Heading the ball can cause dementia, a new study has found – so should we ban heading the ball?

A new study has found there is no evidence that the high dementia risk among footballers is linked to health and lifestyle factors.

Heading the ball, however, has been proven more likely to cause brain injuries.

The research was led by Glasgow University's Professor Willie Stewart, who told Lunchtime Live that footballers are “three-and-a-half times more likely to die from a neurodegenerative disease than the normal population”.

“What we were looking at was former professional footballers in Scotland and comparing them to men in the population who are born in the same year and living much the same areas and working out what their health profile looked like,” he said.

“So, for instance, we find that the dementia risk was just over three times higher than it should be.

“But what we're also looking at was the other risk factors for dementia people might have so things that we know, lifestyle and health that might contribute to dementia risk, blood pressure, diabetes, smoking, etc.

“When we looked at these, we found that, generally, our footballers were really quite healthy men, they had lower levels of many of these risk factors, and they were less associated with dementia.

“So healthy men, but with a high risk of dementia - it brings us back to something in the sport as a problem for footballers and in that we're talking about heading.”

Higher risk

Prof Stewart said the longer you play football and depending on the position you played; you were more likely to have a higher risk of head injury and head impacts.

He said this research gives people “more encouragement” to “push hard” on sports to reduce unnecessary head impacts whenever possible and better manage head injuries where they do occur.

“Whilst during a match day, footballers’ headers during a match are a wonderful thing, do they need to be doing it dozens and dozens of times during the week when nobody's watching?”

Prof Stewart said that banning under certain ages from heading the ball during a match or during training, as has been done in the UK, is a “good start”.

"Long way to go"

He said we have a “long way to go” before banning heading.

“We're talking about, you know, trying to restrict the unnecessary heading during the week, the training heading that goes on, and try and cut back as much of that as possible,” he said.

“Then we'll see where we are in the years to come as the science develops, whether we do need to think about removing heading from the game or thinking about heading in restricted areas in the pitch.”

Prof Stewart said that former footballers should be “living long and healthy lives” and if we can “get rid of the dementia problem” football would be a “fantastic drug to cure disease”.

Listen back here:

Ivory Coast AFCON Soccer, © Copyright 2024 The Associated Press.