Former NFL star Gastineau diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
Mark Gastineau retired from the New York Jets after a 10-season NFL career as the franchise’s all-time sacks leader and he ranked right up there with Joe Namath on a list the club’s most colorful characters.
Now 60, Gastineau admitted that the game he stepped away from after the 1988 season also had a devastating impact on his health.
“I got some news that’s disturbing to the point where I want to get out and I want to help other kids , youths and people coming into the game," Gastineau in an interview on New York’s WOR-AM. "I didn’t have that. I didn’t have the protection. When the results came back, I had Alzheimer’s, dementia and Parkinson’s. Those are three things that I have. I want every player who goes out and plays to be protected.”
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Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a disease brought on by concussions and other head trauma has been diagnosed in brain tissue of 90 of 94 deceased NFL players studied by Boston University researchers, has symptoms similar to Alzheimer’s, dementia and Parkinson’s. The only valid test to diagnosis CTE requires a post-mortem examination of the brain, although Gastineau joined the lists of dozens of former NFL players suspected to be living with the disease.
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Gastineau said he didn’t want the diagnoses of his cognitive ailments last year to overshadow his work on the NFL’s Heads Up Football program, which promotes safer tackling techniques in youth and high school football. A study published in July 2015 in the Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine revealed the program only had a modest impact on overall injuries and no discernible effect on the number of concussions.
Bo Jackson told USA TODAY Sports last week he “would have never played football” had he known the long-term consequences to repeated impacts to the head. Jackson said he wouldn’t let his kids play the game .
“I’d tell them, 'Play baseball, basketball, soccer, golf, just anything but football,’ ’’ Jackson said.
Gastineau said he wouldn’t take the same tact with his kids.
“I’m not giant to say, ‘I’m not going to let my child play,’ when there are techniques out there that if I would have had them --– the techniques I’m teaching kids --- I know I wouldn’t have had the results that I have now,” Gastineau said.
And, also unlike Jackson, Gastineau has no regrets about playing football.
“I am so happy that I went through the times, the trials and things that I went through in the NFL,’’ Gastineau said. “I wouldn’t trade them for anything. . . . I like football.”
