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The men competing in the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB) are some of the most elite athletes in the world. But their death rates differ markedly, a new study of thousands of former pro athletes has found. Former pro football players had a higher overall death rate than baseball veterans and were felled by cardiovascular disease and neurodegenerative illnesses at strikingly higher rates than their MLB peers. On average, the football players died 7 years earlier than MLB players, the research found.
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The 517 former NFL players who died during that 35-year period did so at an average age of 59.6 years; the baseball players at 66.7 years. By far the largest cause of death for the football players was heart disease: It was listed as a cause of death for 498 of the 517 NFL players surveyed. By contrast, brain disease contributed to just 39 of those deaths. Among the former MLB players, there were 431 deaths, with heart disease listed as a cause in 225 of them and neurodegenerative disease in 16.
Data analysis.
Hmm, could it be sublimated guilt over their mistreatment of nerds in high school?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 27 2019, @03:29PM (1 child)
There's a lot of things about football that are extremely unhealthy. From the physical contact to the rewarding of being overweight to the various body problems that affect mobility and the pain killers used to keep it in check.
(Score: 3, Informative) by looorg on Monday May 27 2019, @06:33PM
I guess that is part of what I'm trying to convey here, NFL football is just very extreme. I'm not sure but I doubt we see the same extremes in the MLB, NBA or NHL (the other three big sports of the USA). If one goes back to the first post here I made and linked to and then follow that link to the averages of athletes vs the common man the differences are just staggering. The only reason the weight of NBA players is probably the second highest is that they are also the tallest of them all. While at the same time there is not much difference between MLB and NHL players on the average. But I assume the NHL players get a lot more contact with the opponents then the MLB players do. So while people of the other 3 big sports are by no mean "normal" when it comes to size, weight and other characteristics they are probably by no means as extreme as the NFL players. In the MLB there should be no contact with other players at all, ok there is some but quite minimal -- I guess the worst thing that could happen is if someone hits the ball and it strikes another player at full force. No idea how rare that is but I figure it's quite rare but I could be wrong. At least I don't tend to hear a lot about players taking fast balls in the face. NBA players do have some physical contact but it's not on the same level. NHL players might be the closest in that regard since there is more physical contact (and down right fighting from time to time).
Painkillers are probably a part of normal day usage for most pro-athletes, even if you don't get hit repeatedly and over and over again you are tossing balls etc over and over again so you might run the risks of stress injuries and other forms of damage.
So in that regard perhaps a more valid comparison would have been NFL vs NHL players. NFL will still be bigger and taller and so forth but they might both be taking punishment. Sure the NFL player might be more punishing but at the same time an NFL player never risks being hit at full force into the rink sides.