ESPN Special Focuses on Upper Cervical Care, Jim McMahon's Recovery

The ’85 Bears
Original Air Date: Thursday February 4, 2016 at 9 pm

CHICAGO -- Jim McMahon would leave home and forget how to get back. The last time we saw Jim McMahon on national television it was not a pretty picture. In an episode of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryan Gumbel that aired one year ago he talked about his pain, about how he used excessive amounts of painkillers, about his many surgeries, about his memory loss. The former quarter back admitted he had considered suicide, like teammate Dave Duerson, who shot himself to death in 2011.

Filmmaker Jason Hehir said McMahon’s doctors have determined that the root cause of his problems is in his cervical spine and not so much his brain, the result of repeated concussions. It has completely revolutionized the way people are starting to look at the concussion issue.

Executive producer Vince Vaughn insisted the upper cervical specific chiropractic care McMahon received was “not quackery. We show him in an MRI machine, we show you the scans and the scans don’t lie. It’s how his brain was before and after the treatments. His condition has improved immensely under upper cervical specific chiropractic care.”

The most significant objective proof of upper cervicals results has been demonstrated by Scott Rosa, DC, McMahon’s chiropractor, and Raymond Damadian, MD, inventor of the MRI. Recent research shows a correlation between trauma and Chiari, by hyper flexion type strains of the cord, in which the neck over stretches as it is pulled forward by the weight of the head moving in a chin toward the chest direction, can traction the brainstem and pull it down toward the foramen magnum. On the way down it causes a compression deformation of the larger part of the brainstem in the foramen magnum. The action would be similar, for example, to pushing a cork into the top of a wine bottle. The cork compresses and deforms as it enters the bottle top. As the driving force is released the cork then expands and becomes trapped in the bottle top. If you turn the bottle upside down the wine cannot get past the cork. In the brain, blood and cerebrospinal fluid similarly get trapped.

Jim McMahon, former quarterback for the Chicago Bears, speaks in Stamford, Connecticut on behalf of the Trauma Imaging Foundation. McMahon suffered three diagnosed concussions while in the NFL, but states that looking back, he knows he had many more that went undetected. He has been diagnosed with early dementia. An upright MRI revealed that McMahon had misalignment of C1 & C2 with the base of the skull, pathological cord distortion, aberrant cerebrospinal flow and significant stasis of cerebrospinal fluid pooling in the frontal lobe of his brain. Since the skull is a closed hydraulic system, too much CSF means not enough blood. McMahon says that Dr. Rosa’s TIF research and treatments literally “saved my life.”

He found out about five years ago, when he went for X-rays and an MRI. Doctors told him he had broken his neck at some point, and McMahon believes it happened with the Minnesota Vikings during the 1993 season, when he got sandwiched by two Giants defenders in a playoff game at New York.
Just moments after the first cervical adjustment, McMahon said "it felt like a toilet bowel flushed and all the pain and stress went away". This occurred because the CSF (Cerebrospinal Fluid) flow went from being obstructed to flowing normally, allowing it to remove the neurotoxins and wastes that are a byproduct of brain function. This improved Jim McMahon's dementia symptoms as well his brain fog, migraines and slurred speech.

The pain in the 55-year-old former quarterback's head was so excruciating, the throbbing of every single heartbeat in his ears so persistent, that he mostly sought refuge in the bedroom of his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was the only way he could find any sort of relief, and even then -- just lying on his bed with the lights off -- he couldn't completely escape the pain. "It got to the point where I wouldn't get out of bed for weeks at a time," the former Super Bowl-winning quarterback said.

"Let's raise the awareness about this problem,'' he said. "I wish they had figured out what was wrong with me sooner, but at least I got some help. Let's help others out there and let's deal with the problem."

"Medicine will start looking at the brain, spinal cord and spine together. The emphasis is on the together part. Medicine sees a brain injury as something that only exists in the brain, and a neck injury as only something that exists in the neck, but the blood, tissue, and cerebral spinal fluid are all continuous between these two parts of the body. Symptoms of brain trauma can actually be symptoms of neck trauma, and vice versa,” said Guskiewicz. Kevin dedicated his career to discovering and harnessing knowledge about head injuries. Now, he's a highly regarded concussion expert and the recipient of the $500,000 Genius Award.

