Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is presented by The Mac Parkman Foundation
The mission of this show and the foundation is To serve as a source of information, resources, and communications to the community of parents, coaches/Athletic trainers, medical staff, and athletes that are affected by sports-related concussions and to raise awareness of the long-term implications of concussive and sub-concussive trauma to our children.
Broken Brains will also explore how Concussive Trauma impacts our Service Members and Veterans.
Join us every week as Bruce interviews leaders and experts in various Medical fields, as well as survivors of Concussive trauma.
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Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
CTE in Sports: Dr. Judith Gates on HeadSafe Football, Brain Trauma, and Saving the Game
In this powerful episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, we dive into the urgent conversation around repetitive brain trauma in sports with Dr. Judith Gates—founder of HeadSafe Football and fierce advocate for athlete brain health.
Dr. Gates opens up about the devastating impact of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) on her late husband, Bill Gates, a former professional footballer. Through her personal loss, she has transformed grief into action—launching a movement aimed at preventing CTE and protecting current and future generations of athletes.
From youth football to the NFL, this episode unpacks why it's time for real reform—safer play practices, helmet innovation, and policy change that puts brain safety first.
🎯 Topics Covered:
What is CTE and why does it matter?
How repetitive sub concussive hits change the brain.
How HeadSafe Football is rewriting the playbook for athlete protection.
The role of education, research, and family advocacy in tackling sports-related brain injuries.
🧠 Whether you're a parent, coach, athlete, or advocate—this conversation will change how you view the game.
👉 Don't miss this eye-opening discussion.
📲 Like, share, and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts to join the movement for athlete brain safety.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
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Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Broken Brains podcast with your host, bruce Parkman, sponsored by the Mac Parkman Foundation, the national voice for repetitive brain trauma in the forms of repetitive head impacts from contact sports and repetitive blast exposure for our veterans, and what these issues are doing to the brains of our athletes, children and veterans. And the outcome is mental illness that's poorly diagnosed and mistreated and it's causing all kinds of social ills that are absolutely preventable through changes that are very commonsensical and can be, you know, can be made by any parent, any coach or any politician. Really, on this show we reach out to researchers, scientists, experts, professional players, parents, coaches, everybody out there, because we want to give you that 360-degree look at repetitive brain trauma so you're informed, because this is unknown phenomena that affects millions, if not billions, of people around the world yet is poorly understood, it's not trained to our medical and psychological professions. So you become the bastion of hope for the people that you know and the people that you love.
Speaker 1:On our show today, another amazing guest, dr Judah Gates, who's the founder and trustee of Head Safe Football and by football we're talking to a UK person, so that's like what we would call soccer. Dr Judah Gates is the founder of Head Safe Football, an organization dedicated to making youth football safer through evidence-based policy change, education and advocacy. And advocacy Motivated by her personal connection to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or what we know as CTE, through her husband, former professional footballer Bill Gates. Dr Gates works to raise awareness about the risks of repeated head impacts and to promote reforms that protect players at all levels. Dr Gates, welcome to the show and we appreciate you being here so much. It's good to be in contact after Ahead Save came out to our summit last year and did that. Nick your son, I guess did that remarkable presentation on repetitive impacts in soccer players, or what we call football. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for the invitation. We're delighted to connect across an ocean in terms of our work, because that actually gives both of our organizations an international perspective. So tremendous to have your interest and absolutely amazing to be able to be of support to your organization.
Speaker 1:Dr Gates, I mean, without a doubt, you know our foundation in this issue. Even though CTE came out in 2009, I feel like we are way behind the rest of the world in recognizing the issues that this issue, this particular issue, and its impact on society. Can you tell us a story, tell us your story, how you got to this point? Let's talk about your husband, your organization and what drove you to take some of them, which I feel are some of the most successful steps in promoting change and awareness about the issue of repetitive head impact.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Let me tell you about my Bill Bill Gates, and we describe him as the original Bill Gates because he was born with the other guy. Describe him as the original Bill Gates because he was born with the other guy. We were school sweethearts. We met when we were both at what you would call high school in America and we had 60 plus years together. So I was actually alongside him throughout his very long and successful career as a professional let me say soccer in the American way, football to us his professional football career in the UK.
