Football, also known as American football, is a physically demanding sport that can have a significant impact on an individual’s health. The risk of injury, particularly head injuries, is a major concern for players of all ages. Concussions, which can lead to long-term cognitive impairment, are common injuries in football.
The research — based on a survey of nearly 3,000 former National Football League players, representing the largest study cohort of former professional football players to date — was conducted by investigators at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School as part of the ongoing Football Players Health Study at, a research program that encompasses a constellation of studies designed to evaluate various aspects of players’ health across their life span.
This level of attention is important because chronic conditions such as diabetes or hypertension, for example, could be easily overlooked due to a former player’s status as an elite athlete, Grashow added. Not surprisingly, the analysis showed that all four conditions increased with age in both the former football players and in the general population. However, the prevalence of these conditions, or the proportion of individuals who had them, differed significantly between the two groups. In each decade of life, the former athletes were more likely to report that they’d been diagnosed with dementia/Alzheimer’s disease and arthritis.
Metabolic conditions such as hypertension and diabetes could have dangerous long-term effects on heart health and cognition that could be mitigated with early diagnosis and treatment, said study senior author Aaron Baggish, director of in-person assessment studies at the Football Players Health Study and former director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Cardiovascular Performance Program, which provides comprehensive cardiac care to athletes.