As a researcher he has made major advances in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of sports-related concussions. Each year, approximately 3.8 million athletes in the United States experience mild traumatic brain injuries, or concussions. Through laboratory and on-the-field research, Guskiewicz has played an important role in raising awareness about the dangers of sports-related brain injuries in both professional and youth athletics. He was among the first to identify the long-term effects of multiple concussions, including cognitive impairment and depression in later life, through large-scale epidemiological studies of retired professional football players. Recognizing the inadequacy of traditional concussion screening tools — most rely solely on an athlete's self-report of symptoms — Guskiewicz demonstrated that postural control, or balance, serves especially well as an objective measure in the evaluation of concussive episodes. His portable and cost-effective Balance Error Scoring System is now widely used by athletic trainers at colleges and secondary schools to diagnose and manage injury more accurately and rapidly. 

His recent work focuses on the cumulative effects of repetitive, sub-threshold brain impacts. Using accelerometers embedded in the helmets of college football and youth hockey players, he and colleagues are investigating the relationship between magnitude and number of head impacts and clinical symptoms of concussion. Taking this research a step further, he is working directly with collegiate football players and coaches to identify dangerous hits in real time and to correct improper tackling techniques associated with sustaining concussions. While engaging clinicians, coaches, parents, and athletes in recognizing the immediate and long-term effects of concussions, Guskiewicz is contributing significantly to state and federal policy discussions concerning development of more stringent return-to-play guidelines and headgear investigations that will improve the safety of athletes of all ages.

“I first discussed the correlations between my Meniere’s research with Kevin and his concussion research fifteen years ago,” Dr. Burcon commented. He encouraged me to stick with it even though mainstream medicine would first dismiss it because it was something new.

You might not have bought a movie ticket for “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy,” but that is the actual syndrome at the heart of the movie “Concussion.” CTE is a brain disease found in patients with a history of repetitive hits to the head.

“Luckily, upper cervical care can allow people to play contact sports safely,” states Tom Forrest, Blair upper cervical doctor practicing in California. All athletes of every age should get regular checkups by an upper cervical specific doctor, just like going to the dentist.

The Importance of Proper Sleeping Posture

Establishing positive habits is one of the most important ways that you can take control of your health.  Considering that as many as half of all adults report at least mild insomnia, it would seem that a great deal of us never learned how to set good sleeping habits.  Sleep is the time for daily maintenance, when the conscious mind shuts down and the entirety of our internal energy can be put toward rejuvenation.  Everyday life is inundated with tasks to complete and emotions to manage, giving our bodies ample repair to do by the end of our waking hours. 

Sleep allows our bodies to recover faster.  When we sleep between 7 to 8 hours per night, we are more mentally sharp, sifting through information faster and more efficiently; we have more energy and a better outlook; we are more apt to pay closer attention to our eating habits; we build stronger immunity; we find it much easier to deal with stress; and, with our systems working vibrantly, our bodies are able to optimally regulate heart function, hormone production, digestion, and the like.  The opposite to all of the above is true when we do not sleep; insomnia, from mild to severe, wreaks havoc on our health. 

The process of sleep is an automatic activity engaged by a network within your central nervous system, so it is to an extent beyond our conscious control.  However, we can support healthy sleeping patterns by eliminating deficiencies that cause insomnia within each of the five basic areas of overall health: proper function, stress management, nutrition, exercise, and structural balance. 

It is on that last category that the remainder of this article will focus.  Structural balance makes life easier in general, but specific to sleeping habits makes it possible to breathe through fully opened airways, fully relax your muscles to release the stress from your joints, and allow for proper circulation.  Maintaining proper sleeping posture, then, is an important step that must be taken to ensure the best quality of rest.  The three common sleeping positions are on the back, the side, or the stomach. 

Stomach sleeping should be avoided completely.  It puts tremendous physical strain on the body; the neck twisting stresses the supporting musculature, starting a domino effect that causes one hip to pull the attached leg up into a bent position close to the waist.  Try standing that way and see if you think it is comfortable.  Stomach sleeping also cuts off the blood supply to your brain.  The vertebral arteries that run up both sides of your neck and supply roughly 25% of your brain’s blood supply are stretched and twisted when the head is turned, decreasing blood flow; combined with the manner in which it contorts the body physically, this is why stomach sleepers are notorious both for not being well-rested and for being stiff when they wake up in the morning. 

