References are linked throughout the text below:

If I had a kid who played any kind of contact sport, especially football, but including soccer, ice hockey, rugby, lacrosse, and basketball, the one supplement that I would be sure my kid took all year long is Omega-3 Fish Oil. We all worry about the risk of broken bones, and torn tendons and ligaments, but what we should be most worried about is concussions. Young athletes are at an increased risk for concussions compared with collegiate and professional athletes, and recover at a slower rate. American football seems to be the worst, although in similar girl's and boy's sports, girls were at twice the risk of boys. In the US alone, 1.6 to 3.8 million concussions occur in sports and recreational activities annually. (It's a big range because of all the unreported cases.) Even in the absence of a concussion, it is now well known that impacts not hard enough to be called a concussion still cause detectable levels of damage and have the ability to cause long-term complications. Now, I'm not asking you to have them quit sports. Or be a Karen and run down onto the field and stop the game until you find out who hurt your kid. But what you CAN do if your kid suffers a concussion is, first, researchers say they should sit out for 7-14 days to wait out that period of increased susceptibility to another concussive event. And here's what you probably didn't know: A first of it's kind study suggests that having adequate omega-3s on board ahead of time reduces brain injury from concussions. So, how do you know if your kid is at a protective level? Comment the word TRAUMA and I'll send you a link to an omega-3 fish oil bundle that includes a test to measure the Omega-3 Index. It's a quick finger prick test you do at home that measures Omega-3 levels in your red blood cells. It's the gold standard Omega-3 test. You want that test to come back between 8 and 12% for optimal protection. Most young athletes come in at around 4%. It's recommended to boost them up to at least that 8% mark. Preferable higher. Depending on their baseline, that could take 2,000 - 3,000mg of Omega-3 per day. So do the test on them and see how much you need to raise their levels. In another study, 404 NCAA Division 1 Football Players were tested in the 2017-2018 season and a full 100% scored less than 8% on the Omega-3 Index. This could be a big deal in protecting our kids. The research shows that in addition to controlling inflammation, supporting nervous system function, maintaining muscle mass after injury and improving training adaptation and exercise recovery, it's looking like fish oil supplements protect against concussion injuries. Helmets and pads can only do so much. This is an opportunity to protect from the inside. Type TRAUMA in the comments right now if this fits for you and your family.

Surprisingly, it has been shown that the majority of diagnosed concussions are associated with no reported consciousness disturbance (Hill 2014).

Brains of former NFL players exhibited abnormalities in their white matter (WM) tracts coupled with decreased executive functioning, which associated positively with those who had accumulated more SCI (Alosco et al. 2018). Injury to the WM is significant because it comprises 50% of the human brain and acts as a “subway” that connects various regions, with its dysfunction being linked with cognitive impairments as well as numerous psychological disorders (Fields 2008).

Data from high school football players has shown that after only a single season, there was indication of WM tract abnormalities (Kuzminski et al. 2018). Davenport et al. (2016) found that a single season of American football results in negative changes of brain magnetic resonance imagery results independent of any clinical concussion diagnosis. The most commonly noted symptoms exhibited by SRC and SCI over time are cognitive declines, adverse emotional states, and depressive symptoms (Slobounov et al. 2017). In a majority of these studies, increased accumulation of SCI over the course of a season or career correlated positively with the severity of symptoms later in life (Slobounov et al. 2017).

From https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/apnm-2019-0555:

A meta-analysis by Martins (2009) found EPA, not DHA, to be more effective at reducing symptoms of depression, which is common in both SRC and SCI accumulation. The E-series resolvins derived from EPA have been shown to improve mood disorders, specifically depression, more effectively than the D-series resolvins of DHA (Deyama et al. 2018). Both n-3 PUFA provide benefits, but DHA is more effective overall at improving structural integrity and EPA appears to impact mood disorders to a larger degree (Devassy et al. 2016).