There has been a lot of media attention and interest lately on the issue of brain trauma amongst athletes. A New York Times article dated August 17, 201 called “Study Says Brain Trauma Mimic A.L.S.” not only made the front cover and lead article of the Sports section, it became one of the paper’s “most e-mailed” for weeks. And with good reason. It dropped a bomb:
Lou Gehrig, the legendary New York Yankee hitter famous for never missing a game, even playing after receiving a concussion – may not have died from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (A.L.S.), or what’s known today (ironically) as “Lou Gehrig’s disease”.
The article made news because it cited an important study published by a leading neurology journal that confirms a long-suspected connection between A.L.S.-like motor disease and head trauma experienced in collision sports and combat. It also concludes that diagnoses of Lou Gehrig’s Disease might have been incorrect for a number of other deceased athletes.
What the study’s authors, Doctors at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine, proved with their research was that while concussive (concussions) and sub-concussive injuries are not new to various sports such as football and boxing, the effects of these injuries and the way they erode the central nervous system is similar in ways to A.L.S.
The alarming implications of these studies are that the cognitive effects of brain trauma could potentially affect hundreds of former professional athletes and perhaps thousands of boys and girls across many youth sports.
In some recent and high-profile cases, high school and college athletes who had untimely deaths later had autopsies that found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy – essentially thousands of sub-concussive injuries sustained over time, gradually eroding the brain and nervous system.
While athletes, parents, schools, and sports organizations ponder what to do in regards to preventing or minimizing repeat brain injury, it’s worth considering what other activities might inadvertently be potentially contributing to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
This brings up the long-standing concern over the safety of exercise equipment known as high intensity vibration plates. Dr. Clinton Rubin, Chairman of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of New York Stony Brook and an expert on the topic, says, “ the study points out the dangers of thousands of sub-concussive collisions – and I hate to say it, but that is exactly what high intensity vibration does. We know that these signals transmit very well through a body”.
In fact, there is a long history of research into the inherent dangers of chronic exposure to high intensity vibrations on the musculoskeletal system. It is not difficult to imagine that intense and sustained vibrations at the level of one or more g-forces (force of acceleration) that can “shake” a person hard enough to induce chronic musculoskeletal pain (i.e. low back pain) would be doing the same to the brain and nervous system.
To conclude, I would suggest that users of high intensity vibration plates (anything over 1g), should be concerned about potential long-term consequences or damage that result from such a strong and sustained force on the central nervous system. Many commercially available vibrating plates (that accelerate at upwards of 30g’s) are officially considered unsafe for any amount of time. And with good reason: The International Standards Organization and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health have both identified high intensity vibration as a potential pathogen to brain degeneration.
Dr. Kim Luu, PhD
