I stumbled upon this article last night which discussed life expectancy across various sporting codes and I thought this would be rather obvious seeing life expectancy being increased . Boxing understandably would be at the bottom of the list due to the number of blows a brain would have to endure over a professional fighters career and no doubt would create complications at some point. Killing your brain cells through repetitive blows to the head comes with a health warning.
I think the majority of sports on this list would influence life expectancy through being active and fit. If you look after your body generally it should bode well for later in life and those that were fit once generally have a mind set to look after themselves fitness and diet wise throughout life. I have not trained for years yet my blood pressure still is very good and better than average. I am often asked if I am still training which is kind of great knowing your body is still in excellent shape.
I would rather see a table showing quality of life across the various contact sports like American Football and Rugby because brain injuries are definitely up there with boxing. A recent brain study by world rugby with ex rugby players found that 25% of those players tested were likely to have some form of cognitive brain disorder. This is worryingly high and believe the sport is more dangerous today that it was 30 years ago. The contact collisions are more intense with athletes now training full time due to the sport turning professional. Not only the hidden dangers, but the obvious ones like osteoarthritis being 4 x more likely and hip replacements 6 x more likely just from the nature of contact sports.
The problem with having some type of brain injury one would have to question what is the point of living if you are a vegetable as you would have no idea what is happening around you anyway. There are some horror stories about players forgetting where they live and the scary part is these players were still active playing the sport.
The truth about real contact sports is that only in the last decade have these brain injuries been exposed. The NFL has had cases, but they are never going to admit how big a problem this is as this would be a direct threat to their sport. There have been a few films made about certain players who suffered from brain damage, but definitely not enough has been made about this.
During the recent women's Rugby World Cup one of the ladies was tackled and was then removed from the field due to the gum guard sending off a warning signal. This is new technology being tested and what was important about this particular incident was the lady never received a blow to the head and this was purely the whiplash type effect. The problem is this cannot be safeguarded against no matter what new rules are imposed or thought up as there is no real player safety.
When comparing Rugby with American Football specialists believe rugby players are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with neurodegenerative diseases. Rugby players are on for the entire game as compared to American Football where the players are only on for short periods of time.
I think what this life expectancy chart highlights is that those people who play sport should have a higher life expectancy due to their active lifestyle. Anyone that plays sport is going to be generally fitter than those that don't so are better equipped health wise and should out live those that do not participate in sport. Obviously there are exceptions, but this is more of a general assumption across the board for those that play sport and those that have not.