One teenager in Houston, Texas, said a weightlifting session gone wrong led to his hospitalization. Last Thursday, 17-year-old Jared Shamburger talked to ABC affiliate?KTRK?about how he felt “super duper sore” following a 90-minute strength-training workout at?the gym.
“Everything hurt,” he said. “It hurt to touch. It was swollen.”
After a call to his doctor, Shamburger was hospitalized for 5 days with rhabdomyolysis, or rhabdo, an ailment in which muscle tissue breaks down so severely that the items in muscle fibers leak in to the bloodstream and result in a kidney blockage. Unchecked, it can result in kidney damage as well as death.
While Shamburger is?likely to create a full recovery, this alarming condition is one thing we have seen before. In January 2017, a school of Oregon football player seemed to be hospitalized with?rhabdomyolysis after enduring a tough?”military” style workout. Vijay Jotwani, MD, a principal sports medicine physician at Houston Methodist, explained how rhabdomyolysis happens.
“It’s a product of pushing well past your limits,” he told Health inside a previous interview. “You’re spending so much time, feeling the burn and go that next step-and another step, pushing far beyond the point of pain. Later you’ve extreme muscle pain and swelling-much worse than delayed muscle soreness. You may even have black colored urine. That’s because the [protein] myoglobin out of your muscles has flooded in your bloodstream as well as your kidneys are overwhelmed.”
Rhabdomyolysis isn’t a common diagnosis, but it is recognized to affect those who do grueling workouts, like the kind army recruits or CrossFit?devotees take part in.?If you push yourself hard during intense workouts, be familiar with the signs and symptoms and how you are able to avoid rhabdomyolysis.?Part of rhabdo-related kidney damage is caused by dehydration, so staying hydrated is crucial. And when you develop severe muscle pain, swelling, stiffness and/or dark colored urine, go to the hospital.
Shamburger’s mother Judy said the “mama bear” in her own kicked in when her son explained his condition. “If he hadn’t caught it, if he hadn’t told me, if we had just gone on vacation about our way, I can not even imagine,” she told KTRK. “And I don’t want to, by what might have happened.”
