My son participates in sports that have always bothered me - tho I didn't try to stop him. I figured mom saying "that's scary, please don't do it" wouldn't cut any ice. But I'm a very (very) low risk person.

A relative who was always active - water & snow skiing, a variety of team sports, & so on - was diagnosed with an aneurysm & told to not be as active so he would live longer. He tried the docs advice for almost a year & finally said screw that - this is going to kill me whatever I do. He went back to doing what he loved & died happy. His family was happy with his decision because they understood him well. He was miserable just sitting around being cautious.

As far as food goes, I was in denial for a LONG time about my extreme weight gain & diabetes. I didn't deliberately eat bad food because I was taking risks, but because I didn't want to think about it. I actually didn't know how fat I was - recently came across a picture from that time & was horrified - I must have weighed at least 250 or even more. But because of my health & life situation I was very depressed - food was just about the only happiness in my life then.

LOVE this!

Adrenaline rush and high risk causes better brain function in the ADD brain....it wakes up the brain.

Addiction is totally separate.

Most football fans actually dont understand the full impact of ...full impact sports. Concussions are a real long term negative effect on the brain. Seems like people who do know this ignore the evidence.
Also, There is enough evidence today to show the brain is damaged even if there is no concussion. We are not designed to be smashed around.

I regularly meet people who I recognize as ADDers... because they dont know they are and so are not getting the treatment they deserve.

I gave up my prescription meds because I was treated like a drug addict, regularly peeing in a cup.....very degrading. Never as a patient deserving dignity, and treatment. Oddly my son has NEVER had to pee in a cup....maybe because he has a well trained doc with lots of experience. idk for sure. But I am sure the two of us have had very different experiences .....moms lead the way for families, they should be treated well.

Iwas a kid that climbed trees, rode horses but didnt jumo bikes on ramps nor bungie jump. The I had two boys to raise. The only way for me to survive was to teach safety and supervise when little. Ive tried to teach :What are the hazzards and then how do u reduce the risks. My oldest can take a ax and cut down trees on his own. Always safety first.

As I said about DS2, after a thoughtful discussion about football and the passing of a few months, he opted for soccer over football. He realized we stood firm about football and neither of us would give permission. Know that after the discussion I did leave the door open to discuss the possibility of participating.... a strict no didnt allow his input into the discussion. He came to his own discission .....

Neither of my kids were into team sports so that wasn't a problem. But snowboarding, skateboarding, & martial arts were big. When he was around 15 he wrote a poem about one of his skateboard experiences. I enjoyed the poem so much (tho I was glad I didn't witness the event) that I've kept it all these years. I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to share it with you all. You can skip it since it's way, way off topic.

THE HILL
by The Critter

‘twas a hill so long
that I could not see the end

my friend said
“let us ride down it like the fools we are!”
he was right

I stepped onto my skateboard
and started down that hill
that long
long
long
hill

I hit a pebble
one small and insignificant
pebble

and over I went
(got a bit bent)
to slam into the pavement
OUCH!

as I lay there
some words came to mind
(not nice, let me assure you)

I thought I had died
and I wasn’t in heaven

A lot of interesting points here.

Soccer is almost as bad as football, we weren't made to bounce something off our heads either.

In a report of the American Academy of Anti-Aging medicine convention I read that a person who plays football, soccer, hockey, boxing and other head jolt sports have a 25% greater chance of getting Alzheimer's or Parkinson's than the general population.

But it's all about balancing pleasure vs risks. I am not a risk taker but I got pleasure from smoking and eating too many sweets at one time. I tried to deny the risk but one day I woke up.

Whether it's an adrenaline rush or sugar rush, we seek pleasure. It's natural. You can't eliminate risk, you can only minimize it to the point where you are comfortable with the pleasure:risk ratio.

My grandmother was told not to eat spicy foods, decided life was not worth it without spicy foods and checked out of life earlier than she could have. Is that wrong? Who am I to judge?

I take an international vacation every year. That's not perfectly safe either. I drive on US1 and I95 too, but practice defensive driving to minimize that risk. I eat a high fat, low plant-based diet. Some say that's risky, I disagree. Who has all the right answers?

Still thinking out loud here.

Bob

Bouncing off head is a choice. Not mandatory. Soccer has far better brain stats than football.In American football, the rate of CTE is directly tied to age players started: the younger, the worse. Need to separate the sports, not lump together.

Im hoping for the day when cars dont cross the yellow line, AND automatically stop before a collision. Driving is very risky..... and keeps the adrenaline rushing on my neck of the woods. Very defensive driving required here.

A fellow told me after a long flight home seated next to a doc that just attended a confetemce, doing NO organized sports was linked to longevity. As was gardening and two other factors I no longer remember. Athletic sports are overrated for long term health.

I have never pushed my boys in sports. Just play on a team for fun.


Follow the facts. No mainstream media junk. Avoid government sites, avoid ADA, etc. Find the real studies, with real facts. And dig in. I did.

Afriend did witness her daughter taking such a spill, felt like an eternity in slow mo, not able to reach out grabbing ahold of that child before crashing into pavement.

I do wonder if we protect too much. Like better football helmets and heavier padding which actually allows for hearder hits. Pain is a good teacher.

