By Dr. John L. Reizer
Editor at NoFakeNews.net
It’s already September and in the United States that means it is football season again. I have to admit that I have been a big football fan for many years. I love to watch the sport and follow, pretty religiously, a particular professional team. I’ve been engaged in this strange obsession for a longtime.
Historically, there’s been some concern by the parents of young children and older, professional players about the dangers associated with contact sports and more specifically, concussions. I can remember listening to talk radio programs, many years ago, that were discussing the hypothetical dangers connected to soccer players that headed the ball repeatedly, and what that type of repetitive trauma might do, over time, to young athletes. Currently, there are a lot of articles being written about the dangers associated with playing American football and European futbol.
In my opinion, the concerns by parents and former players regarding repetitive head traumas coming from certain contact sports are absolutely warranted. These traumas can and do cause neurodegenerative disorders. Neurodegenerative disorders are conditions that affect the integrity of the human nervous system. As a doctor of chiropractic, I can tell you that interferences to the human nervous system can be a major cause of systemic disease in all human beings.
The nervous system is a very complex subject. In a nutshell, it is the conduit of life for all creatures. It allows vital instructions for health to be transmitted from the brain to its target organs, tissues, and cells which in turn provides each of us an opportunity to express our unique genetic potential through physical matter. A person’s health is very dependent on a properly functioning nervous system. It is, ultimately, a breakdown in neurological pathways that provide the necessary environment for the genesis of disease.
Repetitive trauma to the head and other parts of the human body, in my opinion, can cause a plethora of problems for the nervous system. Just from a chiropractic perspective, the amount of spinal misalignments that would most likely show up in the spines of players participating in football, as well as other sports, is incredibly high.
Spinal misalignments (also known as vertebral subluxations) can and regularly do interfere with the proper functioning of the human nervous system. Over time, a dysfunctional nervous system can lead to a less than optimal expression of health in the human body. In simple English, it means that a person with any interference to the nervous system would eventually become susceptible to numerous diseases, including autoimmune disorders.
There is extensive evidence, already on the books, that proves repetitive trauma to the head can cause neurodegenerative problems. When we examine the misfortunes of professional boxers like Muhammad Ali, that have experienced repetitive traumas to the head, we can begin to understand how devastating neurodegenerative disorders are to the overall physiological construct of the human body.
Unfortunately, most people think of neurodegenerative problems as being limited to the head. For the most part, that’s how they have been defined by the traditional health sources that people rely upon for their health information. But it’s important to keep in mind that the nervous system is very large and runs throughout the body. Anytime an organ is jarred or physically impacted in an injurious way, it creates far reaching effects for the entire nervous system. All organs, tissues, and cells must transmit and receive information to and from the brain via the nervous system. Messages of health run in afferent and efferent pathways and a disruption of communication in either direction can cause severe health related problems over time.
In my opinion neurodegenerative disorders stemming from cumulative head traumas/injuries are more likely than not to be the contributing factors in the genesis of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and a general decline in the body’s ability to maintain a properly functioning immune system.
What do you think about this subject?