The two best ways to sleep are on your back or on your side.  Back sleeping is ideal.  The body is most relaxed in the supine (back-lying) position, with the head slightly elevated by a supportive pillow and a small pillow tucked beneath the knees.  The head and neck are the body’s structural foundation; wherever the head goes, the rest of the body follows, so sleeping on your back without the lower body support creates a situation in which the musculature in the lower back, hips, and legs attempts to pull itself into a similar position as the head on the pillow. 

Side-sleeping is okay too as long as it is done correctly.  Two things are required to ensure high quality sleep when side-lying.  First, the pillow that you use must allow your head, neck, and shoulders to rest in their neutral positions.  If you imagine looking at yourself in the mirror when your posture is relaxed and then tipping 90 degrees onto your side, that is the correct head and neck posture for side sleeping.  Second, a pillow between the knees is a must, for it prevents the natural shifting of one hip and leg across the other to avoid the bones of the knees resting on top of each other.  To put it simply, the head, neck, shoulders, and hips need to be balanced in order to avoid undue strain on your body.  If your body is stressed while sleeping, then sleeping will not accomplish the fullest extent of its intended purpose. 

In regard to pillows, the one that you use to support the lower body can be a regular pillow, but be sure to use common sense when gauging the size of the person (slight of frame needs a smaller pillow, larger frame needs bigger pillow).  The head and neck pillow represents a more delicate search for both comfort and support shaped by the consistency of your preferred sleeping posture.  The SleepRight side-lying pillow, for instance, is designed for sleepers that exclusively lay on their side.  It is custom fit to meet the requirements of your body style and its website offers a helpful, basic guide to help you measure your shoulder heights correctly.  The D-Core is the back sleeper’s equivalent. 

Perhaps the best pillows are the ones that allow you to fluctuate between your back and your side.  Cervical contour and standard memory foam pillows give you that flexibility, but they have to be replaced more often than a fiber support pillow, the gold standard of which is the Therapeutica.  The Therapeutica has a wedge extension that acts like a ramp to support the upper back, as well as a dip in the center where your head rests that provides optimal head/neck support and keeps you from turning/straining your neck.  It is also raised on each side to allow you to roll to your right or left without having to maneuver it. 

Without proper sleep, we cannot be truly well.  The manner in which we sleep, thus, has a big impact on our health.  Paying attention to your sleeping position and investing in the supportive pillows that are right for you goes a long way to ensuring that you sleep not just adequately, but optimally. 

Sources: WedMD, Therapeutica.com, SleepRight.com

Mass Shootings: What Is The Real Cause?

In the wake of tragedy comes opportunity.  The gunman who killed ten people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon was the latest in the seemingly endless run of mass shootings.  Each one of these alarmingly common occurrences provides another chance to logically evaluate the reasoning behind them, an absolutely vital step in determining the appropriate actions to take after twenty years of watching the problem worsen. 

One of the most popular reactions in America to mass killings is to demand greater gun control.  Any topic that becomes political in the modern climate evokes polar viewpoints hyperbolized by the media.  If we are to seriously assess the mass shooting problem, though, the political undertones need to be stripped away. 

Studying the issue on a more humanistic level, this is a people problem.  At the heart of this debate is that people are deciding that it’s OK to kill other people in schools and other heavily attended public places.  The theme behind the firearm regulation argument is certainly worth exploring; it absolutely makes sense to find a way to keep guns away from people willing to commit heinous acts of violence.  However, this is not a simple matter of the presence or absence of guns.  Given that people are far more complex than the weapons they use, it is imperative that we acknowledge that this is a multi-faceted problem. 

Societally, we have developed a bad habit of black and white thinking, which limits our collective ability to develop a well-rounded understanding of various issues.  Take mental illness, for example.  63% in a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll said that they think mass shootings are more likely due to the difficulty in identifying and treating people with mental health problems.  Reasonably, one could assume that no sane individual would enter a public forum with the intent to harm and that if a previously unstable individual could regain his/her soundness of mind, tragedy could be potentially avoided.  It is in pulling that narrative thread that we then engage the most complicated question of the subject matter: what is mental health?

