Can football be saved from CTE? Some people think so. New rules, better helmets, concussion protocols to take players out of the game, but is it enough? CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a degenerative brain disease caused by repetitive hits to the head. These hits don’t have to cause concussion. Most of the time sub-concussive … Continue reading Can Football be saved from CTE? by Laurie Carr
Category: Football
“We’re desperate”
I Love Football! With that said… In May of 2017, my wife and I were temporarily living in the Boston area doing genealogical research. I had been diagnosed with football related brain damage 6 years earlier (following 10+ hours of testing) and we hoped that doing service would calm symptoms that had become severe. After … Continue reading “We’re desperate”
Willful Ignorance – they should have known!
Dementia in football: Ex-players three and a half times more likely to die of conditionFormer professional footballers are three and a half times more likely to die of dementia than people of the same age range in the general population, according to new research. Read in BBC News: https://apple.news/AwI69TRGZRWiW37jLsr297Q Regardless of what many continue to … Continue reading Willful Ignorance – they should have known!
The Synergy of Light
A story in the NY Times reported a Journal of Applied Physiology research article that found weight training in rats changed the brain. The authors stated how modified strength training appeared to promote the creation of new neurons in the memory centers. This is not the first time exercise and/or other lifestyle habits have been … Continue reading The Synergy of Light
PBM Treatment Results for CTE
In December of 2013, following over 10 hours of neuro-cognitive testing, and preceded by years of ever decreasing emotional control, my wife Laurie and I listened as the Neuro-psychologist summed up my results, “Probable etiology for these changes is multiple head trauma with multiple concussions. Problems with attention and memory are hallmarks of significant brain … Continue reading PBM Treatment Results for CTE
The Research
In past posts, my wife Laurie and I have detailed how we “accidentally” found ourselves in a cluttered office on the twelfth floor of the Boston VA hospital. We were in the office of Dr. Margaret Naeser, a research scientist at the VA for the past 36 years, and a faculty member at the Boston … Continue reading The Research
The Need is Real
On Sunday April 14th a newspaper article about our struggle with CTE appeared in the Deseret News out of Salt Lake City. First online, and then in the Monday paper, the article by Lee Benson, chronicled our journey to find a treatment that actually worked for the symptoms my husband was suffering from. Science was … Continue reading The Need is Real
“Light” is the Answer
As I said in my last post, after around 7 weeks without treatment, we called the VA. We wanted to start the home treatment right away, however Larry needed to go back to Dr. Naeser for another round of fMRI's and testing first. I was really nervous about this step in the study. I knew … Continue reading “Light” is the Answer
The Miracle of Light
As I mentioned in my last blog post, Larry was the first ex-football player to be studied extensively as part of the Boston VA study using photobiomodulation (PBM) as a treatment for brain damage and possible CTE. As part of the study, he went through more neurocognitive testing to establish a baseline, and he had … Continue reading The Miracle of Light
The Next Morning
...continued from 'My Darkest Night' The next morning arrived without any more words. I could tell Laurie still wasn’t free from the terrible feelings from the night before, and I couldn’t blame her. It was summer, so we were out of school for vacation and had nowhere to go. I was sitting on the couch … Continue reading The Next Morning
Football and the Brain 