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By On January 17th, 2013

Smaller, “Subconcussive” Hits May Cause CTE Over Time

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy has gone from unknown condition to household discussion in the past few weeks, especially after NFL veteran Junior Seau was found to have the condition after he committed suicide last year.

CTE is believed to be brought on by repeated brain injuries, such as those commonly sustained in the NFL, but Purdue Biomedical Engineering Professor Tom Talavage told WIBC.com he believes it may not take such serious hits to create life-long changes in the brain.

“If you’re taking […] around 90 hits per week or more, even six months later your brain is still not back to where it was before you started that activity,” said Talvage.

Considering how many times a football player gets hit in a week, including practice, it isn’t hard to imagine them racking up that many blows pretty easily. If the problem isn’t necessarily the huge collisions that seriously affect players, but also the regular smaller hits, the NFL may be in worse trouble than they previously thought.

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