5 ms·

With these kinds of sports, I have to wonder how much cumulative brain damage (CTE) contributed to his death.

bcook 10y ago
"These kinds of sports"? What physically competitive sport has no threat of falling and hitting your head? How much "brain damage" is caused by the psychological and physiological effects of a sedentary life-style?
- ethanbond 10y ago
  I don't see how this addresses the point. People are more than free to choose which sports are worth their inherent risk. The problem is that that risk isn't actually well understood scientifically, and generally people are totally ignorant of what little information is known. Sports may be worth the risk (I think they are), but that doesn't mean we should give up on discovering what the risk is.
  - bcook 10y ago
    What about the reward? Yeah, this is a seemingly unfortunate conclusion to his life, but we should persue all avenues to discover why, not only the aspects that we assume were negative influences...
    - Retra 10y ago
      How is one person asking a question inhibiting any of that?
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >How much "brain damage" is caused by the psychological and physiological effects of a sedentary life-style? According to your uninformed comment, perhaps some? CTE is not a joke, and isn't the product of a few head bumps. The fact that you put brain damage in quotes, as if the brain isn't actually damaged from such things, is beyond ignorant. Maybe start here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/
  - bcook 10y ago
    The quotes were intended to differentiate between the obvious, instantaneous brain damage from head trauma and the long-term, hard to measure effects of an unhealthy, sedentary life-style has on the brain. I was trying to point out that we are overly focused on the easily measured (negative) effects. His life-style also had positive effects, but they were not instantaneous. Knowing what led him to suicide is infinitely more complex that asking "how many times did he bonk his head?".
- mynegation 10y ago
  You could fall and hit your head doing no sports at all. There is a spectrum where flying the wingsuit, BMX, downhill skiing, ski jumping, and snowboarding, American football are on one end; beach volleyball and synchronized swimming on another.
  - pokpokpok 10y ago
    just to be pedantic, competitive volleyball has a concussion problem
    - stephencanon 10y ago
      and ski jumping is actually one of the safer sports, fwiw.
- myg204 10y ago
  Swimming.
  - pimlottc 10y ago
    You've never hit your head on the end of the lane while doing laps? Especially backstroke...
    - kasey_junk 10y ago
      I gave myself a nasty concussion during a mistimed flip turn when my goggles had filled with water. I suspect I'm in the extreme minority though.
  - stordoff 10y ago
    No threat of falling, perhaps, but open-water swimming (for example) isn't risk-free. My mother has hit by a boat during an open-water race, and was very lucky to avoid a spinal fracture.
- MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
  While there may be a baseline level of risk for falling and hitting your head as an accidental occurrence in most sports, it's not much higher than in other areas of everyday life. But some sports (football, boxing and some other combat sports, and vert-ramp extreme sports of all varieties, among others) all put participants at much higher risk for repeated head traumas, which has in recent years been shown to cause long term, degenerative physical and psychological effects. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...
buro9 10y ago
As a general rule you are better off, for overall mental wellbeing, doing sports rather than not. I personally think that programming is a pastime that contributes more to depression than any cycle sport does.
- MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
  This is not relevant to the parent comment. Being active, or even playing most sports, can be mutually exclusive with putting yourself at risk for CTE.
- duaneb 10y ago
  This is a poor general rule. Sports can have hugely different profiles of health effects: running is almost certainly better for you than boxing or football. In any case, brain damage is bad and you should avoid it if at all possible.
  - collyw 10y ago
    I don't think it is so poor if you consider the benefits of cycling outweigh the risks. Most sports aren't done in traffic, so I imagine that cycling is relatively high risk. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/
    - brianwawok 10y ago
      80% of my cycling is in my basement. Many ways to train.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      Cycling typically doesn't lead to brain damage. I suspect it is lower risk than sports with high rates of CTE. Also, the Netherlands is unusual in being so cycling-friendly. I suspect risk is much higher almost everywhere else on the planet.
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  While I agree that people should get on their bikes more, this is not mere "cycle sport". I bought a BMX bike at about 35, after a decade or more of "only" riding mountain bikes, mostly on streets and well-maintained trails but occasionally going off-road. Within a week of getting back into doing the old freestyle tricks I used to do regularly, I took a fall and damned near broke my ass; and we're definitely not talking about tricks on the scale or level of someone like Mirra, here. It was weeks before I could sit comfortably again. I had to work lying down or standing for at least two weeks. The type and magnitude of injury one can sustain from BMX freestyle riding, particularly vert riding, is just not in the same category as the kinds of injury you'd sustain cycling in the traditional sense (short of getting hit by a car, which is also probably more likely for freestyle riders). So, yes, get on your bike (or kayak, or running shoes, or whatever) and get daily exercise. That's a great idea. But, "extreme" sports are called that for a reason, and they do subject your body to much more significant risk of injury, possibly even serious injury. There is already good science linking repeated concussions to depression and other mental illness; and it's not crazy to suggest these folks are getting more concussions than the general populace (when I was involved in these kinds of sports, I had friends who joked about how many concussions they'd had while skating or biking). I'm agreeing with everybody in this thread, I think, but the notion that "doing sports" is what Mirra was doing is sort of like saying a hurricane is "some wind", and that it's a healthy lifestyle is misleading. He was fit, obviously, but had also suffered numerous major injuries throughout his life, many of which likely still caused him pain and reduced mobility, even years after they'd healed. Concussions were almost certainly among the injuries he sustained.

