Brain Doc Daniel Amen Offers Hope for Veterans of NFL and Armed Service

In a study involving 100 current and former NFL athletes, Dr. Daniel Amen shows that diminished cognitive function as a result of a football career may be reversible.

Football players who earn the opportunity to play at the top professional level may enjoy vast wealth and the adoration of the game's millions of fans. But the potential costs are dear, and often permanent.

The health risks involved in football are well-known, and the culmination of a professional career in the NFL can leave former players struggling with a host of painful and enduring medical challenges for the rest of their lives. Among the most alarming is the damage to the brain that results from meting out and taking hits by the thousands over an entire career.

Daniel Amen is one of today's most visible brain researchers through frequent appearances on PBS as well as through his books that include Making a Good Brain Great and Change Your Brain Change Your Life.

In an article that appears on The Huffington Post, Amen details his work with several retired NFL players and confirms the worst: when 200-plus pound men, even with the benefits of protective equipment, collide repeatedly at full running speed with the helmeted head leading the charge and taking the impact, brain injury and declines in cognitive function and emotional health are common.

Amen writes that he saw as patients several former football pros with similar symptoms: depression and irritability, obesity, and in some cases dementia. In the absence of official NFL medical research and data linking football with effects on the brain, Amen began his own investigation, one that involved gathering data from more than 100 active and retired NFL players.

The results were alarming: at rates far higher than in the population as a whole, the players were found to exhibit signs of permanent brain damage. Brain regions and their functions most commonly found to be impacted are the prefrontal cortex (judgment, impulse control, attention, organization and planning), the temporal lobes (mood and memory) and the cerebellum (movement and thought coordination).

The second half of Amen's investigation however delivered equally strong but far more optimistic results. Former players exhibiting impaired cognitive function were put through a combination of a weight-loss regimen with regular exercise (Amen notes that, perhaps surprisingly, former players commonly adopt sedentary lifestyles). In addition, they were put on a course of brain-boosting supplements including fish oil and a supplement of Amen's proprietary design made from ginkgo biloba, amino acids and other ingredients.

Follow-up brain scans on study participants, Amen writes, indicate success in not just halting the decline but in reversing it, and in dramatically improving cognitive function and emotional well-being in the large majority. Pre- and post-study scores in tests of neuropsychological function improved significantly, in some cases by 400 percent.

"The follow-up results have been nothing short of amazing. We have found that recovery and improvement in cognitive function is indeed possible," Amen writes. He adds:

"The exciting news in my mind is that if we can demonstrate improvement in football players with chronic brain damage, it offers hope for the millions of people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury, including the 15 percent of soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who came home with brain injuries."

Photo by dbking via Flickr.