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Answered by Vivienne Nathanson

Obesity is an increasingly significant problem in the UK and efforts should be made to encourage interest in sport and being active. But boxing has its own significant risks to health, and as such concerted effort should go into advertising and raising participation in other sports, where inflicting pain and injury is not the objective. Although there is less evidence of long-term health problems in amateur boxing, that does not mean there is no risk. Evidence suggests that like their professional counterparts, amateur boxers are affected by chronic brain injury, albeit to a lesser extent. The use of headgear in amateur boxing is often promotes as preventing brain injury, when in fact it only prevents superficial head damage. This could mean that boxers receive more damage to their brain than they would otherwise, for example a fight continuing to knockout, which may have been stopped earlier due to other superficial head injuries. There is also the possibility that head guards could increase the injury by presenting more angled edges to blows which then produce the classical boxing rotational acceleration effect. The only way to prevent brain damage in boxing is to either ban boxing entirely or ban blows to the head.