Speaker 2:He played for 13 years for a club called Middlesbrough FC. He played 333 games. He was a centre-back. He was renowned for being strong in the air. So all of the newspaper coverage, all of the media coverage said things like all roads down the middle were closed by gates and they were usually closed by his strength in the air. However, sadly, during his career he began suffering from repeated and debilitating migraines, so much so that he went to the club doctor and the club doctor at that time was actually the England football team club doctor. So Bill was dealing with medical advice at the highest possible level in the United Kingdom at that time I'm talking the 60s and the 70s when he reported his migraines the comment that came back was it goes with the territory, bill, you know it's just what happens. You're heading the ball a lot. It goes with the territory as distinct from any recognition. And we obviously now know from all of the work that's gone on about punch drunk and boxers etc. We know that the history of neurology indicated that even at that time there were significant dangers in blows to the head. So Bill went through his professional career as a very well-respected player. He actually played for England youth team and very respected in his community and very respected in the footballing world. He retired from professional football actually at a very young age, on the eve of his 30th birthday, because the migraines were just so very, very bad. And at that time what he said and the sad thing is it proved to be a prophecy that became true. He said one day I will suffer from something dementia, whatever else because of the number of head impacts I've had. I mean at that time the players were heading 100 balls a day in training, particularly if they were the ones who would be sent about where their strength in the air was relaxed so fast forward.
Speaker 2:We went through several decades we watched the generation before Bill. Many of them succumbed to neurodegenerative disease, motor neuron disease, what you in the States refer to as Lou Gehrig's disease, dementia, what was described as Alzheimer's, although we now question very much whether it really was. Because dementia the cause of dementia is essentially a judgment call. No illnesses that cause dementia can definitively be diagnosed until post-mortem, including CTE. So we went through the next few decades living our lives, having kids, having grandkids, and always with a niggling worry at the back of our minds as to what might happen. Sadly, that niggling worry became a truth and in Bill's 60s he began on the journey which people who have been on it and I know many of your NFL players are on it rugby players, nhl players the journey that begins with potentially psychological changes, mood changes, obsessive behaviors, tormented behaviors, the many suicidal ideations.
Speaker 2:For Bill it began with small memory losses. I mean my son, nick, described the fact that when he first realized his dad had a problem was when his dad asked him half a dozen times what time their golf tea time was, and knowing how much both Nick and Bill enjoyed playing golf together, the fact that he didn't remember that was significant. So we went on a 14-year journey which I can only describe as horrific for Bill and very challenging for the family. We went through the memory loss. We went through the post-it notes around the house. We went through the toxic behavior. We went through the find me a gun, give me tablets. I can't live like this. We went through the walking 10 miles a day because walking was the only thing that brought him peace. But we had to accompany him because he couldn't find his way home. And sadly, that journey ended two years ago October the 21st 2023, a date I will never forget. And by that time, bill was no longer able to walk. He was barely able to speak, he could hardly open his eyes and his communications were often through squeezing a hand. I would hold his hand and I would say squeeze my hand, if you know that I love you. And the most wonderful thing was when I got a squeeze back because I felt that the man of my life, my partner for life, was still in there.
Speaker 2:In terms of what then put us as a family on the Head Safe football journey, it was the absolute generosity of spirit of my husband when, in 2017, he was told from some very advanced tests in North America a PET scan with amyloid traces revealed no evidence of amyloid, so Alzheimer's was ruled out. A spinal tap revealed elevated tau protein, so a tau pathy was indicated, the most likely one being CTE. Because of his repetitive head impact history, when he was given that provisional diagnosis, he turned to me and he said, judith, it's too late for me, but promise me that you and your family will do everything that you can to protect players in the future. Now I took that as a solemn promise. I would actually describe it as a sacred promise that I gave him because my husband, my man, my partner, was asking me on his behalf to plant a tree where he would not benefit from the shade but others following would would not benefit from the shade, but others following would.
Speaker 2:And so we founded a charity, initially worked with rugby but recognised we needed to focus exclusively on football, on soccer, because of the requests from soccer families. And we founded Head Safe Football. And we founded it with three main threads, with an umbrella going over all of them Care and support for families. And I have worked with so many families. I've spent so many hours with families struggling to come to terms with the challenge of loving and caring as somebody they love just years before their eyes and the practical problems of the financial implications and the practical problems of the financial implications. We work on research and I helped found an international group, the Repercussion Group of independent researchers, because we'd already found the challenge of independence, that the concussion in sport group was largely manned by researchers who were in the employ of the sporting governing bodies and that influenced much of the research. So I'm connected around the world, from New Zealand to the West Coast of America, with researchers who are independent.
Speaker 2:And then our prime focus we can't change the past, we have to learn from it. So our prime focus head impacts are the cause. Beyond question. Causation has been demonstrated unequivocally. We don't know what level of head impacts are safe, but we do know that head impacts are dangerous, so we are going to reduce them.
Speaker 2:And then I described our work as having an overarching umbrella.
Speaker 2:The overarching umbrella is of advocacy and media coverage and in that we have been, I like to think, significantly successful.
Speaker 2:But there's always more to do by the BBC in England if there is a story breaking. We have been on national television on a number of occasions. We have a BBC breakfast show which is watched by many, many people, one of the most watched shows in England, and the phrase is come on the couch. And we've sat on the couch and given out this story so many times. We've had centre pages in the Sunday Times, one of our biggest Sunday newspapers, as well as in the national press. So we are pushing as you are and I thought it was wonderful the phrase that you used that we are reaching out to people to say to them will you be the vanguard of change If we raise awareness of this issue? Will you tell your kids? Will you tell your neighbor's kids? Will you say your brain is fragile, look after it. So that's us at Head Safe Football Care and support research, primarily education and absolutely media coverage and trying to get out there with a story of the guys who lost their memories in giving us our sporting memories of watching them.