My son taught himself to ride a bike, no helmet, no brakes. Forced him to think about how to manuver a stop and never go too fast, think about the trees to miss, and the miss the old truck. Later he tebuilt the bike adding breaks, and mom insisting on a helmet when she found out what he was doing.

Boys are risk takers. Mother nature knows and puts boys at a higher birth rate for a reason.

Overalk, back to topic, sugar and grains are just too cheap and too available.

Pain is a good teacher indeed.

Better football helmets won't do anything, because the brain still bounces around inside the skull.

I always find it strange that colleges, places where brain development is SUPPOSED to be the objective, spends so much of their resources on Football, which damages the very brains they are supposed to be improving. (I know it's the money)

I remember testimony from an emergency room doctor when they were debating motorcycle helmets. He said all the helmets did was make it easier for the undertaker, because the impact damage to the brain is internal.

I was into basketball because I got taller quicker than my schoolmates. Then one day the band was going to play at a basketball game. The coach and band director told me I had to make a choice. I didn't even have to think about it. I chose band.

Bob

Which is why we have to change the culture. Sadly, I don't think we can do it fast. We can't even go back to eating the way people have decades before, because the food itself has changed. I don't think we're even told how much.

Pain can only become a good teacher if the cause of the pain does not either kill you or leave you permanently brain damaged.

Helps if you know what caused the pain, too. Thinking here of offending foods causing inflammation and illnesses a person doesn't realize are caused by things they may have been told are healthy but aren't for them. And concerning helmets, what's been said is true that there's a lot they can't protect you from, but if you do a sport or activity that offers one, folks, please consider using it! My teen's life was saved by a bike helmet and I and others I know dodged serious head injuries by having routinely worn the various types of safety headwear when the unexpected happened. It was a relief when I arrived at the hospital after the ambulance carrying my teen to see that broken bike helmet: Yes! You obeyed me and wore it despite how you thought it was uncool and you're a good biker and don't need it. You're going to live!

My son was required to always where a bike helmet. One day my friend and neighbor told me that when my son reached the end of our street he would take off his helmet. When we confronted him about this and asked him why he took it off he said that he didn't like the way it looked. We decided to buy him one that he thought was cooler because wearing his helmet was more important than trying to force him to wear one he didn't like. We can't protect our children from any and all risk, or ourselves either, but it is certainly well worth it to do the best we can. I am so glad that your son was ok.

The fact that the bike helmet was broken shows how much force it absorbed. That can't be a bad thing. What a heartstopping moment!

When I tell people my arthritis calmed down incredibly when I went gluten-free, they get this blank look. They literally cannot imagine a world without bread.

They don't want to, and all their favorite sources say they don't have to!

When questioned years ago about how I had lost weight, or asked about my strange eating habits (eating meat and cheese rolls instead of a sandwich, wrapping up a glob of chicken salad in a slice of provolone, etc), I generally just tell people that I don't eat sugars and starches, and most people didn't have any comment, because they weren't thinking "that means no bread".

But when I told our hairstylist that I had stopped eating starches and sugars, she said "That sounds a lot like Atkins - no bread, that's brutal!!" Never mind the lack of potatoes, popcorn, chips, and cookies, etc, she simply couldn't imagine living without bread, and the truth of the matter is, most people can't imagine it.

Bread is such a staple in most people's lives these days that when there's snow in the forecast, the first thing the grocery stores sell out of is bread. Experience should have taught customers that even if we have a foot of snow, the roads will still be cleared enough for them to get out to shop again within 2 days - but they want to make sure they don't run out of bread during those 2 days.

I used to generally think of all that bread being sold as people wanting to be able to make sandwiches to eat, in case the electricity goes out. But that can't be the primary reason, because the other things that sell out quickly (aside from toilet paper) are milk, and eggs, both of which require refrigeration.

[We always made jokes about snowstorms being "french toast weather" - you need bread, milk, and eggs to make French toast, and if you're going to eat all that french toast, you're going to need a lot of toilet paper]

The French Revolution was brought about (at least in part), because the general population simply couldn't get enough bread to eat. Granted, the poor were literally starving without sufficient bread, because bread was the cheapest thing for the poor to eat, and the mainstay of their diet, so when bread was in short supply (because of bad weather causing poor wheat harvests) and too expensive (due to supply and demand), there were no alternatives available to them.

But you can still see near-riots in grocery stores when they've sold out of bread before a snowstorm (or hurricane - similar stocking up for almost any "weather event"), even though the store really does try to make sure there's a sufficient supply available to meet the demand - I often saw the bread-stocking guy at our store phoning in his order, and he would always order double or triple the usual amount of breads in preparation for a snowstorm, but it would still barely be enough.


Even with those who have gone gluten free, for most of them it doesn't mean eating any less bread than before - they'll buy a gluten free option (made from rice, tapioca, and/or potato flour) instead of giving up bread altogether.



And in all honesty, there are a lot of us on here who have our LC substitutes for breads too - there's all kinds of versions of atkins rolls/cloud bread/oopsie rolls available, and now there's the chaffle craze too. Personally, I don't think of those as bread substitutes as such - more like a LC food (cheese and eggs) in a version that I can use to hold the somewhat messy LC food (meat), so I can hold it in my hands to eat it, instead of needing to use a knife and fork for every single meal, but that's just a personal take on what they're really like.