Dementia is a personal cause for hockey legend Gordie Howe. According to the Associated Press, the disease that killed his wife in 2009 is beginning to affect him—likely the cause of concussions he sustained while playing for the National Hockey League.
Although the number of concussions NHL players suffered wasn’t tracked when Howe was playing, the hall-of-famer took his share of bumps to the head. Such events have been increasingly linked to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease that leads to dementia. The condition has been diagnosed in many former NFL and NHL players whose families had autopsies done on the body.
But Howe’s family is hesitant to link his dementia with his time in the league, the AP said. No one knows for sure how many concussions Howe sustained in his career, and he didn’t show signs of memory loss until well in his 70s.
“I don’t think anybody can really answer that questions,” his son Marty said. “He went for so long without any symptoms whatsoever. You don’t have to be an athlete or in contact sports to get dementia.”
The AP reported that it is also possible for Howe’s dementia to have a vascular root. He suffered from heart disease later in life and had to have a coronary stent implanted about 10 years ago, a known risk factor for memory loss.
