CTE, Brain Trauma, and the Hidden Cost of Elite Sports

CTE awareness, brain trauma, athlete mental health, and the hidden emotional cost of elite performance are becoming increasingly important conversations in modern health, psychology, and sports culture. Behind achievement, discipline, and competitive success, many athletes silently struggle with concussions, nervous system dysregulation, emotional suppression, identity loss, and the long-term psychological impact of high-performance environments. As conversations around traumatic brain injury and mental health continue to evolve, more people are beginning to ask what elite sports can truly cost the mind and body over time.

In this episode, Dr. Supatra Tovar sits down with former USA bobsledder and CTE advocate William Person for a powerful conversation about athlete mental health, concussion culture, brain trauma, emotional resilience, and life after elite sports. Together, they explore the hidden neurological and emotional consequences of high-performance culture, the pressure many athletes face to suppress vulnerability, and the lasting impact that repeated trauma can have on identity, emotional wellbeing, and recovery.

William Person shares his personal experiences navigating elite athletics while advocating for greater awareness around traumatic brain injury, recovery support, and emotional healing for athletes and military populations. The conversation explores the culture surrounding concussions in competitive sports, the psychological toll of constantly pushing through pain, masculinity and emotional suppression, nervous system overload, and what it means to rebuild your sense of self after performance becomes your identity.

You’ll also hear thoughtful discussions about burnout, resilience, emotional regulation, mental health recovery, and why conversations around brain health are more important than ever in modern sports culture. Dr. Tovar and William Person discuss the emotional realities many high performers face privately, the stigma surrounding vulnerability, and how healing often begins when people feel safe enough to acknowledge what they are carrying emotionally and neurologically.

If you’ve ever wondered how high-performance culture impacts emotional wellbeing, identity, nervous system health, mental resilience, or long-term brain function, this conversation offers powerful insight grounded in lived experience, advocacy, psychology, and recovery.

Subscribe for more conversations on psychology, nutrition, mental health, emotional wellness, nervous system regulation, sustainable wellbeing, and healing beyond performance culture.

Timestamps:
00:00 Welcome back and introduction
02:10 William Person’s athletic background
05:45 The hidden culture around concussions
10:30 What brain trauma can feel like emotionally
16:15 Athlete mental health and emotional suppression
22:05 High-performance pressure and identity loss
29:40 Masculinity, vulnerability, and healing
36:20 Nervous system overload and recovery
43:15 Advocacy, awareness, and supporting athletes
50:10 Final thoughts and Part 2 preview

Episode Summary

High performance can come with hidden emotional and neurological consequences. In this conversation, William Person shares how brain trauma, concussion culture, emotional suppression, and athlete identity can deeply impact mental health, nervous system regulation, and long-term wellbeing. This episode explores resilience, recovery, emotional awareness, and the importance of changing conversations around mental health in elite sports.

🧠 What This Episode Covers

CTE awareness and concussion culture
Athlete mental health and emotional wellbeing
Brain trauma and nervous system health
The emotional impact of elite sports
Masculinity and emotional suppression
Identity loss after athletics
Mental resilience and recovery
Trauma and emotional healing
High-performance burnout
Life after competitive sports
Emotional regulation and vulnerability
Advocacy for athletes and military populations

🔗 Connect with William Person

GoFundMe:
William Person GoFundMe

Facebook:
William Person Facebook

LinkedIn:
William Person LinkedIn

Continue Your Journey

📘 Book: Deprogram Diet Culture: Rethink Your Relationship with Food, Heal Your Mind, and Live a Diet-Free Life