Speaker 1:Ma'am, your mission is absolutely everything that we need when we start dealing with the issue of repetitive head impacts. Number one I want to express my sincere condolences on not just the loss but the years of watching somebody you love diminish day by day, and these are stories that our audience really hasn't heard yet From the caretaker's side. The caretakers as you're dealing with, you know, family members offer suffer. I mean, they suffer in some ways as much as the footballer or the sports player themselves. The trauma, the anxiety, just the sadness and grief has got to be.
Speaker 1:You know, and I'll tell you, you know, it's a testimony to love that these caretakers stand by their man or by their woman until the end, right, they don't leave them, they love them and they understand that who they are now is not who they married, it's not who they were, and so it's obvious that your love was the prime motivator in getting this foundation off the ground, because I understand that sacred promise. It is a promise that I didn't get to make to my son, but I made it to him and our Lord that I would do what I can to change this, and that's why, you know, reaching out to you is so important Now. You brought up a couple of things that I want to dial into a little bit, because when we talk about the issue, you know the issues that Bill Gates dealt with and that our NFL players dealt with that to a large part, these are preventable by the simple reduction of the total amount of head impacts that these people take.
Speaker 2:Amount of head impacts that these people take, and you said that you know Bill, he headed the ball hundreds of times in every practice, a hundred times a day in training, not just the games, a hundred times Just in training. Yeah, and I mean, my son is Asian. I invite any of our listeners to do the same calculation 13 years of playing training, 45 weeks of the year, five days a week. Work it out for yourselves. That's a heck of a lot of head impact and we actually use the phrase when we talk about it. We say cumulative intensity of impact. How many head impacts over what period of years and what is the intensity of them and what we actually find from research, uk-based research. Professor Willie Stewart is our go-to person, as Boston University is, and I follow very closely the work of Boston University and the Concussion Legacy Foundation. But Professor Willie Stewart's book indicates that five times more likely to develop dementia if you've been a professional footballer and those statistics are increased based on the length of your career and truly come back and said this is the problem.
Speaker 2:How do we reduce the heading? We recognize as a charity because of course we're coming up against the corporate world, which is the money-making world of the Football Association and FIFA, etc. We recognize as a charity that if we pushed to radically change the game and ban heading in the game, we would get nowhere. History will judge that one, but we're seeking to play our part by reducing heading and training, and what our education program does is, first of all, it provides the coaches, the trainee teachers, the players, all of the people that we work with information on the brain itself and what happens to the brain, not at an ethical, scientific level. We give the facts, not the facts for a scientist. We go into digestible facts, understandable facts about what happens to the brain, but we don't just want to stop there.
Speaker 2:If we want to be part of the solution, we need to be saying what can you do to avoid this, given the traditional practices? So we actually have games that highlight the damage to the brain TauTag, a whole range of things that my son and our educator work on but then we move on to how you can play the game differently in order to reduce head impacts. So we look at set pieces and we look at alternative strategies. We're actually saying this is how you can learn about the problem, but these are potential solutions, and I feel that that is the biggest tribute we can give to the guys who lost their lives and I'm so sorry about this. I know of your son's story. This is the biggest tribute that we can say to them. No-transcript.
Speaker 1:And Dr Gates. You know it's also a shame that it came down to people like us, when we have the research, we have the knowledge, as you said, the jury's back why the professional sports leagues will not accept all the research, all the science, just the mere logic of 100 impacts a day and thinking that this is somehow innocuous to our. You know, the most critical organ in our body that's suspended in fluid, within that skull that obviously shakes every time.
Speaker 2:Our fragile brain, the fragility of the brain. We are asking our bodies to do what they are not designed to do, what they can't evolve.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. The brain was not meant to handle repetitive trauma. I mean, it's hard enough to come back. You know, everybody assumes that our concussions in America concussions two weeks. You're back hitting soccer balls, you're back playing football. We're not educated in continuing to monitor our kids, we're not educated on even what to look for, because we are told there's no more problems, your kid's back go and the kid acts normal, right. Yet at the same time, you know we've got this huge problem that's impacting, you know, everybody in our space right now is devastating communities.
Speaker 1:Yet we still, our society, I mean here in America, the CDC, the NIH haven't put out anything on repetitive impact, except one small blurb is not even recognized as a risk by our association of pediatrics, by our psychological and suicidal prevention community, by our sports leagues. I mean, it's just organizations like yours that's out there. You know, pressing the word with the logic. Overall, we are impacting some change, and so talk about some of that change. You're having a remarkable success rate with coaches of explaining to them what the risks are, and then you know, so tell us about your success there, because we're still trying to get coaches to listen over here and they are a little bit, but we're. You know it's, it's, it's. It's a long slog. We're a big country with a lot of little tiny sports cliques out there. But, um, talk about some of the success you've had in the uk because we definitely hope to emulate that over here.
