Yahoo Finance Leading Dementia Expert Says Heading Should Be Eliminated From Football
A leading dementia expert has said that heading footballs should be eliminated from football to protect players, at all levels, from developing dementia and other degenerative diseases.
Consultant neuropathologist, Dr Willie Stewart has recommended footballs be sold with a health warning and said it's time for the sport to ban the practice, especially at amateur and youth levels, as it can cause both degenerative conditions and short-term impairment of brain function.
"We can stop this now and to do that we have to reduce, if not eliminate, unnecessary head impacts," said Stewart. "Is heading absolutely necessary for football to continue? Or to put it another way: is exposure to the risk of dementia necessary for football?
"I've yet to see any evidence that heading a ball is good for you. Football is great for you, there is less cancer and cardiovascular problems for players, but there are dreadful levels of dementia and I can't see the benefit of that."
He added: "Maybe professionals with all the support and medical knowledge of the risks can continue to play full-contact heading football, but maybe at community and youth level, we can start talking about a game without heading. Do we wait 30 to 40 years? Or do we say the evidence is sufficiently strong where we should consider a sport without unnecessary head impact?
"I think we are well past this point."
Stewart made his comments after publishing research that showed defenders were five times more likely to have dementia than people who don't play football.
His research also found that forwards were three times as likely to develop dementia, while, interestingly, the risk to goalkeepers was almost non-existent when compared with the general population.
Overall, outfield players were four times as likely to develop brain diseases such as dementia.
Stewart's previous work in the area prompted English football to introduce recommended limits on heading for professional and amateur players, which will come into force ahead of the upcoming season.
However, Stewart is critical of the guidelines that will limit professional footballers to 10 'higher-force' headers in training from long passes, corners or free-kicks, and limit amateur players to 10 headers per week, labelling them "unscientific guesswork".
"There is no basis to say 10 headers of a certain level will necessarily make a great difference to the risk. The FA based their recommendations on analysis of matches, estimated what the forces might be and then used that for training guidance.
"That's like being stood on the edge of the motorway and guessing cars' speeds and talking about road traffic measures in a city. It's not entirely relevant.
"To assess whether 10 high-force head impacts might make a difference, we have to wait 30 to 40 years," he said.
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