Bill Romanowski: Brainiac.

• Author: Schley, Stewart

The first concussion suffered by Bill Romanowski over his 16-year NFL career came during a game against the New Orleans Saints. Romo was a rookie linebacker for the 49ers, and the play was a counter-trey, the pulling guard rolling to his left. The guy's knee came in hard against Romo's helmet, and for the first of what would be more than 20 times, the gelatinous tissue of Romanowski's brain brushed up against the hard surface of his skull's inner wall.

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The last concussion came during Romo's final season, 2003, when he played for the Raiders. That was the one that spelled the end. A few weeks later, the veteran linebacker with 243 consecutive game appearances drove out of the parking lot of Oakland's McAfee Coliseum and suddenly stopped. Romanowski had forgotten where he lived.

For Romanowski, a Connecticut kid from a meager upbringing who had willed himself to become an extraordinary athlete, a madman who famously was captured on television spitting in an opponent's face, an ex-Bronco who popped pills like candy, an unlikely working man's hero who captivated the Denver faithful, it had come down to this: Bill Romanowski's brain was all messed up.

He retired soon after that, around the time he realized he couldn't remember who sang his favorite song. "I was coming from a place of pretty intense fear," Romanowski says.

Romanowski has a theory, though: What you focus on is what will happen. He believes it. He starts each day by meditating. Four years ago, with his speech slowing and his mind unable to remember events that happened only a day before, Romanowski began to focus on finding a way to heal.

Could there be an ex-jock better suited to the task? Romanowski's acquaintance with chemistry is legendary. As a player, he assembled and engulfed each day a briefcase full of vitamins, supplements and pills he swears were instrumental to his career longevity. (Although Romanowski admits he took the now-banned growth hormone THG, he says he never took any substance that violated NFL rules at the time. He was acquitted of a 2000 charge that he obtained the diet-stimulant phentermine illegally.)

When he felt his mind faltering, Romo started making calls to researchers he'd consulted in the past. He called people like Thomas Incledon, an Arizona fitness and nutrition specialist. He asked them what they knew about neuro-nutrients. He studied journals. He ordered products.

Working in a makeshift laboratory, Romo...