[mike-the-mikado]

I think that head injuries are a known cause of dementia (my father suffered a serious head injury and developed dementia a few years later at the age of about 70). It has been implicated in connection with sports injuries (boxing, rugby, heading a ball).

I wonder if the risk of head injury has reduced with time?

[JumpCrisscross]

> head injuries are a known cause of dementia

Almost 2x more likely [1].

> wonder if the risk of head injury has reduced with time?

The lack of spikes from the world wars would suggest otherwise.

[1] https://karger.com/ned/article-pdf/56/1/4/3752570/000520966....

[MangoToupe]

I think being around explosions actually IS linked to Alzheimer's. It wouldn't surprise me to find a link to dementia as well.

But generally, bullets, disease, and malnutrition don't cause the same sort of brain trauma.

https://newsroom.uw.edu/news-releases/blast-related-concussi...

[WalterBright]

60 Minutes recently ran a segment on the cumulative damage of relatively small explosions (such as rifle shots) can lead to brain injury and dementia, even with hearing protection.

[genewitch]

I know i gave you a little crap vis a vis the toyota stuck accelrator thing in another thread, but i quoted you about this stat twice, yesterday. I rarely pay attention to usernames when replying, and you have a breadth of experience that doesn't immediately identify who's "speaking."

how many books have you written ;-)

[bsimpson]

My dad's hobby when I was a kid was playing the saxophone.

Bunch of wind instrument legends started dying relatively young around that time, and he went "yeah… no."

(Granted, he wasn't doing drugs and alcohol like musicians probably do, but it was still enough to scare him away.)

[madcaptenor]

You had me wondering if wind-playing itself has unfortunate cognitive effects. (This seems just barely plausible, since you spend a lot of time breathing funny if you play a wind instrument.)