So, you know, I like really wild and crazy ideas, and a few years ago, you approached me

with a wild and crazy idea.

This was on one of our walks, I think, well, if we were we talked about this.

That's my friend, Dr. Athene Venkata Romani.

I'm a physician and a health economist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Athene and I made a residency at Mass General Hospital, and now we have similar jobs.

Unlike me, though, Athene is a big football fan.

He's been rooting for the Pittsburgh Steelers since he was a kid.

And like a lot of football fans, he's been increasingly aware of the toll the game takes

on the bodies of the people who play it.

Most of the discussion we've had up until the last few years has been with the neurological

health of football players.

More recently, we're thinking about the stress on the heart that may be adaptive for the

game, but it may or may not be adaptive for life after that.

For years of stress on the heart, repeated blows to the head and other physical injuries,

causing NFL players to die earlier than the otherwise would have, what about the health

advantages that come with being a professional athlete?

You might think we could just look at health data for NFL players and compare them to the

rest of us.

The problem is that they aren't like the rest of us.

On average, football players live a lot longer than we do.

There's a lifetime of exercise and preparation and discipline that can have health benefits.

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