'There's no such thing as safe' in contact sports, brain injury expert says

We turn now to the issue of impact sports and the threat to sports men and women of all ages, especially in the light of the recent death just last month of a 70-year-old French woman after a head collision on the rugby field. Claire Mignier suffered a heart attack as a result and died, her tragic death recognised by French rugby at top Qatar's games in the wake of her loss. There are many cases of rugby players suffering serious head and brain injuries. The most high profile here in France, Sébastien Chabal, dubbed the caveman for his long hair and beard, whose game was based on crunching, bone-shaking tackles. He's admitted he can remember very little of his career. There's a case being brought by male rugby players, including 2003 England World Cup winning hooker Steve Thompson, over brain damage. And the sport not doing enough to prevent player injuries. But of course, it's not just rugby. There's American football too, which is very much in the same bracket. Let's bring in an expert on the issue. Daniel H. Daneshvar, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Daniel, thank you for being with us. In your opinion, is there any safe impact sport? Well, so everything in life has some risk associated with it. But what we're increasingly realizing is if you get a lot of repeated hits to the head, then you're at risk for problems later in life, both in the near term and long term. There's no such thing as safe. I, for instance, play in an amateur rugby club. I wouldn't begin to get any parallel between myself and a professional rugby player. But is there such a thing as the occasional impact, which means you will not be? Have a future problem, or are you saying that even just at a casual level, the very low level that I might play at, that risk is still there? Well, it's good for your health to be active. So I think that that's a good thing. But on the flip side, your brain doesn't care what hits it, whether you're getting hit in a professional match or in a scrimmage or as an individual. So it really is important to make sure that you're getting as minimum head impact dosage as possible. The way I think about it, it's like we all understand the relationship about a dose response relationship with smoking. There's no safe number of cigarettes. More is worse, less is better. The same is true for head impacts. There are head guards in the field of rugby. There are even more impressive head guards in American football. Does that make a difference? So the best equipment versus the worst equipment might attenuate the forces associated with the impacts by like 10% or so. So when you're talking on a football impact of an average of a 30G impact, you're taking a 30G impact and making it a 27G impact. Still a pretty big hit. You're much better off taking that 30G impact and making it a zero G impact by having it eliminated altogether. So I'm wondering whether the use of a mouth guard is something that in some way makes the impact less. The saying goes certainly in the UK that if you're biting down on your mouth guard and you're in contact, it reduces the impact on your head. But from what I'm hearing from you, that might just be an old wives' tale or an old father's tale. Yeah. Also, mouth guards are really key for protecting your teeth. So dentofacial injuries or facial injuries get much more likely without a proper mouth guard. But when it comes to concussions, a lot of different studies have tried to evaluate the efficacy of concussion prevention with mouth guards, and all of them have come up negative so far. Okay. I'm not feeling good about this so far. I think perhaps I should take up badminton. In terms of what is being done with professional players, is enough being done to protect them? I know this might be a contentious question to put to you, but I'm going to do it anyway and see what you come up with. Is enough being done to protect professional sports people? Well, there's always more that can be done for our professional athletes. But in many of our sports, the professionals actually have the safest kind of play. I'll use American football as an example. In American football, there's fewer than one contact sport per week. That's not how the college kids play. That's not how the high school or the youth athletes play. And so in many ways, the NFL is playing a safer style of football. They also have athletic trainers and other people on the sidelines to help watch and monitor people. for signs of concerning issues. That's not how kids play. And when you think about the number of people who play sports, there are more people like you playing rugby than there are professional athletes. Daniel, thank you for your time. You've given me a lot to think about. I think our viewers will share my point of view. Daniel H. Dhaneshwar, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. Thank you, sir, for your time. I've noted everything you've said, and I'm sure many people will be actually quite interested in the thoughts that you've expressed. Daniel H. Dhaneshwar of Harvard Medical School. Thank you very much indeed.