Speaker 2:I think that if I describe what we're seeking to achieve, we're seeking to change practice at a very fundamental level for every player who ever heads the ball. So we're not just looking at the professional game because we have the evidence. I work with a family where the guy was a better player, never played professionally, and the family chose to have his brain examined post-mortem and he had CTE. And you of course know from America I mean I follow carefully the young players who commit suicide for their brain to be examined. The recent gun incident in New York is potentially indicative of that, if the brain shows. So we are working at every level, but we are also encountering obstacles. The obstacles by and large encounter from the National Sporting Organization and let me say that I fully understand their perspective. I've been not just an academic but an entrepreneur and a consultant and I've worked at a very high level at national level, working on national strategic plans for countries. So it gives me an objective perspective on being able to analyze the context of a situation. And if I put myself into the corporate shoes of the FA gurus or the NFL gurus and I know that the NFL has never admitted liability for all they have set up because of course then there's insurance coverage and we know the ramification. So I understand the perspective of the corporate world and I understand what they are seeking to defend. My sadness is that they are protecting a sport to the detriment of the people who play that sport. They are viewing the players literally as commodities. So we come up against the obstacles of limiting our connections. I mean, what we argue and what we demonstrate is that we are actually building on some of the very small steps that the Football Association is taking and explaining to people why those small steps have been made, like banning heading in children and rolling it out to under 12s. No explanation was given. We're giving the explanation so we get buy-in. We're seeking to operate as a small group on what I describe as a cascade model, so we're actually seeking to influence coaches and teachers that then go out and influence more people. So we're trying to spread our word in that kind of way and to grow exponentially, I suppose we would be saying by the people that we work with, then work with other people, and so we can actually work out our impact by talking with them about the number of people that they impact. But we come up against the obstacles of resistance and we come up against the practical obstacles of how fast you can roll out. And you've got an even bigger problem Our country would fit into one of your states, so I reckon. But we can only try purposefully and rationally, and seek to build our credibility and we are achieving success.
Speaker 2:I mean when, for example, a couple of weeks ago, one of our head safe football advisors came to me and he said I've got to tell you this story, judith. He said I've got to tell you this story, judith. And his grandson, alex, who is six, has just started playing for a local group, training and playing, et cetera. And the ball hit Alex in a training practice in the face. And his granddad, nick, who has worked with us, said to him never mind, alex, you can call that a header. And Alex stopped and looked at his granddad and said granddad, if you hit the ball before you're 12, you lose your memory.
Speaker 2:Those were recognizing success, because people say to me how do you define success? And I say, like you say, I have no doubt. I have a mountain in front of me that I'm trying to climb, I'm in the foothills at the moment and success would be a flag on the top of that mountain, but I'd probably then see another mountain. But equally success is six-year-old Alice. Success is somebody who says to me none of my grandkids will ever head a football because they know now. So that is it?
Speaker 2:So we're kind of rolling out on the base of scientific rationality, alternative practices, and tell everybody else and that's the way in which we're trying to work. I mean, you may be interested and I'd be very happy to talk about it if you were that we're equally at the top level trying to change policy. So we're trying to do a sustainable change, whereas change in practice will hopefully lead to change in people's thinking and therefore lead to change.
Speaker 1:And Dr Gates. That's so important because you know, from the policy perspective, what we're trying to do is we're trying to coach the issue of RHI into how it impacts almost all the social ills that we deal with today, from incarceration, domestic abuse to violence, to mental health, healthcare costs, impact on families. The whole nine yards, which is all those costs, which are hundreds of millions of dollars a year, go away by simply addressing one aspect of what your mission is, which is lower the amount of impacts that the child that takes and, as an adult that they take too, I mean the impacts continue to damage the brain. So, from the policy level, do you think that like legislation is necessary? You know, like outlawing, you know that legislation is necessary, outlawing head impact, stuff like that. Or what are the policy routes that you're seeking to, that you're undertaking right now? Is it with the leagues, is it with amateur organizations? How are you going forward with that? Because I do believe that is equally a big part of the, not only the success they have, but in the end result.