🎓 Course: Deprogram Diet Culture
ANEW Insight Course

🌐 Visit the Website
drsupatratovar.com

🎥 Watch More Episodes
ANEW Insight YouTube Channel

🎤 Watch the TEDx Talk
Rethinking Our Relationship with Food in the GLP-1 Era

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the A New Insight Podcast, empowering and inspiring your journey to optimal health. Hosted by Dr. Supatra Kavar, clinical psychologist, registered dietitian, fitness expert, and author of Deprogram Diet Culture. Rethink your relationship with food, heal your mind, and live a diet-free life. I follow my guests' journey to optimal health, providing you with the keys to unlock your own wellness path. Tune in and evolve with us. Hello and welcome. I am very excited to have former nine-year team USA Bob Sled Athlete and CTE Awareness Advocate William Person with us today. William, welcome. Oh, appreciate it. Thank you for having me. I'm very thrilled to have you. And I have really wanted to have someone on who can talk about CTE and its effects and treatments for it. And you are the perfect person for this. So I'm going to read a little. Go ahead. Oh, no, I was just going to make a dad joke. Well, that is my last name. I'm a person. So sorry about that. I love me a good dad joke. So don't get me started. Uh, I can I can actually pop one off right now. What's a sad cup of coffee? Depresso. Uh no. Good. Okay, I'm gonna read a little bit about William and then we're gonna go right into our questions. William Person is a former nine-year team USA Bobsled athlete whose career exposed him to severe and repeated brain trauma. Over time, he developed debilitating symptoms he didn't yet recognize as CTE, overwhelming confusion, crushing depression, vertigo that made it impossible to stand, and cognitive decline so profound he would get lost in his own neighborhood. As he watched former teammates and competitors deteriorate and lose their lives to suicide, he feared he might follow the same path. Everything changed when he tried hyperbaric oxygen therapy. His first session restored clarity to his mind, energy to his body, and even color to his vision. It gave him hope and a new mission. William is now dedicated to raising awareness about brain injuries and sports in the military, advocating for athletes and veterans who are suffering in silence and raising funds to open a free CTE recovery center equipped with medical-grade hyperbaric oxygen chambers. His message is simple and urgent. Protect your brain, seek treatment early, and never ignore the symptoms that could cost you your life. William, welcome. Oh, thank you, man. You said that perfectly. Well, I, you know, I'm very interested in oxygen therapy. Recently I had someone who came in and talked about exercise with oxygen as a therapy. And I know that there is the hyperbaric uh option as well. So I'm really glad that I was able to connect with you so we could explore that option because I know that there's a lot of really kind of profound and amazing results coming from these oxygen therapies. You're being a prime example of one. But go back in time and give me the journey that you know you you've you started with Team USA, and thank you so much for representing our country. And then when almost to the brink of suicide, and then back to purpose. Just start by sharing what life looked like, you know, at when you were doing the Olympics, but then afterwards, what started to show up in your life? Well, the truth is, um, when I made Team USA, uh, it's it's just crazy to say this now. I didn't understand it back when I was doing it. Uh when I was 28 years old, I wrote the program, it was an independent living transitional housing program for the state of Utah. And it was such a new concept that they opened me as a uh uh um pilot program, you know, and so I was always in mental health was my thing. And uh the crazy part about it is is um when I joined Team USA, I was still I stayed open for two more years, and then I was just so busy with traveling that I closed. But my background was actually mental health. Like I've actually I used to run a facility for um psychiatric solutions, which is the largest uh mental health facility in the world, you know, and so like mental health was my background, and and and the truth is when my symptoms kicked in, I didn't recognize them. And even with my teammates taking their lives, I wasn't able to connect those dots. And um, I also want to give you one more thing. Like any question you give me today, if you give me more than one question, I'll probably answer half of one of it. You know, I have some little glitches in my matrix, I call it. It's my last little glitch that kits me. Like I'll talk and I'll sometimes I'll just lose that train of thought. So if that happens, feel free to pull me back. I used to be embarrassed. I stopped doing interviews because of that years ago. And but now I just want the world to see what this is for what it is. Yeah, no problem. And thank you for clarifying and you know putting that out there. I think that that you know it it's vulnerable, but it's real, and absolutely you've had some significant effects. Tell me for Bobsledders, what happens