich you are, you still can't have a decent quality of life.

It's not sitting that is the biggest damage but the amount of life lost doing things you don't care about as much as other things you could be doing with your life.

Insightful, depressing. I feel like you could make this into a motivational poster.

I'd rather have carpal tunnel than reduced brain function.

Comparing apples to oranges. One happened in the past and the other might happen in the future. Plus, there are exercises for problems with sitting, so one can continue to sit for a living and not experience any of those problems.

Buddy brain is priceless...

Coaching and proper equipment are important. The biggest thing is that the better the equipment gets the more comfortable players are trying to hit harder and faster.

Rugby matches are very rough with near constant collisions but no pads. I'd be really interested to see a comparison study between to two.

I played 6 years of rugby. I also played high school football. My position, lineman, in football was a pretty non-collision position and I never experienced any concussions.

In rugby, every position involves collision. As a backline player most of my job was to run, but there was no way of ever avoiding multiple collisions in a game. Less impactful then football for the reasons you mention, but more frequent. I know for certain that I've had (at-least) a few concussions in rugby. For instance, getting up from a hit and having no idea where you're at for a second, and then feeling the world morph back into you as if it were knocked right out.

Concussions are a big problem in rugby too, and they have only relatively recently realised the extent of the issue. The NFL may have swept the issue under the carpet for years, but everyone was burying their head in the sand until very recently in rugby - there have been multiple cases of players clearly getting knocked out and playing on after a short head injury assessment this decade.

There are many accounts of players saying they don't remember huge periods of matches. Shonatayne Hape gave a great interview which is absolutely terrifying, where he describes the effects and how it became progressively easier for him to lose consciousness to the point where he didn't even have to been hit in the head by the time he retired:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objecti...

Former UFC champion George Saint-Pierre has described in interviews how he basically loses consciousness for hours at a time, and doesn't know what happened. Like he'll come to and an entire day has passed. He suspects alien abductions (!), but there's no doubt this is brain trauma from all the hits to the head in MMA.

Concussion is a huge huge deal in rugby these days. Something like 50% of international matches see a player having to leave the field for a precautionary "head injury assessment". At junior levels players need to be immediately substituted if there is any suspicion of a head injury.

You don't hit opponents head with your head at rugby, so concussion is not so common. The most frecuent problem is spinal cord injuries in scrum[1], which year after year leaves some players paraplegic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(rugby_union)#Safety

A good friend of mine died a few months ago from ALS, clearly - also by his own reckoning - a delayed consequence from a severe car crash in his youth. "I was given an extra 29 years, I can't complain" he tapped out to me the last time I saw him, speechless and immobilised in a hospital bed.

There's a fairly well established correlation between head trauma and this abominable affliction. Why anyone voluntarily would throw themselves into that kind of risk is utterly beyond me.

But then, so is any kind of football, be it the US or the European kind.

Because a lot of these people grow up in poverty and a culture that tells them this is their best chance out. By the time they actually have a shot to do so, football is their entire life. It's easy to sit from a presumably educated and wealthy position and scoff at these people, but it's not going to lead you to any insights as to why it happens.

European football (soccer) is not comparable to the American kind in the amount of risk players are at - it may not be as safe as basketball or baseball, but it actively penalizes contact that may injure a player where as American football incorporate them into the game.

"But then, so is any kind of football, be it the US or the European kind."

How so?

Beyond me. Not understood. I don't get it. I don't get the attraction, the excitement, the hype. Which is all purely subjective, of course. I see two teams of idiots chasing a ball. Haven't they got better to do?

Can you even tell the difference between American football and association football (soccer)? Seems doubtful. You certainly have no basis to discuss the comparative risks between the two. Maybe the people that play these games don't want to sit around in front of a computer all day atrophying and getting fat and sick. Maybe they like to be healthy and have fun. That doesn't make them idiots. It just shows your intolerance to something that doesn't even affect you.

May I humbly suggest a basic course of reading comprehension?

You're the one that needs to learn how to write properly.

This appears to be similar to "Brainspotting", a technique that emerged from Dr David Grand's work with EMDR therapy. They're trying now to get funding for fMRI studies during treatments to better understand and possibly validate the treatment. The mode of operation appears to be increasing metabolic activity in certain areas of the brain for the purpose of enhancing processing/garbage collection.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...

From the Mayo clinics page on CTE

"CTE is a progressive, degenerative brain disease for which there is no treatment."

tl;dr: "Football gave me multiple concussions and severely broke my brain. Now I am seducing kids into the same passion for football that lead me to that point."

Wold be nice to have a submission title that actually says what the article is about.

I wonder if similar things (stimulating some parts of the brain and not others) can be done for other professions, such as coding where you are addicted to it, or maybe even the autism spectrum.

I really enjoy stories like this. Are there any place with more like it?

Well, the site it's on (The Players' Tribue) basically specializes in those.

What he has sounds like it is most likely https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalop...