The Mayo Clinic staff begins an article on their website designed to answer the above question with the statement, “Understanding what's considered normal mental health can be tricky.”  Search the term “mental illness” and you may notice the trend to describe it as a disease in a rather arbitrary effort to separate the sick from the well.  Hence, we are generally categorized as either mentally stable or mentally unstable.  A mental illness is defined as a wide range of conditions that affect mood, thinking, and behavior.  Their common traits include sadness, loss of interest, fear, doubt, worry, mood swings, obsession, impulsiveness, and misinterpretation of reality.  Tricky indeed; if they read as familiar symptoms, it would be because nearly everyone deals with them to varying degrees at some point.  So, do we not all vacillate somewhere between mental stability and instability?

Each of us should be concerned with our mental health and we should be encouraged to explore various ways to keep ourselves mentally well, as there is a fine line between stability and instability.  Unfortunately, we live in a world that professes symptoms to mean disorders and disease.  Those who are diagnosed with a mental illness become stigmatized, simultaneously discouraging others who may exhibit consistent signs of emotional turmoil to seek help.  One in four adults (nearly 62 million Americans over the age of 20) and one in five children (19 million kids) will go through a significant mental health issue that has a pronounced affect on their daily lives in any given year.  60% never ask for support either through apprehension, denial, neglect, etc. 

Mental health issues are not well understood; the manner in which they’re dealt with even less so.  As is the case with most diagnosed health conditions, medication is the popular treatment route suggested for the so-termed mentally ill.  The mechanism of action that dictates the efficacy of such medications is interference with brain and body chemistry.  There are 75 trillion cells on average in the human body, each of which perform 200,000 chemical reactions every split second.  Disrupting the normal processes that control our body chemistry is a dangerous, controversial method that addresses nothing but the symptoms and takes no account of their cause or context.  Consider that the human body is still developing its normal chemistry during the teenage years and that the last two decades have seen a sharp rise in the prescription of anti-psychotic drugs to teenagers and young adults.       

Dr. Peter R. Breggin, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and former full-time consultant at the National Institute of Mental Health, insists that there has been overwhelming scientific evidence for decades correlating psychiatrically prescribed drugs with violence.  He has testified to Congress that research demonstrates a causal relationship between antidepressant drugs and the production of suicide, violence, mania, and other behavioral abnormalities.  Accounts like Breggin’s help in understanding the results of alarming statistical analyses like the one in 2012 which revealed that the common link between over 80% of the mass shootings was a perpetrator on anti-psychotic drugs.  The four most commonly prescribed psychotropic drugs all share side effects that include difficulty concentrating, mood or behavioral changes, feeling like you cannot control your actions, suicidal tendencies, confusion of identity, paranoia, sleeplessness, aggressiveness, and sudden loss of consciousness.  Such are the potential dangers of interrupting brain chemistry. 

Mental well-being, one of the pillars of overall health, is an intricate thing and its integrity can be challenged or broken by environmental, social, emotional, spiritual, and biological causes.  Our food crops are sprayed with weed and bug-killing chemicals and the animals that keep our meat supplies replenished are pumped with synthetic hormones, resulting in nutritional deficiencies and internal systemic chaos.  Traumas, both emotional and physical, are extremely common especially during youth, each creating functional discord in different ways.  Physical traumas deplete structural integrity and weaken our central nervous system’s ability to regulate basic processes, including the limbic system that controls our emotions and motivations, while emotional trauma often creates destructive psychological patterns. 

None of the above areas of discussion can be left out of our exploration into the reason why people are choosing to commit mass murder.  It may be easier to blame the instrument instead of the person wielding it or to blame altered brain chemistry for terrible actions; it may be easier to view the issue as a mental illness recognition problem that does not apply to you.  Meanwhile, mass shootings have spiraled out of control.  It is not the result of one thing, but many.  Attempting to fully understand the underlying problem will not be easy, but the time has arrived to do the difficult work.  We must accept that sometimes the answer is not black or white, but somewhere in between.

Sources: The Journal of Ethical Human Sciences and Services, The National Alliance on Mental Illness, The Mayo Clinic website

Dr. Chad McIntyre owns and operates the Triad Upper Cervical Clinic in Kernersville.  Though his practice specializes in Upper Cervical Care, emphasis is also placed on nutrition, physical activity, and stress management.  With his pre-doctoral education centered on the field of Psychology, Dr. McIntyre takes a particular interest in mental health.