when uh they get um you know into the sled that eventually goes into the realm of CTE? Well, there's actually a few things. Um, if you ever go to a lake early in the morning, uh that water is like it's like a sheet of glass, it's smooth. Uh the bobsled track has uh ripples in it, and so you take a 500-pound sled and you run it across those ripples with metal runners, it's equivalent to shaking baby syndrome. So it's like if I have my jaw relaxed, my teeth are gonna chatter. And so that's what it's doing to the brain. That's one thing. Also, they told us we were only pulling four to five G forces maximum. Uh, but an article came out uh by the New York Times called Sledhead, and they tested one of the tracks, which is one of the mildest tracks in the world, and the one in Calgary, where they shot the movie Cool Runnings, they tested that track, and that track has spikes of 84.5 G forces. And uh that makes total sense now because when I was competing, we once took fighter pilots on uh on a bobsled ride, and they're the only ones on this planet who pulled the same G forces as us. But you know, they're wearing pressure suits and things that the military trained them to do to reduce it, and they're only pulling six G's, supposed we only pull in five, but that article says they tested that track and it found spikes of 84.5, and so that's why, yeah, that's why everybody's sick and uh, you know, Parkinson's depression, seizures, strokes, CTE, you know, and um, yeah. Give me a picture of exactly what CTE is for the people who don't know, and and and and give us the full name and exactly what happens to cause those kinds of symptoms. Like I'll see if I can say it today. Some days I can't say certain words, but it's traumatic. Um traumatic encephalopathy. Yeah, so yeah, when I started this journey, like I I couldn't put together full sentences, you know. I was um like if you look at my old pictures, I was bald and balding. My hair was, you know, I I don't know. This it's it's been a journey, it's been a long, long journey. If anybody, if you can't see me, my hair is now past my chest and down my back now. And uh that's how long this has been going on. But um the the best way to say what CTE is, I'm gonna give it to you. And uh the bluntness is I'm gonna give it to you because if you see these NFL players who've been killing themselves, CTE, we know what that is. If you look at the um mass shooting rate in America, the mass shooters, uh, 31% are are veterans coming back turning the guns on us and other veterans, right? And uh and the rest of them are either this people who've been um what do they call it, radicalized, or people with head concussion issues. They're they're in those two categories. There, you know, it's not many on the other side, it's those those three categories. And and so a lot of our veterans were coming back. They give them that blanket PTSD statement, right? It's it's an umbrella. Now they're knowing they're starting to do studies where they're checking their brains when they die, and they find out they also have CTE. And so if you look at the veteran suicide rate, it's around 6,400 per year. However, there's another 5,000 that overdose every year, and even if they leave a suicide note, they do not count that as um a suicide. But but we're looking at 11 to 12,000 veterans every year are are taking their life, and uh that's what CTE really is. And uh I can I can give you the all the legal stuff, but the truth is look at it in our communities. That's what you're looking at, right? And so for people who might be unfamiliar, they've heard about it like with the football players, and it's you usually get this type of brain damage when you are constantly hitting your head, or you know, your head is jostling around inside of your helmet, and that causes bruising, it causes damage to the brain. And we see that there's a variety of symptoms that arise from it. And I would assume, and maybe you can tell me, does is that because of the different areas where you might be receiving that damage from the head shaking around? Well, I'm I kind of missed your question. Can you give it to me one more time? The damage is it varies from person to person. Yes. You see some uh, you know, with the people who have depression, you see cognitive decline, um violent behavior. Yes, but it doesn't necessarily present exactly the same person to person. Is that correct? Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I and I really think that is, uh, because like when I was going through it, I was in dementia. I didn't know I was in dementia. Uh, people asked me if I was depressed. I would say no, I'm I wasn't depressed. But the truth was I was praying for death every day. That was my routine. Uh wake up trying to figure out what day it is, what month we're in, and uh and ask God to come and pick me up because I, as a counselor, I didn't want to leave that trauma on my family. And you're right, it presents itself differently. And I think the medical community might have it wrong because along my journey, I met people uh who had the same symptoms as me. Like I met the housewife who uh, and one time this lady she was frustrated with her