Whiplash and boxing a potentially lethal combination

Numerous events apart from car accidents can set off a whiplash personal injury. Sports and martial arts fall into this category, including boxing.

Boxing is traditionally known to be a fairly aggressive contact sport causing head injuries, but the multifold effects of whiplash reactions to a punch can be complex and affect areas of the body untouched by a blow.

Boxing whiplash personal injuries can result in critical damage to the oesophagus - the muscular tube serving the passage between the mouth and the stomach. Damage to the vocal cords can also cause hoarseness and loss of speech.

The spine and joints can also be affected and it's common for joints between the cervical vertebrae to get displaced or pulled during a boxing whiplash personal injury. This damage to the cervical area is similar to car accident whiplash sufferers, with lower areas of the spine also likely to be affected due to the force of the impact.

The teeth can also get damaged. Whiplash can cause you to clench your teeth on impact, causing a chronic response that will slowly destroy the vascular bed of the pulp and then cause the injured tooth or teeth to literally die. Damage of this type can extend to up to 28 teeth.

A whiplash personal injury in boxing in this way can cause a personal injury similar to a kick or punch to the chin called "an upper cut".

It is often the angle of a boxing punch (even at low velocity) that can cause a significant whiplash personal injury. Researchers have often been puzzled by the extent of a whiplash personal injury despite the fact that it occurred at low speed.

The rate of change of trunk accelerations (i.e. the jerk of the stimulus), not the amplitude of the body or head, is a critical factor in the explanation of why sensormotor control sometimes fails to protect the neck.

Stimulus jerk is probably a crucial factor in the occurrence of whiplash. During boxing matches, a punch can generate (in a few tenths of milliseconds) a neck and head acceleration as high as 50g, which does not cause significant damage to the cervical area of the neck in the short-term.

The thrust of responsive neck muscle contractions combined with neck inertia after a punch are what create the potentially lethal cocktail which sends the central nervous system into a state of panic.

Whiplash compensation claims
A whiplash personal neck injury caused by a sudden movement of the head, backwards, forwards or sideways, is usually called whiplash.

While the term whiplash is most frequently used to describe car accident personal injuries where somebody is rear-ended, hit head-on or from the side, whiplash injuries can also occur during sporting events like ski accidents, and from other head or neck traumas.

People can suffer a whiplash personal injury several ways in sport, but punches, slams and falls are the most common ways they occur. In boxing, whiplash happens when the head and neck is thrown or "whipped" backwards and forwards very quickly, connected to a punch.

If you have sustained a boxing whiplash personal injury, you may be entitled to make a compensation claim. We can give you free legal advice from our team of highly experienced personal injury advisors and you won't have to pay us anything at all during the compensation claim process.

With nothing to pay and damages awarded to you if your whiplash compensation claim is a success, you will be able to enjoy our excellent success rate if we feel we can take your compensation claim on. So why not find out more and chat online with an advisor now, request a call-back or dial us direct on 0808 143 43 42.