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Eric Lindros leading activist for CTE research

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Eric Lindros enjoys time with his family but worries about what the future of his brain health could have on them.

Eric Lindros enjoys time with his family but worries about what the future of his brain health could have on them.

Eric Lindros wants to talk about concussions.

The former NHL star whose career was altered and ended primarily by six concussions suffered between 1998 and 2000 as a Philadelphia Flyer happily reports he is healthy and well, living a busy life in Toronto with a growing family.

But he is also passionately active in promoting the concussion research of scientist and associate professor Arthur Brown, Ph.D, out of the University of Western Ontario, in part to help science drive progress and also because Lindros is human, too.

He knows about the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), about its posthumous diagnosis in so many former NFL players and in some late NHLers. As a husband to wife Kina and a father of three, part of him naturally worries about the future.

“It’s a combination of both,” Lindros told the Daily News in a phone interview last Wednesday. “To not be worried about it would be impossible to do. You do worry from time to time. It’s just normal to worry about something like that, because you’re seeing more and more first-hand some of the results (with other athletes).

“You’re reading about others, seeing others in documentaries or watching in a movie theater,” he added. “But there are many people who feel fine and do well, too, and I hope to (always) be in that group.”

Lindros, who celebrated his 43rd birthday Sunday, sounds busy and happy. The former Ranger (2001-2004) is a partner in a clothing distribution company. He lights up when he talks about his wife, 21-month-old son Carl Pierre and the couple’s five-and-a-half month-old twins, Ryan Paul and Sophie Rose.

Just as Lindros once barreled through the neutral zone like a freight train during his Flyers heyday, though, he’s been full steam ahead the past few years as the honorary chair of See The Line, a concussion research and awareness effort at the University of Western Ontario.

When Lindros retired in 2007 after two quick stops in Toronto and Dallas, he donated $5 million to the London (Ontario) Health Sciences Center, where he had received treatment for his concussions. Each spring he now speaks to medical students at the university.

Brown’s research excites Lindros specifically, though, because while concussion awareness has increased in the last 20 years, he is frustrated to see “very little tangible progress” in treating head injuries.

“I’m in the audience a few years ago listening to Dr. Brown, and it was the first bright light, the first ray of sunshine on the topic,” Lindros said. “And this isn’t just for athletes. It’s for everyone: kids on the jungle gym, people who get in car accidents, bike accidents.”

Exported.;CHRIS GARDNER/AP

Lindros suffered six concussions from 1998-2000 and retired from the NHL in 2007.

Brown’s research, under the umbrella of the Brain Injury Group collaboration founded in 2011, is focused on stopping inflammation after concussions, regenerating nerve growth in the brain, arresting the devastating long-term effects of concussions, and investigating the tau protein that builds up and results in CTE.

Lindros excitedly explains the specifics of Brown’s research, which is in early clinical trials, like the big fella is in the lab himself: When a person cuts his or her hand, the body self-repairs by sending blood cells that heal the wound and accumulate into a scar. Similarly, when brain tissue and nerve cells stretch or tear, the body rushes blood cells to heal, but that creates swelling and scarring, and the “injury-induced inflammation” results in complications such as headaches, dizziness, irritability and impacted memory or attention span.

So Brown’s team is working on an antibody that will combat the “CD11d/CD18” protein and reduce swelling caused by the body’s response. They also have developed a therapy around a gene called “SOX9” that enables the nervous system to rewire itself to compensate for lost functions — a therapy Brown believes may have applications to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, too.

The research requires $3.1 million in support over five years, though, and that’s where Lindros came in.

He encouraged the NHL Players’ Association to donate $500,000 last summer, and endorses not only Brown’s research but the collaborative spirit of the university’s symposiums and the BIG network.

“All everyone hears about at most conferences is when something went well in a study,” Lindros said. “Nobody quite hears when something didn’t quite pan out. So why don’t we share all of our information so don’t we have to repeat what didn’t work? If government funding comes into play, wouldn’t it be great for a standard to be set to share information so money wasn’t wasted arriving at the same results?”

Concussions first cut short the NHL career of Lindros’ brother, Brett, in 1996, when he retired after just 51 games through two seasons with the Islanders. Lindros said his brother is “doing OK.”

Lindros’ own string of six debilitating concussions then began on March 7, 1998, on a hit by the Penguins’ Darius Kasparaitis, and concluded with an unforgettable, brutal head shot by the Devils’ Scott Stevens on May 26, 2000 in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals.

As crushing as Stevens’ infamous hit was, though, Lindros points out that long-term brain injury is “not so much caused by the big hits, it’s the continuous smaller hits that accumulate to be a problem.” He cautions that hockey has become a year-around sport at the youth level, too. Everyone used to take the summer off and play a less physical sport. Now, he said, “you’re not giving yourself enough time off.”

“That’s really good for your hands, not really good for other things,” Lindros said.

Lindros is helping Dr. Arthur Brown conduct concussion research by encouraging the NHL Players Association to donate money.jnew

Lindros is helping Dr. Arthur Brown conduct concussion research by encouraging the NHL Players Association to donate money.

Lindros has been vindicated for standing up to the Flyers’ medical staff and management as a player when he insisted on the proper, specialized care and time off to rest and recover from his concussions. But he is not among the 105 former NHL players who are plaintiffs in an open class-action lawsuit against the NHL.

“I’ve been approached,” Lindros said, “but I’m learning more and more about what’s going on with it, and I’m not leaning one way or the other.”

The suit alleges the league failed to warn players of the effects of concussions and head trauma, failed to adequately care for players who sustained those injuries, and promoted violence that led to head trauma.

The Brain Injury Project, though, is now partnered with the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a non-profit organization founded in 2007 by former football player and wrestler Chris Nowinski and Dr. Robert Cantu at Boston University.

Cantu is the expert who announced in October that 87 of 91 former NFL players who donated their brains to science tested positive posthumously for CTE.

“You can’t go anywhere without seeing it, right?” Lindros said of the concussion issue’s impact on football.

Lindros still plays hockey, though, in casual, twice-a-week pickup games at a local rink.

“It’s slow,” Lindros bellows with a hearty laugh. “It’s very slow. We change jersey colors every week, throw your sticks into the middle of the ice and pick teams, that sort of thing.”

It’s something, though. And that’s what Lindros has decided he will try to do about all of this: Something.

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