doctors because they couldn't figure out what was wrong with her. And she told me the symptoms, and I was like, wow, did it sound like CTE or concussion stuff? I said, Were you an athlete? She's like, No. Then there's a whole nother population of women now. They're checking their brains uh when they're dying. These are women who had domestic violence done to them. And so there's a whole nother population walking around with us. Uh you see these housewives who had rough lives and now they're acting out of character. Uh and that's what it is. They're finding in the housewife. And so I asked her, I said, Well, was your ex-husband a violent man? She's like, No, nothing like that. And we talked for about 30, 40 minutes. And at the last moment, she said she had an epiphany. She told me one time she was snowboarding with her son, and she said she felt backwards and her arm seized up and did this, like her arms out like a mummy. And I was like, Aha, that's why the doctors aren't finding your problem. First of all, you didn't tell them about that. And second of all, even if they look for the scans of the brain, they won't find anything with those low-grade. Um, if it's not a massive brain bleed, the the imaging won't pick it up. And so people wow, that makes me scared because I fell so much as a skier growing up. So I really hope that I'm okay and I don't develop those kinds of symptoms. Give me a picture of when you started to notice the symptoms. How long after being a Bob Slater? And and what did you experience you know in succession, if you can remember? Well, I remember uh when we raced World Cup, we're traveling around the world. And so my one of my first red flags is was uh I would wake up and I didn't know where I was at. And um I I rationalized it. I was like, you know what? Um I'm I don't know where I'm at because I have a great life. I travel so much, and um I you know I I just don't know where I'm at because I travel. That's that's it. Um, but one time I went back to uh Salt Lake to hang out with some buddies I hadn't seen in a while, and um we went to shoot pool, and uh, my buddy said, Hey, there's your ex-girlfriend coming in. And I looked at her, I said, She's a pretty girl, but I don't know her. And she sprinted over to me and she jumped in my arms and I caught her. And I was thinking, like, wait a minute. And but I rationalized again. I said, Oh, I have so many pockets of friends, uh, or you know, I just rationalized it. I'm an athlete, I'm the, you know, most athletes think we're arrogant, you know. We think all every lady in the world wants is a, you know, far from the truth, but you know, but I rationalized it and and and it allowed that thing to, you know, continue to fester in my brain. Like the issues were there. And eventually I got to the point where I started having these random cloudy days. And so it looked like diabetes. And so I'm seeing doctors. I'm thinking, you know, can I get my insulin shot this year? 10 years I'm seeing doctors, and they're telling me you're not diabetic. And it didn't make sense to me. Like I always ate clean, so I didn't think I could have diabetes, but it looked like low blood sugar. And uh man, so those are the things that I was just kind of dealing with, but those slowly went from random cloudy days to next thing you know, it was random days of clarity. And it was too late. By the time it got me, I didn't see it coming. And I and once you're there, you know, if somebody's not there to help you, you know, you're not gonna figure this thing out on your own. And I definitely didn't, even with my teammates committing suicide, I didn't uh I didn't I couldn't connect those dots. I just um, you know, yeah. When did the dots connect for you? What how did how bad did it get for you to connect those dots? Well, every day I woke up, I didn't know the day. I know and the thing is I got in trouble with it so much that I every day I woke up, I knew I didn't know the day. So I had a routine. So it's like treating your symptoms. So I put things in place to help me. So every night before I went to bed, I put a thermos of coffee or Mountain Dew or Coca-Cola, things I never drank before. I don't really like to taste, and I didn't even let my children drink soda. And so here I am living off of that stuff. So in the morning I wake up, I had that on the on the nightstand and uh take a sip. Okay, now I'm awake. And then um now I gotta figure out what the real day is. So I had a little blue daily planner I looked at. Oh, okay, I'll look at it. Okay, it's Monday. Okay, great. Now what month are we in? I was stuck in the loop where I always thought it was January or August. And so every morning that was my routine to figure that out. And then uh, oh my God, it was just one of them things. Like you I eventually I it got so bad where I took the mattress out of my bedroom off the bed and I put it in my living room, and I began to live there. And what probably saved me is uh one of my teammates, um, he wanted to be a uh writer. And in my younger days, um, if you see all movie Jerry Maguire, I was a part of the people they I was a real fast guy, so they hired me. I played five different characters, and