Heading May Be Riskier For Female Soccer Players Than Males
I watched the soccer world cup recently, comparing notes with my son, who was watching down under in Australia, where he is living and working. It can sometimes be a boring game, sometimes very exciting. But every time I see them forcefully hit the ball with their heads, I cringe.
Having worked on many hundreds of clients with headaches, migraines, brain injuries, and other neurological problems, all I can think about is the locking of the cranial bones, the compensatory stabilizing efforts of the dural tissue, and the effect on the cerebrospinal fluid and the brain itself. According to this study published in Radiology, however, “headers” may hurt women/girls more than men/boys.
“The study authors found that female amateur soccer players who frequently head balls showed more white matter brain alterations than their male counterparts…Lead author Michael Lipton, a neuroradiologist and neuroscientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says white matter in the brain can be compared to fiber optic cable, which connects a network of computer. White matter is made up thread-like axon nerve fibers that connect neurons to each other, and their protective covering, myelin.
“Heading causes these brain tissues to become disorganized, Lipton says. His previous research found that these abnormalities accompany poorer cognitive function associated with memory or attention issues when associated with heading.
“‘The most important finding here is that we see that in women’s brains, actually looking at brain tissue, there seems to be a greater sensitivity to repetitive, very low-level injury relative to men,’ he says.
“An important note about this research, Lipton says, is that it isn’t about concussions. Instead, it’s measuring “sub-concussive injuries,” or repeated impacts that don’t cause any immediate, acknowledged problem for the player, but could be problematic in the long-term.”
Study in Radiology:
https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2018180217
Report by Sara Kiley Watson for NPR:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/07/31/634263471/heading-may-be-riskier-for-women-soccer-players-than-men