I suffered 3 concussions in a 3 year period -- all from stupid accidents, not sports -- and the effects have persisted for years, even with various types of rehabilitation. It's very difficult to describe how a concussion changes a person. Of course, problems with balance and speech are obvious. But for me, the concussions also impacted my mind, my ability to think. I used to be able to read for an entire day, soaking up information. But now, it's like I hit a brick wall after a certain point, where it becomes impossible to proceed. I basically have a set amount that I can learn in one day -- whether it's the API for a library, the architecture of legacy code, etc.

Multitasking has become extremely difficult, even though it was never a problem for me before. It's a complete killer for my mind and it will exhaust it at the expense of the previously mentioned information-acquiring capacity very quickly. When I worked as a developer, trying to switch between multiple tickets between code reviews, conducting chats in multiple channels, and jumping back and forth between various programming languages was a huge sap upon my limited mental energy.

My first concussion wasn't too severe, but my second one was more so, as I probably was still healing from the first one. I had just come back from a break from work and didn't feel right in taking sick time. Compounding this, I was in the process of switching careers to become a developer and was studying very hard every night. I remember one night, about a week after my concussion, when I was writing some code. The pain in my head increased, until it became a pain of an intensity that I had never experienced before. This was probably my first experience of what would become many years of migraines... and this next part is probably unscientific, but I really felt that something "broke" at that point, as it signaled the start of many months of cognitive decline and emotional instability.

I sustained my third concussion when I felt pretty well healed from the second one. Not having learned my lesson, I didn't take much time off of work. While I didn't feel something "break" like the second time, I was working on a difficult project under a short time schedule, and I was worried about losing my first programmer job and the damage that could occur to my career if that were to happen. I made it through that project, but then new problems began to develop... and to persist. Two years later I still have many of the same problems. I wonder if my dedication to that job and love for programming have resulted in irreversible damage. It wasn't worth it.

Friends, we are all on this site because we are people who greatly use our minds. I want you all to remember that we each only get one brain, which is not only essential to our profession but which is the core of our personality, of who we are. The severity of impact is not associated with the severity of damage from a concussion, and experiencing one concussion makes you more prone to further concussions. My 3 dumb accidents have made the last 5 years of my life difficult in many ways, and have probably changed me for the rest of my life.

As such, I cannot condone willingly embarking upon an activity such as football which so clearly places one's mind at risk. To the author of this piece and to some who read it, football may be a game, but I think that our lives are more valuable than games to be played, than entertainment to be had. For every high profile recovery like this, there are countless children who are severely and permanently damaged for the sake of sport. Treasure your mind and the minds of your loved ones. And if you ever do suffer from a concussion, take complete and absolute rest, lest you jeopardize the healing process and find yourself with lifelong injury.

Hmm too bad that there are literally at least a billion people on earth with much more sad stories that didn't have a 10 mio. policy coverage for "when they can't do what they love to do" anymore, and also most people can't do what they love to do in the first place.

There is a name for all that, it's called "luxury problems". Like Paris Hilton telling us that her boyfriend threw her diamond thong out of the window and she can't find it anymore. Terrible.

Happiness and hardship are only relatively quantifiable. You can't draw the conclusion that he had less of a struggle simply because he has money.

I'll probably get downvoted for this, but somebody needs to say it: you're an a-hole.

1. I don't see this athlete claiming his story is comparable to the plight of refugees or anything like that.

2. Nobody is requiring anybody to read his story; he's simply making it available to anybody that is interested.

3. His story is relevant to millions of (professional, amateur, and occasional) athletes around the world... and millions more with traumatic brain injury.

4. He does have millions of dollars, but a lot of people with chronic illness would gladly trade all that money for a clean bill of health.

5. Consider that when you hear figures like "ten million dollars" that the player may receive only half of that, when taxes and agents' fees are deducted.

6. Even if he got to keep all $10mil tax-free (which he almost certainly didn't, IMO) if he lives another 50 years, that's only $120K per year. A comfortable living, well above average, but certainly not unlimited.

"5. Consider that when you hear figures like 'ten million dollars' that the player may receive only half of that, when taxes and agents' fees are deducted."

The $10 million he got was from an insurance policy, which he said was "tax-free", and which it sounds like he bought for himself. That agrees with what the IRS says:

"If you pay the entire cost of a health or accident insurance plan, don't include any amounts you receive for your disability as income on your tax return."[1]

And I doubt that his agent would be entitled to any of his disability insurance.

I agree with your other points.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/help-resources/tools-faqs/faqs-for-indiv...

Thanks! I missed that.

No, tens of millions of Americans are playing or played football and almost all never made any money. Many people also suffer concussive blasts in war zones. Concussions and their lingering impact are a huge issue and this was helpful and interesting, particularly that meditation may help stimulate the whole brain.

His problems with his head aren't "luxury problems". Folks are dealing with these sorts of injuries, only we ignore them much of the time and give them a pittance to live on, if they are lucky. Many people also get swallowed in a pool of depression when they get too sick to work. How many of us link our identity to work and other such things? His story is more positive than most with this: He's lucky enough to be able to get such treatment that it is out of range for most folks. It is unfortunate.

I really, really don't see how lasting problems from brain injuries is anywhere near the same as your Paris Hilton "luxury example", except for the fact that he happens to have some money.

Oh yes, the "we must completely fix the worst problem in the world before we even think about the second worst" argument.

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