I'm running around just making it look like real athletes were on that football field. And um movie? Yeah, I worked with Cuba and uh Tom Cruise, and uh and then he got an Oscar off of that. Like I was so happy that was the nicest guy I've ever worked with in my life. Uh well you know, but yeah, so so I'm doing that type of stuff. So when I left the sport, one of my teammates called me. He wanted to be a writer, he asked me if I would help him, and he gave me these concepts for movies that were I'd never seen before, they were so far out, and and I was like, man, that'll be great. So I'm teaching him how to write it in in linear screenplay format for Hollywood, right? And um, so we had these random phone calls, he called me, we go over some stuff, but the very last time he called me, he was speaking gibberish. Um, and I know what I know now is that his mind has slipped already. And um, and uh the the truth is, like I told myself every day I gotta help this guy because he got so frustrated with me, he hung up the phone because I didn't understand him. And uh every day I it was on my heart, I had two things in my head. One, injure life, two, help Pavle. And of course, I didn't do either one of them, but that's it's a cycle, it's like a loop that's it just continually goes. And I believe that's why these soldiers and these athletes are killing themselves because it it'll just badger you until you do it. And um, and so eventually what happened is uh I bought a lake house in the Midwest because I knew I was in trouble. Um, and and I was just going back to get closer to my family, I can be safe. Like all I could do over there is cut the grass or fish. That's it. I'm gonna be at least I won't get lost in my community anymore. And so I bought this thing, and so it was a young lady um who I was seeing in California. So I would come back and see her sometime. And and so uh I'm at the house doing COVID, we're locked in, and she has a lovely family, so they're on the phone all the time. And the noise of them talking on the phone was driving me through the roof. And uh so I told her, I said, you know what, I think we have to break up. I'm going back to Lake House. I need some peace and quiet. And uh, and uh, and everything lined up while I was there. Um, this article came out by the New York Times called Sled Head. It actually um talked about the things my teammates were doing before they took their life and some of the other ailments. And I read this article and I think got on my knees and I thank God all the symptoms missed me, right? I sent it to my girlfriend and she circled some stuff, and the first thing I saw was noise sensitivity. It was the very reason that I had broken up or was breaking up with her, and then I went over that list and I checked almost every box except Parkinson's. Um and uh yeah, but I got to one point where my hand started to do the shakes a little bit, and I don't know what that was, but it stopped once I started. I do a hyperbaric. It wasn't all the time, it was random, it wasn't very much. And then also when I was at the lake house, Pavle's um autopsy report showed up and found out he was in stage four. And so what I realized is I could never have helped him. And um, and but that guilt, like I was I felt so guilty and ashamed. And uh, and when that guilt hit me, I just started trying to I started talking to other teammates, and I know everybody was dealing with the same stuff. And I now I'm the whistleblower, I'm talking to everybody, just trying to save lives at this point. I did like a suicide, non-suicide deal. Everybody, you call me, but the thing is, I never put myself to call anyone, I didn't have a person to to call. And so my system was trying to save people that but I wasn't worried about myself. But the the truth is, what I found out with Pavle is like um, I thought that I was supposed to save his life, but I think he came in and saved my life, and that's really what happened. Amazing. Now, I I hear you had a mantra. I love mantras, I use them all the time with my clients. I I use them on myself, they're so soothing and meditative. You had one that you used when things got really rough. What was it? You mean for suicide? Mm-hmm. Well, I had a lot of clients over the years. Um, and I always taught them one thing. I I say, hey, you know, I know you want to commit suicide, but you know, what's the hurry? You know, I say, give yourself another day. And so if it's a good idea to kill yourself today, it'll be a good idea tomorrow. So it all it always bought me one more day. And um, and I've never had a client that I shared that with, and it didn't work. And so it was in the back, it was it was on loop in my ear, like you know, and so I was on cruise control, and without me doing this for years, and only I got owned a treatment facility for you when I joined Team USA. And I the irony of it is I opened this place when I was 27, 28. I was less than 10 years older than these clients who lived in my inpatient program who called me dad. I was like their father. Now I'm older and I think back, I said I was doing what? I was a baby. How did I, you know, how did I do that? You know, and