A Tale of Rhabdomyolysis
One
day, a very fit, young, physical therapist colleague of mine went to
CrossFit. She had been many times before. On this warm Texas evening,
she performed a partner workout, where each would trade off performing
sets of 10 for each exercise. The workout consisted of pushups. Lots of
them. Copious amounts of overhead press were also included.
So what is rhabdomyolysis
exactly? Under extreme conditions your muscles cells explode. They die.
They leach protein out into the blood stream, including one form called
myoglobin. Ever stalwart, your kidneys take up the job of clearing
these dangerous proteins from the blood. Why? It’s just what they do.
Unfortunately, myoglobin proteins aren’t designed to be in the blood in
the first place and they can easily overload the kidney. This can
produce injury or death to all or part of the kidney in a short amount
of time, and is potentially lethal. Locally, the muscles are left
damaged and dying. Swelling ensues and weakness occurs as pressure
builds around the remaining muscle cells. Your body’s systems that
normally can assist with this local muscle damage are now offline trying
to help you not die. If you get to this stage, you’re in serious
trouble.
No comments:
Post a Comment