The death and dementia rate for former NFL players under sixty years old far exceeds the rates seen in the general population. So is the death rate for non professional athlete blacks compared to Hispanics and whites.
Too many performance enhancing drugs and too many hits to the head.
All NFL players, with the exception of back up QBs and kickers have a shortened life span.
CTE is the main killer of these guys.
The Dr. that did the autopsy of Junior Seau stated his brain was severely affected by the countless number of concussions he had throughout his career.
This is why so many parents are keeping their kids from playing football, especially at a young age. Soccer, baseball, basketball all are less contact sports when it comes to head injuries.
Same thing with professional wrestlers with their drug abuse and they also suffer head trauma even if wrestling is scripted. They die young all the time.
Researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “studied all NFL players who played for at least five seasons during 1959 to 1988 and found those players ‘had a much lower rate of death overall compared to men in the general population,’ including lower rates of cancer and heart disease,” the NFL noted.
That finding was affirmed in a recent study that looked at a younger cohort of retired players and found “that while the leading cause of death among former NFL players was cardiovascular disease, ‘the overall and cardiovascular mortality risk of this NFL cohort was significantly lower than the general U.S. male population,’ “ the statement said.
Took all of 30 seconds to find that