BEDFORD - The information on the screen in the Bedford High School auditorium was as jarring to Alex Starr as the hits he had taken on the football field months earlier.

Starr, a sophomore at Bedford High, was in the audience earlier this week listening to a presentation about sports head injuries. The featured speaker was Chris Nowinski, a former Harvard University football player and World Wrestling Entertainment performer who has suffered at least six concussions. He eventually retired from wrestling because of the lasting effects of his head injuries.

Nowinksi is the author of the book Head Games: Football's Concussion Crisis. He's also the president of the Sports Legacy Institute, which studies the effects of concussions and other sports-related brain injuries.

And on this night in Bedford, Nowinski wanted to impart a lesson to the athletes in the audience: Concussions can be a serious issue, and if they aren't properly treated with rest, they can lead to long-term problems such as headaches, memory loss and depression. In severe cases, he said, citing studies done by doctors, multiple

concussions have been linked to death.

But, he reminded the crowd repeatedly, with enough rest and medical guidance, athletes can get back on the playing fields after a head injury without fearing further risk to their health. Athletes, however, have to know the symptoms and be honest enough to report them to coaches, trainers or parents.

"Take ownership of your health," Nowinski said.

The message was an eye-opener for Starr. This past fall, he suffered three concussions while playing running back for Bedford's varsity team. As someone who has had multiple concussions, he was familiar with the term "second-impact syndrome." Yet he didn't know the extent of its dangers.

"Before this," he said, "I never knew that anybody could be killed from second-impact syndrome."

Devastating consequences

After Nowinski was diagnosed with post-concussion syndrome and was forced to retire from WWE at age 24 in 2003, he began researching head injuries. He found research linking multiple concussions with serious long-term neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, memory impairment and depression.

In 2006, his book Head Games was published. In 2007, he helped found the Sports Legacy Institute along with Dr. Robert Cantu, the chief of neurosurgery service and director of sports medicine at Emerson Hospital in Concord, Mass.

Early last year, Nowinski heard about the suicide of former Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals safety Andre Waters. Suspecting that Waters's history of concussions may have been linked to depression, Nowinski asked Waters's family for a sample of his brain tissue.

Bennet Omalu, a Pittsburgh neuropathologist, analyzed the tissue and found that it resembled that of an 85-year-old man and showed early indications of Alzheimer's. Omalu has also analyzed the brain tissue of three deceased former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive linemen who all suffered from head injuries - Mike Webster, Terry Long and Justin Strzelczyk. Webster died of a heart attack amid significant psychological problems in 2002, Strzelczyk died following a high-speed chase with the police after suffering from an apparent mental breakdown in 2004, and Long committed suicide in 2005.

Omalu found that all four of those ex-NFL players had a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). He says each of their deaths followed a similar pattern: concussions, which led to brain damage, which led to depression.

Single page