{"id":22623,"date":"2015-08-20T00:01:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T07:01:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=22623"},"modified":"2015-08-20T00:01:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-20T07:01:01","slug":"weight-lifting-can-kill-you-shall-i-email-the-news-to-my-weight-lifting-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/weight-lifting-can-kill-you-shall-i-email-the-news-to-my-weight-lifting-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Weight Lifting Can Kill You — Shall I Email the News to My Weight-Lifting Son?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Weight<\/a>
Bench pressing — with a spotter. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0pounds of weight dropped on your neck during a bench press will\u00a0finish you off pronto. What\u00a0I didn’t know was that death by dead lift\u00a0can sneak up on you weeks later, long after you’ve put the weights\u00a0back on the squat rack.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0was at the top of\u00a0Peter’s list of gotta-haves.<\/p>\n

\"weight<\/a>
Dead lift. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My son’s\u00a0weight lifting passion has scared me for years now; it’s nothing new. I can’t help thinking as I watch Peter lift\u00a0180\u00a0pounds 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?<\/p>\n

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\u00a0a paragon of modern parenting restraint.<\/p>\n

Until, that is, last Sunday, when I\u00a0learned something new and scary about weight-lifting. Something that Peter’s chums and weight-lifting coaches probably haven’t told him about.<\/p>\n

And that is — you\u00a0can pop a carotid lifting weights. Yes, the strain of lifting a big weight\u00a0can damage a carotid artery, and you won’t even know it. And there you are, a few days or weeks later, riding\u00a0off in an ambulance, dead of a stroke.<\/p>\n

It’s true. Says so right there in the August 16\u00a0New York Times<\/a> Magazine. Page 18. The\u00a0weekly Diagnosis column. The headline reads, “One pupil was smaller than the other.\u00a0Was that reason enough to go to the E.R.?”<\/p>\n

Yes, it was. The patient in question had some mysterious symptoms, an ear ache and one pupil bigger\u00a0than the other. The urgent care docs prescribed antibiotics for the ear, but when the symptoms recurred, an astute optometrist\u00a0sent him off to a\u00a0neuro-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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Trauma from events like lifting weights can cause small tears\u00a0in the carotid artery walls, writes Lisa Sanders, M.D., in the NYT\u00a0Magazine. Blood pumped from the heart can press on the<\/p>\n

\"weight<\/a>
Incline benching 60-pound dumbbells. Photo by Barbara Newhall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A stroke.<\/p>\n

Peter\u00a0doesn’t have Horner’s syndrome. Not yet anyway. So it’s not too late to warn him.\u00a0Should I tell him about it? \u00a0Or should I keep my motherly concerns\u00a0to myself?\u00a0What do you think?<\/p>\n

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\u00a0link to the NYT website.<\/p>\n

(Here it is, just in case you’ve got a kid who lifts weights and you’re a worrier: \u00a0http:\/\/well.blogs.nytimes.com\/2015\/08\/07\/think-like-a-doctor-a-knife-in-the-ear-solved\/ )<\/p>\n

Peter\u00a0might 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\u00a0into my old\u00a0hover-mother ways.\u00a0I’ll beat myself up for a few minutes.\u00a0But then I’ll stop.<\/p>\n

Because, annoyed as my son might be with me, at least he won’t be dead.<\/p>\n

If you liked this story, you might like “How the Selective Service Made a Man of My Son — Without Even Trying.”<\/a>\u00a0 Also, \u00a0“How to Play With a Barbie Doll.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>You can also find my posts on Patheos.com<\/a> and HuffingtonPost.com<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Weight<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Peter<\/a><\/p>\n

Weight lifting can kill you. Death by dead lift and dumbbell can sneak up on you long after you’ve put the\u00a0weights back in the squat rack. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22651,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[34,1526,55,709,82,1152,1527,56,1528],"class_list":["post-22623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-dont-miss","tag-empty-nest","tag-family-stories","tag-new-york-times","tag-on-the-funny-side","tag-parenting","tag-parenting-adult-children","tag-peter","tag-weight-lifting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}