Comment Head impacts lead to dementia (Score 1) 50
All sports with repeated head impact lead to dementia. Soccer from heading, though there are some collision concussions. Check out the health conditions of the English World Cup team members. Its a big deal in soccer. Then Rugby, lots of cases there from collisions. Boxing of course, the punch drunk syndrome. Football. Ice hockey.
Both rugby and soccer have developed increased risks recently for different reasons. Soccer because the lighter and drier ball has led to more heading, and because in the professional game the number of fixtures has increased, as well as the intensity of training sessions. Rugby its because systematic programs of weight training have led to increased bulk and strength for teams already selected for bulk, and there too you have in the professional game greatly increased numbers of fixtures. The physics of collisions means that as weight increases the force of the impact rises faster.
Some people in the UK have proposed, hard to say how seriously, eliminating heading the ball in soccer. The authorities have limited the amount of heading by young players, banned it below certain ages. The problem is that the weight of the ball is the same, but the mass and strength of the muscles of the neck is much lower, so the impact and movement of the head is greater. Same applies to a lesser extent to the women's game.
Better monitoring is leading to more exact knowledge on how many impacts there are, and sensors can measure their force much more precisely. But in football the collisions are a main element of the game. You probably could eliminate heading from soccer without losing much of the dynamics of play. In Rugby it should be possible to enforce tackling rules which greatly reduce head impacts. But boxing or football its hard to see how that can be done while keeping the sport recognizable. Boxing is basically head banging.
The moral for a parent must be, steer your boys into track and field. Girls even more so. And if they want a martial art, Brazilian ju-jitsu.