A Rejuvenating Night with Chris Nowinski PhD
- Scott Bisbee
- Sep 20, 2019
- 3 min read
About a few months ago, the Edmonton Public Library put out a notice that Dr. Chris Nowinski was going to come to Edmonton to speak as a part of their speaker series.
Being a huge wrestling fan when I was younger, I jumped at this opportunity.
I have been following Dr. Chris Nowinski's work ever since he had to leave the world of professional wrestling.
Chris kept getting concussion after concussion in the WWE, and this affected his performance as a wrestler, and his day to day life living. It wasn't until he got a major concussion that Chris was let go from the WWE. It was a shame because he was going places. I knew Chris was going to be a WWE champion one day. He had IT.
(Here is a match he had with Al Snow, but as you can see they didn't protect their own heads back then.)
I got there nice and early because it was first come first served. If there were no seats left, tough luck for you and I wanted a seat.
About ten minutes in, I noticed one of the guys from the conference I went to this past weekend. He didn't see me, but I thought it would be nice to sit by him and talk, you know the whole networking stuff.
I will be the first one to tell you that I have a lot of faults, but I am usually excellent at self- awareness (when I want to be). I can generally tell if someone doesn't like me right away, and sometimes I don't care. I like to see them squirm.
Well, it happened with this guy. As soon as he knew it was me, his body language was entirely off. We talked about the conference, and he asked me what I thought, I told him the truth which you can read here.
We had a difference of opinion - he thought the guy I thought was boring, was excellent and the guy I thought was excellent, he didn't like him and I found that fascinating, I brought that to his attention how we had different views, and the conversation went quickly south after that. To the point, whereas we were talking, he pulls out his cell phone. So I guess we are done now, I thought. I just left it at that.
Chris Nowinksi, after he left the WWE, co-founded the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
You can read more on the Concussion Legacy Foundation here
Chris talked about Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, (CTE) and how it is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain, found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma.
Chris knew he was on to something because when he was still in WWE, he talked about Chris Benoit. Benoit was interested in what Nowinski was doing because Benoit noticed something wrong with him, and by then it was too late. Benoit killed himself and his family.
Benoit donated his brain to Nowinski, and sure enough, he had major CTE.
Here is what I picked up from the presentation
The brain has NO pain receptors (pretty obvious to the people who have been concussed before)
The synapse's in the brain. If you were to stretch it out it would reach the moon and back
When you get concussed, your brain re-wires itself but it never heals. So basicially if you end up getting concussion after concussion, you will lose more and more brain cells and then you will die.
CTE is to football as smoking is to lung cancer
Kids who get concussed at an early age, BIG TIME increase their risk of CTE when they are older.
Alzheimer's and CTE are very similar.
-Top 5 running backs in the NFL history, never played high school football.
CTE increases your chance of getting cancer big time
Chris played off of the crowd well.
Someone's phone rang as Chris, was telling his story and it couldn't have happened at a better time because he was talking about how he was trying to call a doctor and he goes.."just like that."
Another part of the night, he was looking into the crowd when he asked how many people got concussed in their lives and hardly anyone put up their hand. He then says, "Oh yeah, you're all library people."
I enjoyed the talk; it was well worth the $12 or whatever I spent, and I learned a lot.
If you want a snippet of what he talked about, check this out!
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