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"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 psychologi

• ethanbond 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
      How is one person asking a question inhibiting any of that?
• forgetsusername 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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 11y ago
    just to be pedantic, competitive volleyball has a concussion problem
    • stephencanon 11y ago
      and ski jumping is actually one of the safer sports, fwiw.
• myg204 11y ago
  Swimming.
  • pimlottc 11y ago
    You've never hit your head on the end of the lane while doing laps? Especially backstroke...
    • kasey_junk 11y 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 11y 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 11y 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...