“It is urgent to improve awareness, monitoring and management of conflicts”

2024-07-31 09:00:06

“I spoiled myself” : Raphaël Varane’s soccer words The team on April 2 was the detonator of important knowledge about concussions. Some unknown changes in mental activity, caused by shock or sudden decline, arguments are nothing at all.

At least 100,000 of these injuries occur each year in France in many sports, both amateur and professional. A large part has no download or support. Some athletes experience effects after months or even years: anxiety, balance problems, irritability, headaches, insomnia, depression … A particularly important factor among young people, whose brain is still developing.

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If there is zero risk, there is an urgent need to improve awareness, monitoring and management of conflicts. And what better opportunity than this Olympic year to celebrate a responsible sport, practiced without unnecessarily exposing an element as important as the brain?

The freedom of the injured

Because of the dangerous situations there are many techniques, Olympic or not: challenges in rugby, repeated attacks and heads in football, attacks in hockey, handball or basketball, blows in boxing, horse riding and skiing accident, mountain biking, sports, boating and even swimming… The helmet does not provide any protection against collisions, even if it creates an advantageous shield against external injuries.

What to do then? First, it is important to allow the injured to talk and to tell their loved ones. Actor and director Roschdy Zem is one of those helping to lift the taboo. Your movie mine released in 2022 is inspired by the story of his younger brother, the victim of a fall which damaged his frontal lobe.

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Often, the athlete and those around him are unaware of the damage caused by such a concussion. Causing a sudden change of the brain in the skull, a stroke is a trauma which is obviously not good, because it causes many reactions in the brain which can lead mainly to neuroinflammation..

Repeated attacks are a risk of neurodegenerative diseases, such as chronic post-traumatic encephalopathy, which continues without correction to the state of dementia. Symptoms, which are different, depend on the areas of the brain affected: seizures, balance disorders, confusion, anxiety, strange expression, loss of consciousness in around 15% of cases.

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