Smell the Truth » Opinion: Could Marijuana Save Professional Football?

Smell the Truth » Opinion: Could Marijuana Save Professional Football?

clip from article: The biggest lawsuit in sports history was filed by 2,138 former National Football League players on June 7 in federal court, charging that the NFL has “turned a blind eye to the risk” of repeated head injuries and was guilty of “mythologizing and glorifying violence through the media including its NFL Films division.”
The players and their families claim that the serious health ramifications of continual blows to the head, which are integral to the sport, were hidden and that the NFL “generated false findings” to that end. The lawsuit also includes helmet maker Riddel. The players are seeking unspecified compensation for the care and treatment of neurological conditions associated with brain trauma.
The players claim that they expected injuries as a part of playing the game, but what they didn’t expect was that they would prematurely descend into the kind of dementia and mental deterioration that usually strikes much older people. The gravity of the situation was brought to public attention by the recent suicides of three former NFL players who were suffering from ailments similar to those associated with Alzheimer’s or other neurological diseases. In February of last year, All-Pro defensive back Dave Duerson shot himself in the chest and requested in his suicide note that his brain be studied for damage.
Dr. Ann McKee, a neurologist studying brain trauma in Bedford, Massachusetts examined Duerson’s brain and determined that he “had classic pathology of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) and no evidence of any other disease.” McKee found that the repeated blows to the head experienced by football players accelerate mental decline by creating a protein that accumulates in brain cells, disabling and eventually destroying them. The symptoms of CTE resemble those of Alzheimer’s disease—personality changes, irritability and irrational behavior that progress to dementia. Bedford says that she has seen some level of CTE in every football player she has examined. Former NFL players report suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s or other memory-impairment diseases at a rate five times higher than that of the national average for their age group.
With all the attention now focused on the terrible toll that professional football takes on the human brain, a curious and perhaps provocative question needs to be posed to NFL administrators and officials: Could marijuana help?
At first glance the question seems flippant and irrelevant, but when one looks at the evidence from a growing body of science involving the study of plant cannabinoids—the compounds found only in cannabis—the idea of using marijuana to treat and possibly repair the injured brains of athletes seems plausible. Researchers from around the world have found that THC, CBD and other cannabinoids have remarkable neuroprotective properties and also trigger the brains repair mechanism to generate new cells.
Research published as far back as 1998 found that “Cannabidiol (CBD) and THC were shown to prevent hydroperoxide-induced oxidative damage as well as or better than other antioxidants…” and that CBD was more effective for protecting the brain from damage resulting from injury than the antioxidants Vitamin C or E. Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, the Israeli researcher who first identified THC as the euphoric agent in marijuana said that “the endocannabinoids anandamide and 2-AG, as well as some plant and synthetic cannabinoids have neuroprotective effects following brain injury.” Another study, carried out at Michigan State University found that after 48 hours of treatment, THC significantly reduced tau deposits in the brain.
One of the plaintiffs in the NFL suit is Kevin Turner, 42, a former Philadelphia Eagles running back who is stricken with ALS, better known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, which he blames on repeated head blows. It is of course possible that Turner, like Gehrig, might have developed ALS if he had played baseball and not suffered the head injuries..[ read more at link]