Speaker 2:We're first of all seeking to work with government and we have been in touch with government, the appropriate minister in the United Kingdom, and we have worked also with our local member of parliament. I mean, I'm not going to get into senators and the rest of it, I look within and seek to be informed, but we're a smaller country and we were seeking to work with the system. So we're directly connected with our local member of parliament and we have communicated and had responses from the minister who has responsibility for sport and we're pushing that further. What we're actually asking, on the advice of our Member of Parliament, is we're asking the Minister to declare this a public health issue and, in response to it being recognised as a public health issue, we're asking for recognition of a national slogan, our slogan think head safe, reduce heading in training, which of course is designed for football, for soccer, but could apply to any contact sports. So we are pushing that and it follows on from a national slogan that has already been created around symptomatic concussions, which is, if in doubt, sit them out. So we have a precedent to follow and the precedent we're following is we're saying tremendous that this was done by government and that it addresses symptomatic concussions. But the scientific evidence is now demonstrating that it's the repetitive head impacts that are more dangerous. So we actually need a further slogan.
Speaker 2:So we are seeking to work with government on that Think head safe, reduce heading in training as a national slogan and we are pushing for that and trying to get all of the support that we can and we will lend. And I mean we will turn to you as our partner group and say help us roll this out, help us raise awareness of this, and we will try and get banners, information, pin badges, you know the whole lot of stickers, so that it becomes something that you are immersed in. You know people say to us this can't be done. I say look at what happened with smoking, look at what happened with seat belts. If you're traveling in the right direction and I firmly believe we have history on our side then we can try and find a solution to this by raising awareness from a national slogan Think head safe, reduce heading in training. The other thing that we're seeking to do and this has significant implications- hey, Danny, you there.
Speaker 2:For the sporting governing bodies. Marcus died with a death certificate that said frontotemporal lobe dementia. We knew that that was probably the best judgment call could be made, but we'd already made a commitment to an autopsy. His autopsy demonstrated the highest possible level of cte in his brain and no evidence of alzheimer's. And in fact the pathologist said to me I do not know how bill was functioning at all at the end of his life. Well, I mean, we know he barely was, because so severe was the damage to his brain. So with that evidence we went to our coroner and asked for an inquest, which is quite unusual when you already have a death certificate. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:That coroner's inquest is proceeding at a snail's pace. The Football Association has become involved because they are invited as rules and we have all of the medical evidence, the historical evidence of the growth of knowledge of neurology and the damage to brains. We have Bill's medical evidence. My husband was a perfect specimen. Apart from his brain, his cardiovascular health was phenomenal. His blood pressure was better than our son's. He never smoked. He never drank. He was my go-to chauffeur. I was the one who enjoyed a glass of wine. He drove me home from parties. He exercised regularly. His parents died in the mid-90s. No genetic indications of what killed him, so he was perfectly healthy, apart from the brain disease. So if the coroner rules an industrial disease, we will immediately go to the Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and ask them to create the designation, the prescription, that this is an industrial disease, which will then affect many, many things, not least financial support for families that are affected, who are suffering greatly from the cost of residential care, etc. But furthermore, if the coroner so rules, the coroner has the right to go to sporting governing bodies and issue what is called a prevention of future deaths request, and he has the right to ask the sporting governing bodies what they are doing to prevent future deaths, which then leads to potentially a change not just in policy for them but in practice for them. So we're seeking to create, as I've said, a national slogan and a government health warning on repetitive head impacts and similarly, we are seeking to have CTE described as an industrial disease in order for the sporting governing bodies to be asked what they're going to do to prevent future deaths and in order to enable financial support for families.
Speaker 2:I have to tell the audience that the Football Association resisted this big time. I felt like David and Goliath. It was fortunate that we have pro bono legal advice with the King's Council, because the FAA sent along their King's Council via Zoom link in an effort to stop the inquest. They first of all asked the coroner to declare. They said to the coroner you do not need an inquest. Why are you having an inquest? You have a death certificate. They secondly said to the coroner it is not in the public interest to have an inquest. Why are you having an inquest? You have a death certificate. They secondly said to the coroner it is not in the public interest to have an inquest. Other footballers may well want one. And thirdly, they said to the coroner this matter will be adjudicated in the High Court in England because there is legal action taking place, a class action suit, which we have deliberately not become involved with because we want to keep our hands clean from no monetary gain for the Gates family.
Speaker 2:The Gates family is operating out of the promise to build and a desire to protect the future. I was fortunate that I had a heads up that the FA were going to be represented, so I did get in touch with the newspapers that I know and we had national coverage of this, and so we had three pages in one of our national papers and literally the headlines were shame on you, football Association, trying to deny the inquest of Bill Gates. Because the Gates family and Head Safe Football said unequivocally all we want is the truth to be told in order to protect future players. And my position was it is sad for me if the sporting governing bodies don't share our legitimate aspiration, which is only designed to protect the future players. So we're working on a number of fronts, as I've said you know, kind of in summary policy.
Speaker 2:Can we get government involved? Can we get a public health warning? Can we get a national slogan think head safe, reduce heading and training Policy? We have this declared an industrial disease? And can we have a prevention of future death disorder issued so that the sporting governing bodies have to look at what they're doing? And then, very importantly, grassroots work, education that looks at the science behind the disease in an appropriately informative way and then how you can protect your brain by reducing your exposure to repetitive head impacts. Are we successful?
