Can sparring in karate adequately jolt the brain, such as to cause it damage?

Question

I am eighteen, in my last year of highschool, and am chalk full of inexorable ambitions of working to attain a Ph.D and go on to, hopefully, become a Professor of English Literature. As such, my aspirations are of the intellectual variety, and I cannot allow for anything or anyone to jeoperdize or depredate the functionality of my cognitive facilities - hence, the question..

I attend karate classes two times a week. We don't spar everyday, and when we do, it generally lasts for ten to fifteen minutes, consisting of several consecutive light, non violent bouts that are moreso prioritized on conditioning various offensive and defensive strategies through jabs and soft hits, than brawling somebody into the ground.

Occasionally, of course, a couple of hits to the head are sustained that are enough to give a jolt, but I've never had any symptoms afterwards like grogginess, headache, etc.

People say you can kill brain cells by nodding too hard, or by barely striking your head with an object (like dropping a tennis ball on your head), but how can this be true? How can the brain sustain damage if no motions are inflicted upon it that might cause a shearing effect, or a concussion?

At any rate, all the standard karate sparring gear is worn by everyone. Mostly it's just point-based touch sparring, but occasionally we will do full contact, and I'm just wondering if the couple of hits I take here or there have the possibility for killing brain cells or causing any structural brain damage.

Karate is indeed a great and EXCELLENT workout, I can't dispute that, and doesn't physical exercise actually even encourage the proliferation and regeneration of cells in the brain? With that knowledge, isn't the risk negligible, and even in someways worth it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

It is physiologically unlikely that the impact of simply dropping a tennis ball onto someone's head can cause sever, or otherwise irreparable damage to the cranium or brain contained therein.

Blows to the head can indeed be hazardous. Ask Mohammad Ali. He sustained hard blows and did so for years however. That is not to say that that can be expected of anyone wishing to pursue such a career or follow it as a workout regimen.

That said, no none can know the tenuous intricacies within the tissues of the brain. People die all the time from aneurysms; which are weaknesses in the walls of (usually) major blood-carrying vessels in the body. My meaning is simply this....we may have (somehow) become the roulette wheel for a major health issue caused by poorly formed tissue in our bodies that we can know nothing about until such a thing lets itself be known, often with dire consequences. High school football players are often heard of dying on the field, usually to heart related incidences. This is, of course, not limited to football players. People can function under normal circumstances for years and not know of the weakness awaiting in their body until they go off the beaten path and exert themselves in a way that causes this weak link to break.

You may or may not have such an issue. You could sustain kicks, and blows of all kinds to your head and be perfectly fine for the rest of a long, relatively healthy life. Or you could get kicked one too many times and expire.

Everything in life is a risk. Nearly everything in life boils down to the risk factor. It's a very gray area. Weigh the risks versus the rewards and go from there.

You can also slump over dead in a rocking chair watching Jeopardy too.....so.....

Good luck...hopefully I'll read you in books and not the newspaper.

Answer 2

so your question is will hits to the head affect your ability to do school work? NO. If its too hard ofcourse it will. Just make sure your Karate proffessor pairs you up with someone that has the same abilities as you and the same general weight. Its definitely worth it, you can't be afiraid of physical activities because your scared that something awful might happen, anyhthing can happen at any time. Such an intellectual fellow, you should read somewhere in your books that life is about taking risks. ..  

Answer 3

Karate is an exercise that positively jolts the brain, but if one was to apply too much pressure to just the right spot I imagine anything can happen.