American football: very bad for the heart

In the end, we don’t know much about American football in France. Ultra-violent sport with incomprehensible tactics for ordinary mortals, it seems however to develop little by little in Europe. VShe sport of rough contact is not without danger to health. If we already knew that these athletes lived on average ten years less than the rest of the population, other complications were identified by a team of researchers from the University of Georgia (United States). According to their study published in the journal The FASEB journal, American football players are much more likely to suffer from hypertension and serious cardiovascular disorders.

It is especially the front row players who are the most affected, due to their propensity to take severe blows during a match. Indeed, the impacts received lead to chronic inflammation which would contribute to increasing blood pressure. “We believe that the increase in blood pressure is due to the repeated trauma that footballers suffer,” explains Cam McCarthy, a doctoral student in charge of the study.
These inflammatory effects are also responsible for brain damage that would then cause chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disorder that causes the death of many footballers.

Stiffening of the arteries

Worse still, the researchers claim that these shocks, comparable to automobile collisions at around 50 km/h, result in progressive stiffness of the arteries, which would result in high blood pressure. Also due to repeated shocks during a match, players’ muscles gradually atrophy, which releases substances into the body that impact the immune system. It seems inevitable, however, that the front lines take hits, which are the very essence of the sport.

But in any case, the protections worn during the matches do not seem to be enough to protect the physical integrity of the players. Let’s hope that this study sounds the alarm within the federations.