Speaker 1:yep, nope, I like to think we need some success.
Speaker 2:We still have a mountain to climb, and it's good to know that we have mountaineers like you alongside us dr gates, you guys have absolutely led the way.
Speaker 1:It it's just, it's just. It's so, so awesome that, without really knowing too much about what you have done on these issues, we are in parallel trying to get things done.
Speaker 1:Yes just had a shooting incident in a professional sports league's building and the day like within two days, all coverage of that is gone, like there's no mention of this at all, no follow-up, and there is enormous present to your point about understanding the league's position. Absolutely, I mean, we before, when we started out, we were very angry. I was very angry. You know at all the failure of the researchers to to publicize the. You know at all the failure of the researchers to publicize the knowledge about these repetitive impacts, the failure of the leagues to understand the impact on all these young players Like I can hardly watch football now because I'm watching young men who have played since they were six, knowing that they are going to be harmed when they leave this awesome sport. There's nothing wrong, nobody wants these sports to go away, but it's the fact that the professional sports leagues just seem to not want to make them safer.
Speaker 1:And I'm a professional, semi-professional rugby player. I played rugby at the top levels of the military and the civilian world Division. I back in the day in the civilian world Division, I back in the day, and we, you know and so and I've got friends right now that have Parkinson's, that are suffering in their 60s from neurodegenerative disorders and they, like you, no predisposition from the familiar perspective. They don't drink their you know their healthy specimens and we run into them. I ran into one at church the other day, his hand's shaking. Hey, he heard me talk about my son and he said is there any correlation between, you know, football and Parkinson's Long-term playing? He played all the way through college, very smart, and you know so. All the evidence is there.
Speaker 1:And let's talk a little bit about these researchers. You mentioned Dr Willie Stewart, who I love, who unfortunately has had to leave his position and because of whatever, I don't know, I just know he let me know that he was no longer in the position he was, but he is one of the most remarkable independent researchers out there. And I want the audience to understand that there are also not independent researchers, right, there's researchers that basically research, that are, you know, kind of incentivized by the people that back the research to come up with, you know, other perspectives on repetitive impact. So talk to us a little bit about the research community. How hard was it to find these independent researchers? What is some of the research that you've been able to accomplish with them that further demonstrates that we have to. In effect, what you call is a public health issue.
Speaker 2:In actual fact, the independent research found us, which I think is indicative of the fact that they were looking to try and get out of the double bind that they found themselves in in terms of having their own research limited and the publication of that research limited. So you will be very aware of the Concussion in Sport group. You will be very, very aware of McCrory, who led the Concussion in Sport group for pushing 20 years and who was recently. It was recently demonstrated that he had engaged in plagiarism and I think that there is also I believe there is also evidence to indicate that research evidence had been misquoted in order to give a different perspective. Equally, the CISG group was very limited in the evidence that they chose to use. I attended their last international conference in Amsterdam a couple of years ago and there was an absolute groundswell of seeking to find alternative perspectives, such as some genetic predisposition and all the rest of it, and many of these people, as we've said, were linked with sporting governing bodies. The independent researchers came not out of the woodwork they weren't in the woodwork but they wanted to come together to find like-minded people who wanted to speak honestly about the things that they are finding, and they are looking at a whole range of things.
Speaker 2:I spoke with a group from my local university in the United Kingdom recently and they are looking at evidence from blood tests that indicate changes and are looking also for funding, because absolutely, funding is needed, it seems to me, to identify, to move towards in vivo diagnosis of CTE in order then to seek to look towards treatments. I'm talking with people who are looking at recording from mouth guards or from headbands the blows that players have experienced in order to then minimize subsequent blows so that you have some recognition of what is happening. We're working with groups that are looking on all of these fronts to minimize the opportunity not minimize the opportunity to actually minimize the exposure is a better word and to demonstrate the level of exposure by, as I've said, things that measure blows in different ways, changes in the blood, etc. But I think that what is sad for me is the sporting governing bodies do not appear to be putting and I may be wrong on this, but I try to do my own work do not appear to be putting significant resources into research that looks, as I've said, at in vivo diagnosis and potential treatments. Instead, they're still focusing on can you really demonstrate causation and what can we find that will challenge the causation argument and, as I've said, I think the jury is out on that.
Speaker 2:So I'm optimistic because by nature I'm an optimist even in the face of adversity. I'm optimistic that the brains of educated and thoughtful researchers are out there. Educated and thoughtful researchers are out there. I would love funding to be available for them to enable them to work on the things that will be of benefit to our sports people, not just to work on whether causation was there, and we'll be pushing for that. So we're just seeking to collect evidence and information. It feeds our education program.