bcook 10y ago

"These kinds of sports"? What physically competitive sport has no threat of falling and hitting your head? How much "brain damage" is caused by the psychological and physiological effects of a sedentary life-style?

ethanbond 10y ago
I don't see how this addresses the point. People are more than free to choose which sports are worth their inherent risk. The problem is that that risk isn't actually well understood scientifically, and generally people are totally ignorant of what little information is known. Sports may be worth the risk (I think they are), but that doesn't mean we should give up on discovering what the risk is.
- bcook 10y ago
  What about the reward? Yeah, this is a seemingly unfortunate conclusion to his life, but we should persue all avenues to discover why, not only the aspects that we assume were negative influences...
  - Retra 10y ago
    How is one person asking a question inhibiting any of that?
forgetsusername 10y ago
>How much "brain damage" is caused by the psychological and physiological effects of a sedentary life-style? According to your uninformed comment, perhaps some? CTE is not a joke, and isn't the product of a few head bumps. The fact that you put brain damage in quotes, as if the brain isn't actually damaged from such things, is beyond ignorant. Maybe start here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/league-of-denial/
- bcook 10y ago
  The quotes were intended to differentiate between the obvious, instantaneous brain damage from head trauma and the long-term, hard to measure effects of an unhealthy, sedentary life-style has on the brain. I was trying to point out that we are overly focused on the easily measured (negative) effects. His life-style also had positive effects, but they were not instantaneous. Knowing what led him to suicide is infinitely more complex that asking "how many times did he bonk his head?".
mynegation 10y ago
You could fall and hit your head doing no sports at all. There is a spectrum where flying the wingsuit, BMX, downhill skiing, ski jumping, and snowboarding, American football are on one end; beach volleyball and synchronized swimming on another.
- pokpokpok 10y ago
  just to be pedantic, competitive volleyball has a concussion problem
  - stephencanon 10y ago
    and ski jumping is actually one of the safer sports, fwiw.
myg204 10y ago
Swimming.
- pimlottc 10y ago
  You've never hit your head on the end of the lane while doing laps? Especially backstroke...
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    I gave myself a nasty concussion during a mistimed flip turn when my goggles had filled with water. I suspect I'm in the extreme minority though.
- stordoff 10y ago
  No threat of falling, perhaps, but open-water swimming (for example) isn't risk-free. My mother has hit by a boat during an open-water race, and was very lucky to avoid a spinal fracture.
MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
While there may be a baseline level of risk for falling and hitting your head as an accidental occurrence in most sports, it's not much higher than in other areas of everyday life. But some sports (football, boxing and some other combat sports, and vert-ramp extreme sports of all varieties, among others) all put participants at much higher risk for repeated head traumas, which has in recent years been shown to cause long term, degenerative physical and psychological effects. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_traumatic_encephalopat...

buro9 10y ago

As a general rule you are better off, for overall mental wellbeing, doing sports rather than not. I personally think that programming is a pastime that contributes more to depression than any cycle sport does.

MaxfordAndSons 10y ago
This is not relevant to the parent comment. Being active, or even playing most sports, can be mutually exclusive with putting yourself at risk for CTE.
duaneb 10y ago
This is a poor general rule. Sports can have hugely different profiles of health effects: running is almost certainly better for you than boxing or football. In any case, brain damage is bad and you should avoid it if at all possible.
- collyw 10y ago
  I don't think it is so poor if you consider the benefits of cycling outweigh the risks. Most sports aren't done in traffic, so I imagine that cycling is relatively high risk. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920084/
  - brianwawok 10y ago
    80% of my cycling is in my basement. Many ways to train.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    Cycling typically doesn't lead to brain damage. I suspect it is lower risk than sports with high rates of CTE. Also, the Netherlands is unusual in being so cycling-friendly. I suspect risk is much higher almost everywhere else on the planet.
SwellJoe 10y ago
While I agree that people should get on their bikes more, this is not mere "cycle sport". I bought a BMX bike at about 35, after a decade or more of "only" riding mountain bikes, mostly on streets and well-maintained trails but occasionally going off-road. Within a week of getting back into doing the old freestyle tricks I used to do regularly, I took a fall and damned near broke my ass; and we're definitely not talking about tricks on the scale or level of someone like Mirra, here. It was weeks before I could sit comfortably again. I had to work lying down or standing for at least two weeks. The type and magnitude of injury one can sustain from BMX freestyle riding, particularly vert riding, is just not in the same category as the kinds of injury you'd sustain cycling in the traditional sense (short of getting hit by a car, which is also probably more likely for freestyle riders). So, yes, get on your bike (or kayak, or running shoes, or whatever) and get daily exercise. That's a great idea. But, "extreme" sports are called that for a reason, and they do subject your body to much more significant risk of injury, possibly even serious injury. There is already good science linking repeated concussions to depression and other mental illness; and it's not crazy to suggest these folks are getting more concussions than the general populace (when I was involved in these kinds of sports, I had friends who joked about how many concussions they'd had while skating or biking). I'm agreeing with everybody in this thread, I think, but the notion that "doing sports" is what Mirra was doing is sort of like saying a hurricane is "some wind", and that it's a healthy lifestyle is misleading. He was fit, obviously, but had also suffered numerous major injuries throughout his life, many of which likely still caused him pain and reduced mobility, even years after they'd healed. Concussions were almost certainly among the injuries he sustained.