Adding to this site’s archives of combat sports safety studies, important findings were published today connecting reduced brain volume and slower processing speed to the number of years and the number of bouts combat sports athletes endure. In today’s study (Repeated head trauma is associated with smaller thalamic volumes and slower processing speed) published at the … More Number of Bouts and Years of Fighting Related to Reduced Brain Volume in Boxers and MMA Fighters

In my ongoing efforts to highlight studies addressing safety issues in combat sports, an interesting study was recently published by Benjamin Lee and Stuart McGill from the Spine Biomechanics Laboratory, at the University of Waterloo (Canada) testing the peak forces caused by MMA gloves contrasted with 16 oz boxing gloves.  The study also reviewed the time … More MMA  Gloves  Produce “4‐5  Times  Greater Peak Force” Than Boxing Gloves

As a long time fan of MMA and other combat sports I feel past, current and future athletes are owed a fair and sober discussion of the realities of traumatic brain injury.  Yes a bit of common sense tells us these sports have inherent dangers and yes being hit in the head is not good … More Guy Mezger Shares the Legacy of “17 Years of Being Hit in the Head”

Recently the Journal of Athletic Enhancement released a first of its kind study examining the cognitive performance on neuropsychological testing of MMA athletes. The study, authored by Christopher Heath and Jennifer Callahan, conducted a series of cognitive performance tests on 28 MMA athletes and a control group of 28 non MMA athletes. The MMA athletes … More Recent Developments in Combat Sports Brain Injury Studies

Although the mandatory use of gloves in Mixed Martial Arts was one step which helped bring the sport from its ‘human-cockfighting‘ stigma into greater mainstream acceptance, this requirement likely increased the incidence of brain trauma for the sport’s participants. Gloves protect fighters’ fists from injuries and reduce superficial cuts to opponents but do little to protect an … More Knockouts By Punch Increased Tenfold After Gloves Introduced to MMA

Adding to this site’s archived medical literature addressing safety issues in combat sports, an important study was published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association addressing objective brain changes in college football players. The study compared three groups: 1. College football players with no concussion history 2. College football players with a … More More Medical Evidence on the Toll of Sub Concussive Trauma in Combat Sports