Speaker 2:We at Head Safe Football seek to be evidence-based but we don't close our minds to alternative perspectives. So, for example, we will look at any evidence as to how hydration is important. We are cautious about headbands because we feel if people wear them they may figure they're safe when they're not. We're suitably skeptical, but not closed-minded, about the benefits of development in helmet design, because it may be that helmets can protect from ricochet of the brain to a certain extent, but equally we recognize that they are not bulletproof, as it were. So we're traveling, hopefully, we're seeking to travel informatively and we're seeking to disseminate the information that we get to appropriate audiences.
Speaker 1:It is so hard to understand that if the professional sports leagues could take a few positive steps, like, especially if they said we now understand, this is an issue we're going to work on, you know, lowering total aggregate impacts by focusing on, you know, no contact to a certain age we say 14 because that's when a prefrontal cortex starts to develop but then, you know, reducing contact in high school, in college, and if they would. And then, of course, you know, we're going to take care of our players, right, we're going to take care of those that have dedicated their lives to our sport, to the fans, to give them their Sundays, or to give them their Friday night lights or their football lights. Yeah, and take care of them. That message, right there, would resonate much better than the obvious denial. And oh, can you prove causality? Well, how about you want some causality?
Speaker 1:There's no football or basketball players at the CTE Brain Bank in Boston University, right? There's no golfers. There's no tennis players. There's only individuals from wrestling, rugby, hockey, ball, soccer. And then, when it comes down to the futures of not only our children but men like your husband that have a family, that have earned a quality of life in their retirement to enjoy their life. If that is not important enough to say, all right, we want to understand, there's 100% causality. Or I think we have enough to say let's start taking care of our brains, of our children, of our athletes. This would change the world. It would. A little bit of adoption, a little bit of understanding from the leagues and some simple moves that never threaten the sport, they only improve it from a safety perspective and also lowering the cost of everything that's associated with long-term exposure to head trauma. What a win for our societies, right, I mean.
Speaker 2:And that's the big picture and I share it totally with you. I mean, I think that your argument on the societal cost from care, et cetera, et cetera, is well made Billions. And the challenge, of course, is that we're looking at short-term profitability from a long-term picture. And you know, maybe we're coming towards the end of this podcast, but maybe I can just share a little family story right now. Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I am here in a renovated barn on a working farm in Massachusetts. I traveled here a few days ago to join with my family for the fifth birthday of my youngest great grandson, luca, and I rented this farm so that the two kids, luca and his big brother, liam, could visit, could feed the horses, could go on a walk around the farm, could feed the chickens, could experience just the family delights of being together in an unusual situation for them, and they're thrilled to bits by it. My sadness is that bill would have been so wonderful with these kids. I'm walking along and I am saying to luca and Liam my hands are feeling lonely and they are grabbing my hands and we are walking hand in hand, but there should be somebody on the other side of them whose hands were also feeling lonely, who should be adding to the life of these children, and that is the human story of what we are losing through the unwillingness to recognize the dangers. That is the story that the players who have finished their career and are living in dread as to what might happen to them because they know that this disease can spread like poison ivy in their brains and it may be waiting around the corner for them. We need to remember that it's one person at a time that we want to protect, whilst at the same time taking a national, international and global look at the fragility of the brain.
Speaker 2:I'm sure we're on the right side of history. I'm sure that in a hundred years time, people will be saying you did what. You used your brain as a battering ram. You wouldn't use your iPhone as a badminton racket, but you used your brain as a badminton, as a, as a battering ram. But it's one family at a time, and when I look at Luca and when I look at Liam, and when I remember that when Luca came home from hospital as a new baby, liam's mom, my granddaughter, said to Liam you can't pick him up because he's delicate. And Liam was thrilled to bits with a new word delicate. He played with it and he said I have a little video clip of him saying great grandma, I can't pick him up because he's delicate. But then what he did was reach out with one finger and put it on lucas forehead and he said delicate forehead. And I thought that's my family's legacy, right there in my great grandsons dr gates.
Speaker 1:I mean, what you have developed is a legacy and you're right. Every time that you have one child or a parent that more mature, and these sports grow up, when it comes down, repetitively impacts and it's all about brain health and the future of a child, not just winning a game or a match. That's when I think we're going to come. We're coming full circle and you're right. We are on the right side of history. And if you look up Malcolm Gladwell's address to I think it was the University of Pittsburgh when he said what the hell are we doing in an institution of learning when we just had a suicide of a football player? We know about CTE and we have a football game and this gladiator sport instead of, and we haven't made any changes. That was his point and he told this story about this young man who was an insurance guy and he started. He was assessing risk and he started looking at the ties between black lung and cancer rates in minors and cigarettes and cancer rates in human beings. And from the time that they identified the risk and we'll say that you know, we say CTE was identified in 2009 by Bennett O'Malu it took 50 years for the industries to finally either get sued to death or admit that we have a problem and it was mostly societal change going. I don't want to smell smoke in my cigarette in my rest, or you know, or I'm not going to smoke, or, hey, you know we're going to take care of our miners that this is a problem, because it was all washed under the rug, just like the professional leagues, by the, by the cigarette and by the mining industries. They did not want to know about the problem because then they had to deal with it. We are absolutely on the right side of history.
