from Albert Einstein College of Medicine
With the recent focus on concussions in football players and the danger of long term damage to the brain, it may not surprise you that a technique used in soccer, called heading, is also under scrutiny. Researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York found that soccer players who repeatedly head the ball have similar brain abnormalities as patients with traumatic brain injury. Dr. Michael Lipton says the force of heading a soccer ball probably won’t lacerate nerve fibers in the brain, but doing it repeatedly could lead to degeneration of brain cells. The study, using thirty-two amateur soccer players found those who headed the ball more than a thousand times a year tended to have lower levels of movement of water molecules in white matter of their brains—compared to normal brain activity.