When you damage your brain, you lose your personality

American Football: 'When you damage your brain, you lose your personality'
New medical studies confirm what many former gridiron players have long feared – bangs to the head can have debilitating and potentially deadly consequences.

By Gerard Wright in Los Angeles

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Dave Duerson shot himself in February

There is mounting scientific and medical evidence that the collisions in American football are taking a delayed but devastating toll on the players in terms of the concussions and head trauma they cause.

There are big hits in every game at college and professional level between big men. Even a small offensive or defensive lineman can weigh 120kg (almost 19st). The collisions are a clatter of helmet on helmet, like rams butting heads, with the helmets protecting their wearers from immediate external damage.

But two medical studies have shown that athletes, in particular American footballers repeatedly concussed in their playing days, are suffering from a neurological condition, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), that mimics dementia, Alzheimer's disease and, in some cases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), or motor neurone disease, the usually fatal condition with which Joost van der Westhuisen, the former Springbok scrum-half, has been diagnosed.

When you damage your brain, you lose your personality