Head Injury In Professional Football

Professional football although, highly regarded as a popular heavily watched sport, is not always the safest. There are numerous types of injuries professional football players could potentially sustain while playing football. Many of these require a lengthy recovery and, depending on the injury, players could suffer devastating, lasting,and potentially addictive effects from prescriptions written for pain. Some injuries are obviously worse than others, depending on the kind of injury it is. Head injuries such as concussions or clean knockouts can lead to many bad effects, both in the short-term and in the long-term. In the short term, head injuries can potentially cause seizures, loss of sleep, dizziness, and lack of appetite.

When joints are dislocated it makes the tendons, and ligaments as well as the muscles surrounding the joint to be vulnerable to tear. Not to mention, the extreme risk for damage to the bone structure from the dislocation. Obviously, some dislocations are worse than others, like when someone dislocate a knee often times doctors or trainers are able to just pop it back in place, brace it, instruct the players to stay off of it for a few weeks and they’ll be fine. The knee may still hurt, but the recovery isn 't near as bad. The story is not always so smooth for other types of dislocations. For example, if a player were to dislocate an elbow like Malcolm Mitchell recently did in early 2016, that often requires complex dislocation surgery to put the joint back in place, and to repair damage to the blood vessels and nerves in the joint during the

This often leads to nasty opiate addiction, potentially years after a player has retired from the league. These addictions can lead to relationship problems with family and friends. Not to mention these dependencies can lead to problems with everyday tasks like going out to do errands without being able to have a fix.Such dependencies can often lead to criminal behavior like assaults, robberies, and potentially even murders if these addictions are not treated in proper time. These are some of the harsh effects of playing professional football. Some steps we could take to prevent these types of injuries could be: better protective equipment such as thicker padding, supportive joint braces/joint taping, harsher penalties on certain types of hits, as well as offering long term support for addiction counseling for players throughout their careers and after retirement. Granted, these ideas won’t 100% prevent these types of injuries, but it can help cut down the life long effects of these