Former Pro Volleyball Player's Life Changed By Upper Cervical Care

This article was originally published on www.avp.com (the website for the Association of Volleyball Professionals)

By Hans Stolfus 

As you can see, there’s no ‘Advertisement’ tag in the upper right hand corner of this page. No one has paid me to dispense the endorsement you’re about to read. I simply feel compelled to share my story as others suffering from a similar condition may benefit greatly from this information.

Anyone who followed my short-lived career on the sand is aware things began to dramatically unravel in 2007 after an acute neck injury limited my mobility to a point where nonstop health maintenance and physical therapy care were necessary just to continue competing. And even then my game was submarginal at best, only I didn’t have another source of income, so the motto became “fight through it” or pack my bags and move to the third pillar under the ‘Pier.’

Pain and tightness turned to pressure. Pressure turned to headaches and eventual migraines. Migraines turned to a life without light and meals spent on the floor. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

I saw chiropractors, physical therapists, massage therapists, acupuncturists, Rolfers, Heller Care Professionals, trainers, medical doctors, migraine, pain and cervical spine specialists, and rheumatologists. I visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., the Headache Institute in Newport Beach, Calif., and Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, Calif.

Diagnosis by Karen Newcomer at Mayo: nothing. Mild degeneration between C4-C5-C6 (vertebrae of the cervical spine) and some moderately bad posture likely attributed to the pectus excavatum headlining my sternal cavity.

Diagnosis & Treatment by Philip O’Carroll at the Headache Institute: botox (yes, botox) into the neck muscles to release tension, nightly nerve pain meds, Treximet for Migraines, and a range of motion routine I had received from at least 36 previous practitioners.

Diagnosis & Treatment by Steven Graff-Radford at Cedars Sinai: two successive nerve injections and a Radiofrequency Neurotomy on the nerves surrounding C2 and C3. Yes, that’s right; I had them burn off nerve endings with the purpose of interfering daily pain signals. I resorted to the unthinkable. It was that or take a detour off PCH into the underlying brush like Junior Seau. And although it removed some of the immediate pain and pressure, it did nothing to fix the root of the problem.

Fast forward three months… walk by a “Busy Body” in Newport Beach, decide to stop in and inquire about a rowing machine for my apartment complex gym — as normal exercise remained completely out of the question, even after the neurotomy — explain my situation to the sales guy, listen to his “you should see this guy” spiel, roll my eyes invisibly, take the chiropractor’s card — which he just so happened to have on him — as to not seem rude, throw the card in the center council of my car, and then proceed to wait three weeks to dial the number and hear how this guy could somehow magically be ‘different‘ than all the rest.

To make an incredibly long story short, it turned out the Neurotomy wasn’t my last option after all. Although I had seen somewhere in the range of 300 previous chiropractors over the years, this guy’s practice was unlike anything I had previously heard of or experienced, focusing on the positioning of C1 (Atlas) and C2 (Axis) and their relationship to the brain stem, spinal cord, and entire central nervous system.

He used a series of numerous unorthodox x-rays, a prism-based stereoscopic viewing method to make each film ‘3D,’ a set of protractor-based measurements drawn on each ‘subluxated’ vertebrae, a heat sensitive instrument to test neurological transmission, a specific table to determine body symmetry, and a scientific technique to bring it all together and locate the problem so it could be fixed.

Bottom line: back in ’07 my atlas (C1) had been spun like a top and was pinching off a host of pain related nerves just beneath my skull ever since. One adjustment, which involved zero cracking or spinning of the head like typical ‘chiropractic,’ and not only did the pain and pressure disappear, but my vision improved, my short term memory began to return, and life started to seem like something worth living again. The procedure was most certainly heavy and intense, and prevented me from moving my head in any direction for 24 hours as a precautionary measure, but was, without a doubt, worth its weight in gold. My life changed the instant those nerves finally freed up, and I can’t imagine going back and feeling the way I did for almost four years ever again. And ready for this, it’s held. My body just needed to go back to the way it was meant to be and the rest has taken care of itself.

