After he developed severe migraines and depression, he wanted to learn more about concussions and their effects. ![]() As a professional wrestler he sustained four more, forcing him to retire in 2004. ![]() As an all-Ivy League defensive tackle at Harvard in the late 1990s, he sustained two concussions, though like many athletes he did not report them to his coaches because he neither understood their severity nor wanted to appear weak. Each wants to sound an alarm to athletes and their families that repeated concussions can, some 20 years after the fact, have devastating consequences if left unrecognized and untreated - a stance already taken in some scientific journals. Nowinski, a former World Wrestling Entertainment star working in Boston as a pharmaceutical consultant, and the Waters family have spent the last six weeks becoming unlikely friends and allies. Because he was coincidentally situated in Pittsburgh, he had examined the brains of two former Pittsburgh Steelers players who were discovered to have had postconcussive brain dysfunction: Mike Webster, who became homeless and cognitively impaired before dying of heart failure in 2002 and Terry Long, who committed suicide in 2005. Omalu both for his expertise in the field of neuropathology and for his rare experience in the football industry. Waters’s brain shipped overnight in formaldehyde from the Hillsborough County, Fla., medical examiner’s office to Dr. ![]() Pinkney signed the release forms in mid-December, allowing Mr. safety from 1984 to 1995 known as a generally gregarious and giving man, spiraled down to the point of killing himself. Nowinski explain his rationale, she realized that the request was less creepy than credible. Waters’s sister Sandra Pinkney with a ghoulish request: to borrow the remains of her brother’s brain.Īs Ms. The Waters discovery began solely on the hunch of Chris Nowinski, a former Harvard football player and professional wrestler whose repeated concussions ended his career, left him with severe migraines and depression, and compelled him to expose the effects of contact-sport brain trauma. Tucker, also team physician of the Baltimore Ravens. “The picture is not really complete until we have the opportunity to look at the same group of people over time,” said Dr. was beginning a study of retired players later this year to examine the more general issue of football concussions and subsequent depression. A member of the league’s mild traumatic brain injury committee, Dr. players who may or may not know their full history of brain trauma, are at heightened risk of depression, dementia and suicide as early as midlife. Waters’s brain deterioration - which have not been corroborated or reviewed - add to the mounting scientific debate over whether victims of multiple concussions, and specifically longtime N.F.L. It’s the significant forensic factor given the global scenario.”ĭr. Waters’s brain damage, “no matter how you look at it, distort it, bend it. Omalu said that brain trauma “is the significant contributory factor” to Mr. Waters, 44, had sustained playing football. Omalu said he believed that the damage was either caused or drastically expedited by successive concussions Mr. Waters’s brain tissue had degenerated into that of an 85-year-old man with similar characteristics as those of early-stage Alzheimer’s victims. ![]() Bennet Omalu of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading expert in forensic pathology, determined that Mr. Waters had sustained brain damage from playing football and he says that led to his depression and ultimate death. Waters’s brain, a neuropathologist in Pittsburgh is claiming that Mr. Since the former National Football League player Andre Waters killed himself in November, an explanation for his suicide has remained a mystery.
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