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Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda

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Speaker 1: Bunjelung Calcottin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges

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Speaker 1: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the

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Speaker 1: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres

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Speaker 1: Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the

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Speaker 1: first peoples of these countries, both past and present.

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Speaker 2: Jesa heads up. This episode deals with issues surrounding mental

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Speaker 2: health and in particular suicide. If you need someone to

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Speaker 2: talk to, you can give Lifeline a call. On thirteen

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Speaker 2: eleven fourteen.

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Speaker 3: Good morning and welcome to the Daily oz. It's Friday,

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Speaker 3: the seventh of July. I'm Zara Seidler.

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Speaker 2: I'm Sam Kazlowski and.

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Speaker 3: Australian has become the first professional female athlete in the

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Speaker 3: world to be diagnosed with CTE, which is a condition

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Speaker 3: caused by brain injuries like concussion. Last year afl W

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Speaker 3: star Heather Anderson passed away unexpectedly.

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Speaker 2: The Adelaide Crowe's premiership player was just twenty eight years old.

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Speaker 1: I think this is really the tip of the iceberg

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Speaker 1: and it's a real red flag.

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Speaker 3: There's a growing body of evidence about how this condition

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Speaker 3: impacts men, but less is known about how it impacts

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Speaker 3: female athletes. And that's despite the fact that some research

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Speaker 3: suggests that women are actually more susceptible to concussion in

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Speaker 3: the first place. We are going to explain why and

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Speaker 3: what this means for women in sport in the Deep Dive.

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Speaker 3: But first, it was an exciting day in the office

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Speaker 3: with the launch of a new social media platform.

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Speaker 2: As if we didn't have enough social networks, we now

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Speaker 2: have one more. Meta launched its Twitter rival yesterday. It's

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Speaker 2: called Threads and it's a text based conversation app available

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Speaker 2: for Instagram users. Met A co founder and ju Jitsu

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Speaker 2: fanatic Mark Zuckerberg said that Threads had passed five million

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Speaker 2: signups in only four hours after launching.

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Speaker 3: Doctor Annacody will succeed Kate Jenkins as Australia's next Sex

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Speaker 3: Discrimination Commissioner. Jenkins is best known for the Jenkins Report,

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Speaker 3: which provided ways to improve the safety of parliamentary workplaces.

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Speaker 3: Cody will begin her five year tenure in September this year.

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Speaker 2: The National Consumer Watchdog has found that childcare fees have

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Speaker 2: risen faster than inflation in the past four years. The

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Speaker 2: HBC is examining the prices of childcare services in Australia

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Speaker 2: and will hand down a final report by the end

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Speaker 2: of the year.

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Speaker 3: And the good news the number of critically endangered caper kayley,

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Speaker 3: which I have learned today as a type of bird

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Speaker 3: in the UK, has increased for the first time in

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Speaker 3: eight years. A survey found nineteen more male caper kayley

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Speaker 3: this year compared to last, which was considered a big

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Speaker 3: uplift given it as a critically endangered species. A little

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Speaker 3: while ago on this podcast, we spoke about a class

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Speaker 3: action case that was being brought against the AFL over

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Speaker 3: the long term effects of concussion injuries. Now I'm going

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Speaker 3: to throw a link to that in today's show notes,

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Speaker 3: but today we're talking about a different side to that,

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Speaker 3: which is that we've heard the news that the first

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Speaker 3: female professional athlete has been diagnosed with CT Zara.

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Speaker 2: I'm keen to dive into why no women have been

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Speaker 2: diagnosed with CT before this, But before we get to

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Speaker 2: that point, why don't we start with a bit of

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Speaker 2: a lay of the land. Can you break down for

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Speaker 2: me what exactly CT is.

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Speaker 3: So, CT or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a neurodegenerative disease

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Speaker 3: that is known to be linked to repeated brain injuries

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Speaker 3: like concussions, and it's a really complex diagnosis because of

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Speaker 3: a number of reasons. So first I'll just go over

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Speaker 3: what the symptoms are. Yeah, it's things like mood swings, depression, paranoia,

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Speaker 3: and anxiety, so things I think that would often be

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Speaker 3: associated with mental ill health. Then many people who have

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Speaker 3: CTE actually go on to have conditions like dementia. Ct

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Speaker 3: has been diagnosed in many athletes who have died by suicide,

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Speaker 3: and I think that is the point that shows the

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Speaker 3: complexity of all of this, which is how difficult it

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Speaker 3: is to diagnose symptoms of ct begin years after injuries

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Speaker 3: are sustained, and crucially, the only way to officially diagnose

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Speaker 3: ct is to do so after a person has passed,

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Speaker 3: and so.

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Speaker 2: It's almost too late by the time we get to

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Speaker 2: that realization.

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Speaker 3: It's just really complex. And I think that for families

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Speaker 3: of people who have died by suicide who are looking

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Speaker 3: for answers, this can go some of the way. But again,

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Speaker 3: it is only being diagnosed if that person's brain has

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Speaker 3: been donated in order to understand more about their.

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Speaker 2: Death, and we have talked about ct quite a bit

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Speaker 2: in the news over the last twelve twenty four months.

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Speaker 2: We've reported on a couple of kind of landmark cases.

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Speaker 3: We have and there have been some stories that we've

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Speaker 3: spoken about a number of times. There was some killed

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Speaker 3: a player Danny Frawley who died in twenty nineteen, whose

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Speaker 3: mark on the sport continues to be celebrated year in

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Speaker 3: Spud's Game, and former Richmond player and professional boxer Shane

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Speaker 3: Tuck who died in twenty twenty. Both of these men

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Speaker 3: were diagnosed with CTE after they had passed.