That’s it. Don’t want to preach, just want to inform. I tried it all and my solution came at a small office in Yorba Linda, Calif. at the hands of a gentleman by the name of Dr. David Topping. There’s only a handful of upper cervical “Blair” chiropractors in California and not many more scattered throughout the U.S. Why? I don’t want to get too ‘conspiracy theorist,’ but frankly there’s no profit margin in healing someone with only one visit. And that’s what practitioners like Topping are doing. They’re freeing up the nerve pathways from the brain to the body and finally allowing the body to heal itself. Not saying it’s for everybody, or that all patients will require only one adjustment as age and degeneration play an important role, but if you’ve got neck or back pain and have run the gamut like I had, might be time to try one more option. It could finally change everything.

And in case you’re wondering, I will play beach volleyball again. Maybe not at the professional level, but definitely for fun down in Corona Del Mar on a casual Saturday afternoon.

Football: The Greatest or Most Dangerous Sport in the World? Or Is It Both?

Football is the most popular sport in this country, having emphatically snatched away the undisputed title of “America’s favorite pastime” from baseball.  It is a tremendously entertaining game and an incredibly lucrative industry.  Yet, recent years have seen it come under fire for its inherent health risks.  Basic awareness of concussions has increased exponentially and with it has come increased scrutiny about the role that repetitive head trauma plays in the long (and short) term health of football players young and old, from the pee wee level to the National Football League. 

 

As the spotlight on the dangers of the game has grown substantially, so too have the number of questions being asked.  It is no longer just about college or professional athletes being grinded through a so-called exploitative system, but whether or not kids should ever be allowed to participate in youth leagues. 

 

Concussions had once thought to have been limited to trauma so substantial that it caused players to be knocked unconscious and, thus, restricting the population most susceptible to being concussed to the high school, college, and professional levels.  Now, however, a greater understanding has developed which acknowledges that concussions come in varying levels of severity.  A minor concussion may exhibit symptoms on a smaller scale.  Seeing stars, headaches, blurry vision, auditory or visual sensitivity, and dizziness are just a few of the common reactions to a concussive force to the head; be their duration a mere few minutes or sustained over several days or weeks, these symptoms are indicative of some sort of concussion. 

 

Justifiably, parents are more worried about their children.  The human body does not fully develop until the late teenage years.  Structural stability is established over many years, particularly the skull and vertebral column that surrounds and protects the brain, brainstem, and spinal cord, the integrity of which governs our basic core functions.  A child’s development could be stunted – structurally and internally – as a result of playing football. 

 

Controversy reigns over the sport.  It was back in 2011 when a retired NFL player sued the league for its supposedly "concerted effort of deception and denial" about the long-term damage that the sport could do to the human body.  That lawsuit eventually awarded former players a settlement of $765 million.  Nary has a month gone by these last four years without the latest wrinkle added to the developing story of concussions vs. football.  Chris Borland, a former University of Wisconsin All-American who had a fantastic rookie season as a linebacker for the San Francisco 49ers last year, made waves this spring when he abruptly retired from the NFL in an effort to avoid future brain damage.  For a burgeoning star to quit football at age 24 was perhaps the start of a trend and the biggest sign of the changing times.  It was a bold move that inadvertently made Borland the de-facto face of the movement that believes football may not be around in another twenty or thirty years. 

 

Borland also represents a fascinating dichotomy that has emerged since traumatic brain injuries became such a prevalent water cooler topic: people who have deeply rooted passion for the game – players, coaches, and fans - are finding themselves torn between their love of football and the progressively clearer evidence that it is ruining peoples’ lives.  In a feature story in an August edition of ESPN The Magazine, Borland said he was reluctant to even watch football anymore and, when asked whether or not he would someday allow his kids to play, he responded, “I don’t know.  I don't think it's black-and-white quite yet.”

 

It certainly is not.  Family bonds are forged over football.  Important values are taught through it.  Fortunes are made from it.  Memories are created by it that last a lifetime.  So, attempts are being made to find a common ground; to better recognize its hazards and to use that attentiveness to make football safer.  Dr. Alex Powers is a neurosurgeon who works for Wake Forest University.  He is also an avid football fan.  His research and his passion for the sport are often at odds because Powers is one of the leading physicians exploring the topic of brain trauma as it relates to football.  According to an ESPN The Magazine article last fall, Labor Day weekend 2014 was a classic example of his plight.  He was in the lab, examining the charts of high school football players the week prior and then flew out with his two sons - both youth players - for a family vacation on the west coast to see the Oregon Ducks play on Saturday and the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday.

