If you're involved with sports in any capacity, there's no doubt that by now you have seen the preliminary information about the evident correlation between having played professional football or having boxed and dementia. Bottom line seems to be that "punch drunk boxers" were only the tip of the iceberg -- that repeated concussions in any sport can lead to early dementia.
Pro football, pretty much a sacred cow in the US, has been the thin entering wedge regarding the possibility that having the concussion delivered by a fist is necessary for dementia to result -- in other words, we're learning that -- DUUUH -- concussions are bad to have!
Here's a link to what could easily be an outlier -- but possibly not -- who had the telltale markers of trauma-induced dementia but neither boxed nor played pro football (he had played college football).
http://tiny.cc/EKsf9 Outlier or not, it's worth reading.
Implications for church sports programs involve the clear necessity to ask seriously if it is appropriate for a church to sponsor or offer programs in sports that appear to involve a high risk of trauma-related dementia. Obviously, boxing and football fall in this category. Both may represent ways "out of the ghetto" and may have roles in reclaiming lives. But there may be better choices, ones that do not entail what appears to correlate the inherent risk of dementia with success.
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