Football legend Brett Favre revealed he has been diagnosed with the world’s fastest-growing brain disorder: Parkinson’s disease.
Favre is one of about a million Americans living with the condition, for which there is no cure, and experts predict one in 37 people living today will go on to suffer it.
At 54, Favre is younger than the typical patient, who are usually in their 60s and beyond – but Parkinson’s has strong ties to head injuries.
Some research shows a single concussion may raise the risk by 50 percent and Favre believes he suffered more than a thousand in his legendary career.
But concussions only account for a small fraction of cases. In the US, chemical exposure and air pollution have been linked to high rates in an area dubbed America’s ‘Parkinson’s Belt’.
DailyMail.com reveals the six early warning signs of the poorly diagnosed condition at the bottom of this article
Parkinson’s is the fastest growing neurological condition in the world. A disease of the central nervous system, it causes parts of the brain to degrade.
Researchers still have a lot to learn about Parkinson’s disease and how it devastates parts of the brain and spinal cord responsible for movement, speech, and sleep.
In cases of Parkinson’s, brain cells that produce the chemical dopamine in a specific part of the brain called the substantia nigra wither and die.
In addition to causing the flood of happiness that comes from engaging in something pleasurable, like sex or eating dessert, dopamine controls movement.
When dopamine levels drop, shaking at rest, muscle stiffness, slow movement, and difficulty balancing and coordinating movement can occur.
Additionally, the decrease in dopamine impacts the way brain cells communicate, which may result in increased activity of other signals in the brain, such as GABA, that are responsible for regulating movement.
This imbalance can make it more challenging for the brain to control movement effectively.
Favre divulged his diagnosis during a Congressional Ways and Means Committee hearing, where he testified about his links to misuse of federal funds under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, which saw nearly $8 million go to Favre.
‘Sadly, I also lost my investment in a company that I believed was developing a breakthrough concussion drug I thought would help others,’ Favre said.
‘As I’m sure you’ll understand, while it’s too late for me — I’ve recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s — this is also a cause dear to my heart. The doctor running the company recently pleaded guilty to taking TANF money for his own use.’
A 2018 study published in the journal Neurology made waves by suggesting that a single traumatic brain injury, even a relatively mild concussion, can drastically increase a person’s risk of developing Parkinson’s.
University of California researchers looked at records of patients at veterans hospitals between October 2002 and September 2014.
They matched each patient with a traumatic brain injury with one who had never suffered from one. Around half of the 326,000 patients had sustained a TBI.
All types of TBI were associated with a higher risk of developing PD.
Specifically, having any TBI increased the risk by 71 percent, mild TBI increased it by 56 percent, and moderate to severe TBI increased it by 83 percent.
Parkinson’s is typically diagnosed when a person reaches their mid-60s, but there are rare cases in which a person in their 50s is diagnosed with the disease, with around two percent of people with PD being diagnosed before age 40.
Scientists have also uncovered a link between Parkinson’s and playing football specifically, which has also been shown to increase the risk of a severe brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
In a 2023 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers found that among 729 adults who had played football in high school or younger, nearly 89 percent of them were diagnosed with PD.
Diagnoses have been ticking up in recent decades, driven primarily by an aging population, with recent estimates showing the total number of Americans living with Parkinson’s will rise to 1.2 million by 2030.
The official total is around 500,000 currently.
Scientists have recently uncovered what appears to be a ‘Parkinson’s belt’ covering Southern California, the sunbelt and rustbelt states where incidence of the disease are higher than the national average.
Parts of the Parkinson’s belt are in highlight agricultural areas, like Kern county in California, which produced almonds, grapes and citrus fruits, that might’ve used this pesticide previously or currently.
Experts suspect exposure to farming chemicals and factory fumes are to blame for the U-shaped portion of the US where rates of the debilitating disease are nearly 50 percent higher than national averages.
Parkinson’s disease itself is not fatal, but it’s myriad effects can make someone susceptible to death. It puts the body under extreme stress, which makes people more likely to develop infection as the immune system is impaired.
Falls are also a common cause of deaths in Parkinson’s patients.
There is no cure for Parkinson’s, but doctors often prescribe medicines to help with symptoms. The most commonly prescribed is Levodopa or L-DOPA. This drug is converted in the brain into dopamine, which alleviates tremors and movement issues.
