Here's another good reason to keep your children from playing contact sports: chronic traumatic encephalomyopathy.
CTE, a motor-neuron disorder that mimics ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), is more than just a mouthful.
It frequently affects athletes who experienced repeated brain injuries associated with routine practice and play in football, rugby, ice and field hockey, boxing and lacrosse.
Punch-drunk boxers have dementia pugilistica, a form of CTE.
Symptoms are persistent grogginess, confusion, reeling, staggering, daze, unsteadiness, stupefication, befuddlement, wooziness and slap-happiness.
Sort of like what you experience after too much hair of the dog that bit you--or after listening to Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck. (29 AUGUST 2010)