If you’re bent on playing football, it’s
a good idea to not play tackle football until after the age of 12 just because it lowers
your resistance later in life. I think that’s something that is fairly
easy to adopt, and I think that’s something we should support. We also are learning a lot about cumulative
exposure in playing careers and finding that long playing careers is associated with a
higher risk. And I think that’s a direction that we’re
really starting to go in, really trying to understand risk exposure in terms of number
of playing years. And I think in the fairly near future we’re
going to have a good idea about a relative safe period of exposure to football and a
relatively high-risk length of career. This video was produced by BrainLine thanks to generous support from the Infinite Hero Foundation.
Posted on BrainLine December 20, 2018.
About the author: Ann McKee, MD
Ann McKee, MD is the chief neuropathologist for the Framingham Heart Study and the Boston University-based Centenarian Study. She is also the chief neuropathologist for the Boston-based Veterans Administration Medical Centers and for the Sports Legacy Institute.
