The Effect Of ALS On The Brain

CTE affects many different athletes all over the world. Chronic Traumatic encephalopathy or normally referred to as CTE is a brain disease that affects people who have had multiple head injuries. It is found in many cases of ex NFL players who took many hits to the head when playing over their careers. There are many documented cases of it across other sports and some military veterans as well. We have made large strides in learning more and more about the terrible disease. The game of football has changed since we have learned so much more about the terrible disease in recent years. We could prevent concussions by changing the way players practice.

ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or Lou Gehrig’s Disease is a classified as a degenerative neurological disorder that inhibits motor neurons in the spinal cord and brain to function properly. This disease eventually results in paralysis and imminent death over a period of time. ALS patients have anywhere from a few months, to a couple years to live after diagnosis since their nervous systems are slowly destroyed, rendering the body useless, and sustaining life impossible.

The epidemic of CTE became evident to the public after Mike Webster, the former Pittsburgh Steelers’s player, sued the NFL claiming his football career destroyed his brain. Four years later, in 2002, Webster died suddenly and he became Patient Zero, after Dr. Omalu performed the autopsy that found CTE. Dr. Bennet Omalu and Dr. Ann McKee made headway with research and found that CTE forms from poisonous protein build up in the brain and causes victims to feel their own livelihood slowly deteriorate (League of Denial). The history of CTE explains that it does not just appear over one jarring occurrence. This protein in the brain tissue builds up after multiple head injuries, also described as a concussion. When football players make a tackle and their bodies collide the brain rattles around in its protecting barrier, the skull. Concussions are very tough to detect because a typical MRI cannot pick up the tearing in the microscopic tissue. Mild traumatic brain injuries show no signs of physical damage to the naked eye. The only factor medical examiners can base their prognosis off of is the state of the athlete presented to them. After a hit the brain deforms, and if shaken hard enough parts of neurons can stretch and even tear. When torn, molecules begin to leak in the brain containing several proteins including tau. With concussion after concussion, the axons in the brain wear down due to excess calcium and a build up of tau forms

As many of you may have seen with prominent NFL players like Mike Webster or Dave Duerson, CTE can be a fatal issue. It cannot be officially diagnosed until after death, but has symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. As the player gets repeated hits, especially a large number of sub-concussive impacts or a lower number of severe concussions, a protein in the brain, known as tau, begins to strangle the brain from the inside. Tau is able to react like this because during a hit, its normal structure around the neurons is damaged. The process starts just in certain areas in the brain’s cortex and symptoms include dizziness, disorientation, and headaches. The proteins eventually progress to consume more of the brain in the cortical sulci, causing symptoms like erratic behavior, poor judgment, social instability, and depression. Many people, including the NFL players mentioned beforehand, die at this age, often as a result of suicide. However, the third and fourth stage show the protein strangling the hippocampus, involved with memory, and the amygdala, involved with emotional reactions. Eventually, it consumes the entire cortex and the brainstem. During these two stages, common symptoms include dementia, slowing of muscle movement, impeded speech, and vertigo. CTE has been linked to playing football in studies conducted by researchers at Boston University and the NFL has accepted this claim. It can even be seen in some players only at the high school level. In fact, 90% of cases of CTE are from people who started playing their sport at a young age. This does not only include football, but other contact sports like hockey and rugby. However, it is important to tell you that some researchers do not believe that this connection between CTE and playing football can made, as CTE can result from other factors, such as environment, genetics, and being in

CTE can be found after death. In 2013 there was over 4,500 NFL athletes that has a had or have a concussion from hits blown to the head. 33 athletes has had CTE. These symptoms. They are making a movie called Concussion. This is a story about

In 2002 Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy was discovered by Bennet Omalu. Omalu was performing an autopsy on former NFL player Mike Webster. He discovered an odd amount of tau protein that had formed on Webster’s brain. After some research was conducted this formation was deemed the name Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. (CTE) This disease, is caused by repetitive brain trauma. This trauma then causes the tau protein to form on the brain and destroy brain tissue. The disease is deadly as it cannot be diagnosed till during the autopsy. The only way to know if someone has Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is to guess based off their personal history with brain injuries and any possible symptoms.

