MMA Brain Damage

[Palerion]

I started training in MMA about a year ago (mainly for self-defense and workout) and I've recently been looking into the effects that taking blows to your head can have on your mental health. Found all this stuff about increasing the onset of Parkinson's disease, causing some kind of dementia, all sorts of bad conditions.

Anyone train in MMA and know a little bit about this subject?

And yeah, I'm aware this is a weird topic to post on PSU

[Kyonye]

Well, you're actually not the first PSU member to train MMA. Although the other one fought. Well, he tried to fight.

If you really want to have an understanding of the impact of head trauma, look at the research done on football players.

In your case, seeing as you are doing it for self defense, there really shouldn't be any reason you are taking very hard hits to the head. Yes, I understand that you need to train the way you might one day have to defend yourself, or others, but it shouldn't require many blows to the head.

[Neurotoxin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dementia_pugilistica

Effects that we thought would only manifest from concussions actually manifest from multiple blows to the head too. Boxing, MMA, American Football, are places where medical research has made a great deal of progress in determining the effects of brain injury from hits to the head over a period of time.

That being said, it will help you with self-defense and workout. If your goal is purely self defense, Krav Maga might be a better route, as it focuses more on practical defensive application and has plenty of weapon defense training.