The Price of Playing Through Pain: The Link Between Physical and Behavioral Health in Former NFL Athletes

Abstract

Over the past decade, media outlets have drawn attention to some of the health consequences of playing in the National Football League (NFL), including how wear-and-tear and injuries accumulated during athletes’ playing years can affect their physical, emotional, and behavioral health after retirement from professional sports. Through a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional telephone survey of former NFL athletes, this study estimated logistic regression models to assess the relationship between several forms of physical pain and anger attacks, controlling for binge drinking, signs of depression, functional limitations, NFL career duration, religious service attendance, and demographic characteristics (age, marital status, race, education, income, and wealth). The analytic sample included 1030 former NFL players. Neck pain, lower back pain, headaches/migraines, and the number of sites of pain were positively and significantly related to anger attacks. There was no significant association between joint pain and anger attacks. NFL career duration was negatively associated with anger attacks, as was religious service attendance. Future research should focus on factors that protect against affective aggression in former professional athletes and how protective factors can be adapted to the broader population.

Health and wellbeing among retired elite athletes: Empirical evidence

“…Athletes 'physical health is also another determining concept to take into account before, during and after the conclusion of the sports career, as the review suggests that athletes who have been forced to retire due to injuries tend to develop more mental and quality of life problems than those athletes who ended their sports career intentionally (Sanders & Stevinson, 2017). Furthermore, we can affirm that after reviewing these publications, the frequency of injuries alongside poor care and treatment can have long-term repercussions on the athlete's well-being (Bush et al, 2020).…”

“…Many authors with similar methodological objectives choose different measurement instruments, with a clear preference over short versions. On the other hand, the sample acceptance ratio in this type of study is around 30% of the total population contacted (Torregrossa et al, 2019), with certain exceptions in some studies with an acceptance ratio greater than 60% (Bush et al, 2020).…”

“…During the active sports career stage, poor physical health care and attention leads to risk factors associated with mental health and quality of life problems after retirement (Sanders & Stevinson, 2017). Studies show a high number of athletes who continue with their sports careers despite competing with pain or high number of accumulated injuries, a factor that has long-term consequences on physical, emotional and behavioural health (Bush et al, 2020). In the Table 2 it is shown that different variables could expand upon and define the concept of physical health, and therefore the measurement instruments that the authors have taken into account when trying to define it.…”

“…On the one hand, we find authors who have highlighted pain as a physical health stressor. Different instruments have been implemented for this category such as the Nagi's Disability Model (Bush et al, 2020); the Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) (Sanders & Stevinson, 2017); the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) (Arliani et al, 2014) and the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS-C) (Mannes et al, 2020). In addition, different measurement instruments were used to analyse the impact of injuries throughout the sporting career such as the Self-Wellbeing Survey (King et al, 2013); the Diagnosis Arthritis Rates Scale (DARs) (Drawer & Fuller, 2001) and the SF-8 which is a health related quality of life assessment (Arliani et al, 2014).…”

How to reduce the risk of cervicalgia and low back pain in obese individuals: A mendelian randomization study

“…This may be because LSB is more likely to cause an increase in disc compression force [36] and long-term overload of lumbar muscles, resulting in functional disorders, loss of stability, and changes in physiological radian of the entire lumbar vertebra, ultimately leading to LBP. Drinking and smoking are considered as risk factors for cervicalgia and LBP, [3,[37][38][39][40] and their mechanism may be attributed to the disturbance of intervertebral disc microcirculation. Palmer et al [41] concentrated on the morbidity and occupational factors of 993 patients with neck pain in the UK, and confirmed that smoking has an inducing effect on cervicalgia.…”