By Barbara Falconer Newhall
Oh, my gosh. Weight lifting can kill you. I didn’t know that. Well, yes, of course, I knew that a bar loaded with 180 pounds of weight dropped on your neck during a bench press will finish you off pronto. What I didn’t know was that death by dead lift can sneak up on you weeks later, long after you’ve put the weights back on the squat rack.
Why do I care? Because my son lifts weights. Big ones. Weights with pounds in the triple digits. When he and his wife shopped for their first house last year, a basement with a ceiling high enough to accommodate a power rack was at the top of Peter’s list of gotta-haves.
My son’s weight lifting passion has scared me for years now; it’s nothing new. I can’t help thinking as I watch Peter lift 180 pounds off the rack and up, up, up, right over his sweet (and, yes, totally grown-up) face — I can’t help thinking, yipes, what if he drops it?
So far I’ve be able to keep my lips buttoned when it comes to the weight lifting. I take photos of my 34-year-old son pressing and lifting and squatting. Dutifully, I utter words of admiration. Prudently, I keep my fears to myself. So far I’ve been a paragon of modern parenting restraint.
Until, that is, last Sunday, when I learned something new and scary about weight-lifting. Something that Peter’s chums and weight-lifting coaches probably haven’t told him about.
And that is — you can pop a carotid lifting weights. Yes, the strain of lifting a big weight can damage a carotid artery, and you won’t even know it. And there you are, a few days or weeks later, riding off in an ambulance, dead of a stroke.
It’s true. Says so right there in the August 16 New York Times Magazine. Page 18. The weekly Diagnosis column. The headline reads, “One pupil was smaller than the other. Was that reason enough to go to the E.R.?”
Yes, it was. The patient in question had some mysterious symptoms, an ear ache and one pupil bigger than the other. The urgent care docs prescribed antibiotics for the ear, but when the symptoms recurred, an astute optometrist sent him off to a neuro-ophthalmologist, who concluded that the otherwise healthy young man — he was in his late 30s, he worked out and he lifted weights — had Horner’s syndrome.
Horner’s syndrome is an injury to the nerve controlling parts of the eye and facial skin. It can be caused by a lot of things. One of them is damage to the carotid artery, which is located next to the nerve.
Trauma from events like lifting weights can cause small tears in the carotid artery walls, writes Lisa Sanders, M.D., in the NYT Magazine. Blood pumped from the heart can press on the
arterial wall and cause a dissection in the artery’s muscles. Blood collects and distends the artery wall, pressing on the nerve. It also sets an otherwise healthy young individual up for a stroke.
A stroke.
Peter doesn’t have Horner’s syndrome. Not yet anyway. So it’s not too late to warn him. Should I tell him about it? Or should I keep my motherly concerns to myself? What do you think?
Never mind. That was a rhetorical question. As soon as I read that NYT story, my mind was made up. I shot an email off to Peter with a link to the NYT website.
(Here it is, just in case you’ve got a kid who lifts weights and you’re a worrier: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/07/think-like-a-doctor-a-knife-in-the-ear-solved/ )
Peter might well shoot me back with an irritated, “quit worrying, Mom. I can take care of myself” email. In which case, I’ll be mortified that I’ve fallen into my old hover-mother ways. I’ll beat myself up for a few minutes. But then I’ll stop.
Because, annoyed as my son might be with me, at least he won’t be dead.
If you liked this story, you might like “How the Selective Service Made a Man of My Son — Without Even Trying.” Also, “How to Play With a Barbie Doll.” You can also find my posts on Patheos.com and HuffingtonPost.com
Fell on this article while reading up on anecdotal cases of carotid dissections, traumatic or spontaneous. Weightlifting, even when done dynamically like cross-fit or Olympic style carries very little risk of arterial dissections. Compared to combat sports and grappling where violent choke holds tend to generate these at some sort of statistical significance.
My point is, there is little to worry about… Good Day!
Thanks so much, Michael. That’s reassuring!
Very interesting! Some people probably lift heavier weights too soon.
Thanks. am going to tell my daugher about this.
Another weight lifter in the crowd! We should probably also tell our kids, especially the girls, that lifting weights is really good for your bones. Builds them up.
Thank you, and include his wife in your email.
🙂