uh Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was all the right things lined up for me to save me. And uh yes, and let's give people a taste for this. We're almost out of time for this half, and I want to give people a taste for what actually saved you and how you stumbled upon hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Well, most of the stuff with CTE, the symptoms look like a lot of things everybody in the world deals with. And so they're easy to help you minimize it. And uh for me, like I I thought it was diabetes all these years. I'm I'm bugging my doctors. Can I get my Islam? So they were telling me I was screwed. No, you don't have CTE. I mean, you don't have uh diabetes. And and so once we figured out Pablo was in stage four when he took his life. And I talked to everybody else, they're all sick with the same. Now we know what this is. My boogeyman now has a name. And so my algorithm, yeah, my algorithm changed on my on my phone. So Joe Namath shows up and he says he used it to reverse his symptoms. But he didn't leave the details, like he didn't say like I had this going on or that, he just said the reverse. And so I just blindly went and tried it. And uh, I was in that chamber for an hour and it took 10 years of cloudiness off me. Now I'm seeing the world like through like I didn't need my glasses when I came out of that chamber. And matter of fact, when I came out the chamber, my glasses were slightly tinted because I'm sensitive to lights. So I put these things on a couple times and took them off. I kept doing that. And a salesman comes over, he says, What's wrong? He said, I said, I don't think I need my glasses. And he says, Oh, you're one of those. And I was like, you know, I think he's a salesman. He's finished trying to sell me this $22,000 machine. That's what he's really up to. But he was right. Some people get immediate relief, and some people need 30 days of uh two treatments per day to get the same relief. And I happen to be the first. And I went home that night, and uh so man, some bad things happened, but some great things happened. Uh yeah, like I how much time you have before you break it saying, I don't want to go. Just keep going, I'll tell you that. So so I get home that night. Like I said, everything is beautiful, like all the colors are vivid. And I guess I don't know. I might not have been seeing colors for a while. I didn't know it though. Um, so I get home, I'm watching TV, I fall asleep on the couch about nine o'clock. Now I wake up with this migraine around midnight. It's so it's radiating. I'm thinking, oh my god, I did damage. I have a hit of migraine in at least a month or two. Like migraines is part of what we deal with. Migraines are vertigo, and so, but the one thing about it is I had an erection at the same time as his migraine. And I was like, wait a minute, them two don't go together. Those two do not go together. Yeah, I'm like, something is happening back here. Yeah. And so I climbed into bed. It was at midnight, and I went back to bed. And uh was upstairs. I was on that sofa, so I went and got into bed. And I wake up in the morning about I think it was about eight, nine o'clock in the morning. And uh, migraine is gone, but that erection is still there. And uh, over the next few hours, that 10 years of cloudiness was gone. I had six days of no clouds, and I'm thinking okay, this was this a fluke, is this in my mind? Uh, but after the six days, I got fuzzy again. So they let me come back again. Uh, and this time I had nine days of relief. And uh man, my life is you know, now I'm like Paul Revere. I'm telling all the athletes around the world, hey, find this chamber, it's gonna help you. You know, it's helping me. This is yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so inspiring. Uh, we are going to get into this a lot more into the uh the next uh section. We are out of time for this half of the podcast. But William, I'm so impressed with how this has changed your life, and this is really bringing hope to a lot of people where they thought that there is no hope. I I I this is news for me. I I thought once you got a CT diagnosis, it was just deterioration from there and not the best end. And I think you're on a mission and we're gonna get the word out for people, anyone who's experienced a sport where they've gotten head injury, or you know, anyone who's been hit in the head from domestic violence, like there's some hope out there for everybody, and and that's so exciting to me. So, will you come back for the second half? Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. All right, everybody, stay tuned. Come back for the second half of this amazing interview with former nine-year team USA Bobsled athlete and CTE awareness advocate William Persson. Thanks for tuning in to the A New Insight Podcast. Please remember the content shared on this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. You can find us anywhere podcasts are streaming, on YouTube at my.com under the Anu Insight Podcast tab. And follow us on our socials at my dotanew.insight on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Threads for more updates. Tune in next time and evolve with us.