 

According to Dr. Powers’ data, a single season of high school football does potentially irreversible damage to the brain in proportion to the severity and number of hits taken.  His stance has created widespread panic amongst football people.  Shawn Springs, a former Pro Bowl NFL player and the co-founder of a company that designs football helmets with greater safety measures, has told Powers that his research is going "to scare everyone to death...and kill football."  Doctors and researchers have told Powers, “You have to kill the game. There's no way, as a physician, that you can condone the data." 

 

All of us that have any interest in football are being forced to reevaluate our positions and form updated opinions based on the data that has become available, especially when determining whether or not to let our kids participate.  "I was totally naive about it,” Dr. Powers told ESPN The Magazine.  “I thought people would see the data and say, ‘This is awesome. No one has ever looked at it this way.’”  Instead, it seemed to explicitly point out the sad truth about football: that there may not be a way to make a violent game safe.

 

Imagine building a home on a tiny island in the middle of the most common area in the world to be affected by hurricanes.  Even if you constructed the sturdiest house on the planet, why would you voluntarily build it in a place where you knew – for a fact – that it was going to be subjected to high winds and flying debris for four months per year?  Is not football the equivalent for the human body?  Is it logical to subjective oneself to a game so intrinsically brutal (especially for kids)?

 

Of course, repetitive trauma during the first ten years of life is very common, extending beyond the realm of youth football.  Though a study was recently released suggesting that 1 in 30 pee wee football players would have at least one concussion per season, another study stated that bicycle accidents were twice as likely as football to cause concussions. 

 

The scope of this discussion needs to expand even further.  In many cases when we are young, symptoms that result from trauma do not immediately set in; oftentimes, traumas start a domino effect, which quietly takes its toll and produces the gradual onset of symptoms long after the fact.  Noticeable, subjective complaints like pain or Migraines or numbness may not happen, for instance, until a year (or many years) after an incident, and most doctors do not make the connection to trauma at that point.  To this day, concussions are a microcosm of a common problem in modern healthcare that only associates symptoms with trauma when the proximity of it can be tied to immediate effects. 

 

Knowing of a concussion and its detrimental effects is only half the battle.  Proper concussion detection should stimulate the advancement of education toward how to appropriately help the concussed heal and recover.  One of the most overlooked aspects of repetitive trauma is its affect on the upper neck area, where the lower brainstem responsible for regulating your organs, muscles, and tissues resides and where cerebrospinal fluid flows in a loop between the brain and the spinal cord.  The hits, tackles, and falls have a greater impact on the upper neck than any other body part because of its unique, more mobile but less stable structural design.  The head and neck protect your life line.  Helmets do not protect that vital head-neck junction, the misalignment of which can affect the brainstem, decrease the flow of cerebrospinal fluid, and throw off the body’s structural balance. 

 

Super Bowl-winning quarterback, Jim McMahon, is one of the higher profile concussion victims.  For years, he suffered from debilitating headaches, memory loss, and the early signs of dementia.  Dr. Scot Rosa, an Upper Cervical Chiropractor in New York, corrected McMahon’s upper neck misalignment.  Since then, McMahon noted in a recent article, “I haven’t had any headaches.”  Numerous noteworthy personalities from Montell Williams to Sidney Crosby to Jerry Rice have had the same procedure and achieved similar success.  The correction does not reverse the damage accumulated over decades in cases like McMahon’s, but it can halt the downward spiral and remove one of the major obstacles to concussion recovery.  In kids, however, the chances for full recovery are much greater; the earlier the problem is identified and addressed, the better the odds of getting back to normal. 

 

Frankly, this is a scary topic.  As fans of the game, are we to ignore the ever more prevalent dangers?  “It's an American pastime, but it's hurting people,” points out Chris Borland’s mother, Zebbie, in the ESPN The Magazine piece.  “I’m conflicted,” adds Borland.  Can we be passionate football fans, simultaneously denounce the sport as too dangerous for our kids to play, but then condone it for other kids?  One thing is certain: we can no longer bury our heads in the sand and pretend that there is no discussion to be had; there is a wide-ranging conversation to be had about ethics, safety, prevention, treatment, etc.  So, enjoy the season, but join the debate too.

 

Sources: ESPN The Magazine, ESPN Outside The Lines, Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, The Deseret News