In a study from Harvard and elsewhere, scientists found the chance that former professional football players will be diagnosed with high blood pressure—a known risk factor for heart and cognitive dysfunction—rises in step with the number of concussions the athletes sustained during their careers.
The results suggest that high blood pressure may be another driver of cognitive decline—a condition strongly linked with professional football play in previous studies and believed to stem primarily from a repeated head injury.
The findings also point to high blood pressure as a modifiable risk factor that could halt or slow both neurologic and heart damage in former players.
In the study, the team did a survey of more than 4,000 former National Football League players.
High blood pressure, the most common cause of these conditions, can also gradually damage blood vessels in the brain, leading to cognitive decline over time.
Various aspects of professional football, such as purposeful weight gain during play years and deconditioning after career end, are associated with high blood pressure.
The team analyzed known risk factors for hypertension in the general population—diabetes, obesity, age, smoking—as well as players’ number of seasons of play, field position, years since play, and the occurrence of 10 common concussion symptoms.
These symptoms were used to calculate a concussion symptom score or CSS.
The team showed that as players’ symptom scores rose, so did their likelihood of being diagnosed with hypertension, even after researchers accounted for known hypertension risk factors.
Notably, even using the number of occurrences of just one severe concussion symptom—loss of consciousness—was enough to accurately predict players’ likelihood of developing high blood pressure.
The team says that while it remains unclear exactly how concussion leads to hypertension, one hypothesis is that repeat concussions could cause a chronic inflammation that prompts blood pressure to rise.
Uncovering the precise mechanism underlying concussion-related hypertension will be the aim of future research.
If you care about high blood pressure, please read studies about how fasting may help reverse high blood pressure naturally, and marijuana may strongly increase the death risk in high blood pressure.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about antioxidants that could help reduce dementia risk and flavonoid-rich foods that could improve survival in Parkinson’s disease.
The study was conducted by Rachel Grashow et al and published in Circulation.
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