The Valsalva & Stroke

[stef]

Time for Everyone to Take a Deep Breath

by Jonathon Sullivan

“...the laws of chance dictate that some people with berries are going to get under the bar. Many if not most of them are going to hold their breath. When they do, blood pressure will shoot up, increasing the intravascular stress on the aneurysm. Doesn’t the Valsalva pose a clear and present danger to them?...The first approach is to consider the dynamics of aneurysmal rupture in the setting of resistance training with Valsalva—the physiological evidence. The second approach is to survey the epidemiologic data—the clinical experience of what actually happens to human populations when they lift under Valsalva. We will consider each in turn.”

Article

[dpinsen]

Excellent article, though I fear much of the readership may miss the Billy Squire allusion.

Question: are there any cases of lifters passing out due to vasalva and dropping barbells on themselves in the process? I wonder if I will do that while pressing. though if I do, and manage to survive, I may be too embarrassed to report it here.

[Chebass88]

Thank you very much for posting this article. I enjoy reading Dr. Sullivan's writings, despite my limited knowledge of anatomy & physiology.

[morbidlyfat]

Hooray, it's finally here! And well worth the wait, surprising no one.

Because my medical knowledge extends as far as taking wild guesses as to which side of the body the liver might be on, I have some questions.

The first is more of a physics question, I guess -- the compressibility of air. It's a gas, or a bunch of gasses, or a solution of gasses and a small amount of suspended liquids, or whatever -- let me just assume you know what air is.

So it should be compressible-ish. Do we actually know how much an average or a strong person can compress the contents of their lungs? Are we talking like a couple extra atmospheres of pressure here, or what? Yes this is sort of an idle trivia question but it makes me wonder. I guess I could try to inflate a barometer or something myself but that sounds suspiciously like work.

Secondly, because I am intensely dumb about this sort of thing, I only now just noticed that at least one lung happens to be pretty adjacent to the heart. Are some of these effects around reduced heart-filling and such as simple as the ensqueezening of the heart by the lung? That sounds way too naive to be true, but I don't know.

And finally, I might suggest that it could be worthwhile to add in the very important disclaimer section which of course everyone reads that this isn't LEGAL advice either, in addition to not being medical advice, because of course what sort of moron could possibly misconstrue this article as being some sort of medical advice (or legal advice.)

Finally part two, I find myself very slightly motivated to personally tackle all the nonsense around the dangers of ephedrine, except that that's pretty well outside the mission statement of this board and it would probably be really boring.

Good, good work here.

[strideknight]

Great information, albeit with disturbing ramifications. How long do you think it will take before this shit gets cycled out? It seems like these ambush techniques might work once, but the next time a case comes up the defense should be able to pick this "precedent" apart. Whoever's up next just needs to call you as an expert witness...

[TomF]

Lovely tour de force, as expected. I'll reluctantly put down both the bassoon and the trumpet, but if the choice is between dying maybe in 75,000 life-years from doing a Valsalva while squatting or deadlifting, or much more certainly injuring myself from not doing a Valsalva while squatting or deadlifting ...

"Sub-arachnoid" eh? That's what, a stroke that flies just under the spidey-sense?

t

[Jburke]

Us broskis are proud to be mentioned

[Karl Schudt]

Hooray, it's finally here! And well worth the wait, surprising no one.

Because my medical knowledge extends as far as taking wild guesses as to which side of the body the liver might be on, I have some questions.

The first is more of a physics question, I guess -- the compressibility of air. It's a gas, or a bunch of gasses, or a solution of gasses and a small amount of suspended liquids, or whatever -- let me just assume you know what air is.

So it should be compressible-ish. Do we actually know how much an average or a strong person can compress the contents of their lungs? Are we talking like a couple extra atmospheres of pressure here, or what? Yes this is sort of an idle trivia question but it makes me wonder. I guess I could try to inflate a barometer or something myself but that sounds suspiciously like work.

Remembering my long ago education as a Rocket Scientist: for subsonic flow, air is effectively incompressible. You aren't compressing the air when you do a valsalva, you are raising the pressure in your body.

[Sean Herbison]

Question: are there any cases of lifters passing out due to vasalva and dropping barbells on themselves in the process?

Yes, don't be one of them. Just stop holding your breath before you pass out and it's not a problem.

[Rockfella]

Another great one. My take on "To do or not to do" : To do by all means.