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE, is a progressive degenerative brain disease found in athletes and others with a history of repetitive brain trauma. It was formerly known to occur only in the boxing world, but now it is occurring more frequently in former NFL players and emerging as a subject

The body is a perfect mesh of numerous organ systems; however, when ranking them top to bottom the brain’s importance is unparalleled. All involuntary and voluntary functions are virtually controlled by this mass of tissue and countless neurons. Ultimately, there would be no life without it. CTE has gone unnoticed for a long time; in fact, until recently, researchers did not know much about its existence. A major component in an NFL lawsuit, researchers found that a majority (96% of the near-hundred tested) of former, deceased NFL players’ brains had CTE.1 The lawsuit is due to the fact that the NFL covered up the relationship between continual head trauma and long term brain diseases.2,3 Now made aware, this disease is one that should have major awareness. There are warning signs; unfortunately, the only way to confirm this pathology is post-mortem.1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11

Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) is a degenerative brain disease found in people with experience of repetitive brain trauma. The most prominent examples of CTE patients are former American football players, most notably athletes that played in National Football League (NFL). CTE is not found in just football players and athletes, it has been found in military veterans and on rare cases domestic abuse patients. Tau is a protein found in your body, when the body is subject to repetitive blows to the head the protein clumps and slowly spreads throughout the brain, killing brain cells. CTE has been found in people as young as seventeen and normally majority of patients start developing symptoms in their mid-twenties to

Throughout this time one has heard about strange diseases that have a huge affect on people. There is a mystery for this happening. Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy(CTE), Huntington's Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Dementia, and Alzheimer’s have the something in common, the brain. Although one intends to think it can handle pain, but failing to not being treated or failing to rest this impact will have bad results. If one only doubts, it will not have anything happen to that particular person, that person can think again. This may not happen today or tomorrow, but it can happen to to one later on throughout that person's lifetime if it is chosen to ignore all this. Some of these diseases have not been

People who have experienced a lot of head traumas are most likely to have CTE. Most of those are pro athletes and combat veterans. Some ailments of CTE are memory loss, confusion, personality changes, erratic behaviors, and difficulty with balancing. Four main diseases that CTE leads to are the Huntington’s, Dementia with Lewy bodies, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson’s disease. Huntington’s disease is when the Basal ganglia part of the brain is is affected. Dementia with Lewy bodies shares the same types of symptoms as Alzheimer’s. Alzheimer’s is a disease that impairs memory and parts of the brain. Parkinson’s disease affects the movement of a person, it’s a disorder in the nervous system. There are many ways to get a disease like that doesn’t mean that people should change the rules of football.

For example, football athletes that are involved in football all around the world either have severely damaged their brain or end up having signs of brain damage and concussions According to NBC New York, a variety of athletes/ football players are found to have the disease of CTE and damage to the brain. Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), found that 177 of the 202 deceased football players had CTE. The disease was also found in 110 of 111 brains from former NFL players. 48 of 53 college players; nine of 14 semi-professional players; seven of eight Canadian Football league players; and three of 14 high school players. Additionally, CTE has been caused by the attack of former football players and the amount of hits to the

What is It? Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a fatal age-dependent degeneration of motor neurons in the spinal cord, brain system, and cortex.39-12 A Plaracteristic of the disease is the loss of all voluntary motor function, with the exception of Ocular muscles and sphincter.8 The average age of onset is 55-60 years and the male to female ratio is 1.3 to 1.10 Following onset it is fatal after 3 to 5 years on average's once respiratory functions are paralyzed." It affects all races' I and is the most common of the human motor neuron diseases3'7' occurring in roughly one in every 2000 people." There are two types of ALS, sporadic and familial', with approximately 10% being

The brain has always been one my favorite subjects in biology, because the brain is the control center of the body and it also has an endless amount potential to do anything or solve any problem. It’s amazing to me that at the beginning of life, single celled organisms created a brain like structure called a nucleus and that the brain evolved as organisms became multi-cellular into what we seen now; a huge community of cells that communicate through chemical and electrical signals capable of love, compassion, and invention. However, the brain has a dark-side which compels me to learn more about its structure and function. The brain seems to be the only organ that when diseased can affect a person’s life on every level; socially, psychologically, functionally, and physically. I have seen first-hand what a diseased brain can do to a person, their family, and their community. The devastation is enormous and it spares no one. The brain can become diseased by so many different causes that when I learn of a new disease that affects the brain I become emotionally invested and interested in that subject. I became interested in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis six months ago when I watched a new movie called “Gleason.” That movie illustrates the full progression of ALS. The devastation that I witness on the subject and his family was almost

A distinctive characteristic of ALS is that although the motor neurons die, the brain, cognitive functions and sensory neurons stay intact (Porth & Matfin, 2009). This makes the disease especially devastating because patients become trapped inside their dying body, with a fully alert mind, but are unable to move. It is not known what causes the exact death of the motor neurons in the body, but “five percent to 10% of cases are familial; the others are believed to be sporadic” (Porth & Matfin, 2009, p.