Speaker 1:You are, and it's pioneers like you and Karen Ziegle here with Stop CTE that we mentor, because you and your stories, the human side of this, which the audience never hears. They see the newspaper articles, they might read about some research, they might see a podcast, but they have no idea of the amount of suffering that's happening right now, with millions, millions of children, teenagers, young men and older men who have dedicated their lives to one sport, a multiplicity of sports. It doesn't matter that human suffering is completely relievable through simple changes and you're leading the pack. As we close out the podcast, let's take some time to talk about Dr Judith Cates and HeadSafe. How do people find you? I know that they're going to be so amazed when they hear this podcast. They're going to want to learn more and talk about how they find you. What's the events that you have coming up? If they need resources or information, you have an awesome education component out there. Please boast about you, know your organization and how people can connect.
Speaker 2:Please go to our website. It's obviously Head Safe Football. Please get in touch with us. Hello at headsafefootballorguk. Please follow us, please like us, please share our posts so we get the message out. Look at all that we are doing and respond. Give us your ideas, because we want to be a dynamic organization, an organic organization that listens to others. Tell us your stories, just as we shared the story of six-year-old Alex having a ball hitting in his face and saying if you head the ball, you'll lose your memory. We will put those stories out because I so much agree with you that people relate to stories. They understand statistics, they see the evidence, but they relate to stories. So really, what I can say is to the American audience that you've got I spend some of my time in Florida every year To the American audience that you've got, help us all together to become an international movement.
Speaker 2:One of the very first things I was involved with was the first football match in England soccer match in England that was played with experimenting with rules and it was described as a no-heading match. It wasn't quite a no-heading match. We had no heading outside of the box in the first half and no heading at all in the second half. But that match got to Australia, new Zealand. I got a call from India. They put it on the front page of their newspaper. There America became involved. European countries sent people with cameras for their documentaries.
Speaker 2:Together we can make a difference. So please support us, look at us online, send us messages. You can get to me directly at judith, at headstayfootballorguk. I try always to respond promptly. I don't always achieve it. I mean, today I'm out walking on a farm with two little kids. There won't be any messages today, but I try very hard to respond. And let's just make this movement an international movement in honor of your son, in honor of my husband, in honor of all of the other players in all of the sports that have lost their lives to this disease. Let's make it collectively that we stop it happening in the future.
Speaker 1:Dr Gates, I want to thank you so much for that closing statement because you have basically encapsulized everything that we when I say we, you, karen Siegel, and our communities of communities are all about. This is an international movement. Yeah, they don't play American football in Europe as much and we don't play as much professional soccer here, but it doesn't matter. We both have systemic and large problems with these impact folks and you're right, it's not just about your husband and my son. It is all about those that are suffering, those that have suffered, and we owe them the recognition that this was not their fault, that while we do play these sports, we did play these sports in ignorance. We can no longer play in ignorance any longer. We have the science, we have the research, we have the common sense to say enough is enough. And regardless of you know everybody wanting some double-blind study gold standard thing we have enough evidence-based research out to say we need change.
Speaker 1:And there is no doubt that these repetitive head impacts are dangerous. They're at substantial risk to our population and their future well-being, and enough is enough and enough is enough. So, dr Gates, thank you so much for your time here, your commitment to this cause, my condolences on your suffering. Please enjoy your family. I have a two-year-old grandkid. I'm not to the great grandkid mode there, but I welcome you and if you stay long enough our summit's in literally three weeks You're more than welcome to come on down to Tampa and participate. We could probably get you up on stage for a little bit there and talk a little bit and keep spreading the word. So thank you so much for your time and we look forward to having you back on the show and my fervent prayers for your continued success.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you for the involvement.
Speaker 1:My pleasure. So, folks, another great podcast. I cannot imagine where our movement would be without Headsafe and Dr Gates. My pleasure, with all the hits, is going to have a concert. It's going to be the only concert. At the show.
Speaker 1:We're in partnership with Horse Soldiers Bourbon. We're going to have that on our website. Please come out and celebrate the Army-Navy history and the ongoing battle of will, as well as the chance to support the mental illness that's so severely impacting our veterans from repetitive blast exposure. Our free book, again on the website, wwwmpfactorg. Please download that. Look up our app on the Google Store, headsmart, which covers RHI, the only concussive app out there. It was actually modeled on a lot of conversations with HeadSafe and remember you only got one melon. Please take care of it. Like us, subscribe us and please like, subscribe and push out Head Safe, their podcast, their capabilities, because we are, in the end, one community trying to do a better job of protecting our kids and not having the pain and suffering that both of us have endured in our lives because of this condition. Till the next episode of Broken Brains, god bless you all. Take care of those melons and we'll see you then. Take care.