Jeffrey Kluger Quotes

The brain is suspended in a kind of thick jelly inside the skull, and a helmet can't keep it from sloshing around. If you hit your head hard enough, the brain goes bashing against the walls of the skull.

In the early 16th century the Italian physician Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, a pioneer in the science of anatomy, came up with the idea that perhaps 'brain commotion' was caused by the thrust of the soft structure of the brain against the solid case of the skull.

I know if I don't look after myself, I will be talking to you in a couple of years' time mumbling my words and slurring. It won't be because I am drunk: it will be the fighting, taking blow after blow to the brain. That scares me. I don't worry about being killed in the ring; it's losing my mind that I fear.

The overwhelming evidence is that trauma is a major factor in CTE.

In boxing, you've got CTE from head trauma constantly.

There is no safe blow to the head, especially for a child.

Scarily, football helmets, which do a fine job of protecting against scalp laceration and skull fracture, do little to prevent concussions and may even exacerbate them, since even as the brain is rattling around inside the skull, the head is rattling around inside the helmet.

When people say that you kind of just get - you know, just feel like a little buzzed or dazed or had your bell rung - they consider that a concussion. I wouldn't. But if that is considered a concussion, I would say any football player at least records 50 to 100 in the course of a year.

Sometimes a great wound or concussion of the head, especially which happens by falling headlong from an high place, brings a prejudice and weakness to the animal faculty, dulling the understanding.

I wish my memory weren't so bad. They tell me it's from all the football and boxing and the concussions that I got.

It's just a matter of sometimes the CTE in your brain affects what happens in your life... and sometimes... it does not.

I forget stuff. Guess I took a few too many punches.

I had a depressed skull fracture. A few pieces of bone went in quite deep; that was the biggest danger.

I forget a lot of things sometimes. I'm not one to sit here and complain. While I did not know the severity of what continuous head traumas could do to an individual and the mind and so forth, I'm not going to sit here and complain.

I've had hundreds and hundreds of concussions, but I don't think that I have any permanent damage. A lot of my peers do.

If I have another concussion and I don't feel like I can play anymore, then I won't.

The idea that just the basis of the game, repetitive hits, could bring on a cascade of issues later in life, that was - it changed the game for me.

I don't ever want to be a punch drunk.

The thing you don't realise is that every time you head the ball, your brain shakes. Every single time. Have you ever headed a ball badly and seen stars for a couple of seconds? That's your brain shaking. Let's be honest: that can't be healthy, can it?

Subconcussive injuries are brain injuries on top of unrecovered brain injuries.

After the situation I had with my concussion in 2015, how long and lasting the effects were, I'm just more careful about it.

It would be ill-advised to compare war and a sport, but I don't think the brain knows the difference. With post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries in blasts with veterans, we see a very similar and somewhat unique issue with repetitive brain injuries in football.

It makes common sense that children, whose brains are rapidly developing, should not be hitting their heads hundreds of times per season.

For some reason, I have a thick skull.

I've been concussed I don't know how many times, yeah it's taken a pretty good toll on the body.