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Speaker 2: And so now let's turn to Heather Anderson. What do

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Speaker 2: we know about her story?

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Speaker 3: So Anderson played for the Adelaide Crows as part of

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Speaker 3: their AFLW Premiership winning team back in twenty seventeen. She

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Speaker 3: was forced into retirement by injuries after playing in just

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Speaker 3: a single season. She died last year. She was only

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Speaker 3: twenty eight, and after she died, her family actually donated

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Speaker 3: her brain to the Australian Sports Brain Bank. And what

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Speaker 3: we've heard from her family is that that was an

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Speaker 3: effort to really shed some more light on what led

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Speaker 3: to her death. And so it's only because of that

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Speaker 3: because researchers could study the brain that they came to

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Speaker 3: the conclusion that Heather Anderson had had low stage CT.

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Speaker 3: The findings were published in an academic paper this week,

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Speaker 3: and the story was first picked up by ABC seven

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Speaker 3: thirty and that's how we all learnt about this.

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Speaker 2: So I imagine after this news there was a kind

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Speaker 2: of retrospective look at what might have led to the diagnosis.

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Speaker 2: What do we know?

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Speaker 3: So we know that Anderson suffered at least one diagnosed

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Speaker 3: concussion during her playing career, though there are four other

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Speaker 3: possible concussions that weren't formally diagnosed.

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Speaker 2: That's a really interesting point because I see that happening

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Speaker 2: a lot while watching football, both in men's and women's games,

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Speaker 2: the kind of head knocks where they look a bit rattled,

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Speaker 2: but there's no medical attention provided right there, and the

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Speaker 2: games are concentrating a lot on supervising that more.

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Speaker 3: But I was going to say, it feels like there

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Speaker 3: is a movement towards.

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Speaker 2: Death getting better, But it's impossible to know these players

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Speaker 2: that have hundreds of head contacts. Again, it can be

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Speaker 2: really tricky.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and Anderson played a lot of contact sports throughout

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Speaker 3: her life. We know that she played AFL and rugby league.

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Speaker 3: She also served in the Australian military and she did

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Speaker 3: amateur martial arts, but there were no ports of concussions

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Speaker 3: when she was doing either of those.

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Speaker 2: Zara, We've started to have a conversation as a country

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Speaker 2: about the risk of CT in men's sport. Why haven't

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Speaker 2: we seen that conversation replicated for women?

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Speaker 3: Well, I mean, the research into CT has always been

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Speaker 3: focused on men. Traditionally, the sports where CT is most

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Speaker 3: frequently reported have been male dominated sports, and the research

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Speaker 3: has been equally focused on men. And I think that's

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Speaker 3: why this news about Anderson is such a big deal.

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Speaker 3: That researchers say her diagnosis could indicate a wider presence

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Speaker 3: of CT in female professional athletes that you know, we

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Speaker 3: might not have ever known about. The researchers have said

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Speaker 3: that as the number of women in professional sports expands,

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Speaker 3: and we know that it's expanding really quickly, rapidly, yeah,

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Speaker 3: and also in contact sports, that it is likely that

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Speaker 3: more cases of CT will emerge. The researchers have warned

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Speaker 3: of an urgent need to under stand concussion risks in

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Speaker 3: female contact sports and to find specific strategies that are

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Speaker 3: really designed for women and for female athletes, not just

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Speaker 3: you know, one size fits all, Because there is some

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Speaker 3: research that actually suggests the women are more susceptible to

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Speaker 3: concussions than their male counterparts.

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Speaker 2: Why is that.

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Speaker 3: I think that the fact that women's bodies generally are

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Speaker 3: an under researched area is the first thing to say,

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Speaker 3: and there isn't a scientific consensus on this topic. But

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Speaker 3: I'll go through a couple of the theories. So some researchers

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Speaker 3: believe that women have shorter and narrower necks as well

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Speaker 3: as less head mass. Right, That apparently means that there's

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Speaker 3: more acceleration of the head and neck during impacts, So

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Speaker 3: a hard hit could impact women more than men.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, mind blown. Some other researchers have suggested that hormones

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Speaker 3: might have something to do with it. But something else

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Speaker 3: that I think is really important to consider is that

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Speaker 3: women are actually more likely to report their concussion related

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Speaker 3: symptoms than men. Interesting, and so that could be the

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Speaker 3: reason why women are perhaps overrepresented in concussion data.

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Speaker 2: I feel like that is a major issue in sport,

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Speaker 2: and there's still clearly a lot of work to do

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Speaker 2: in this space.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I definitely think that that is something that

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Speaker 3: needs attention, and I think overall we are starting to

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Speaker 3: hear about and talk about the effects and you know,

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Speaker 3: possible CT with much greater frequency than ever before. But

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Speaker 3: I think it's clear that there needs to be a

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Speaker 3: consideration of the different experiences of men and women in

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Speaker 3: contact sports, and that research needs to be dedicated to

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Speaker 3: understanding those differences as well as appreciating the presence of

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Speaker 3: it in the first place.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on the daily as today. If

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Speaker 2: this conversation raised anything for you, please reach out to Lifeline.

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Speaker 2: You can call them on thirteen eleven fourteen. That's all

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Speaker 2: from us this week, but we'll be back again in

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Speaker 2: your ears on my day morning. Have a lovely weekend.

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Speaker 2: H