Nerve damage / Recovery / Effects of lifting on CNS.

[Chadlay]

Hello my name is Chris

I had fairly bad injury about 15 months ago. My shoulder and elbow were dislocated at the same time. I was helping an uncle with some roof repair stuff needless to say I found out that trying to catch somebody from falling with 1 arm on a roof is a terrible idea. After going to the ER to get everything "reduced" and a battery of tests. I found out that I had damage to nerves in my brachial plexus and ulnar nerve entering the elbow near the triceps insertion point and possibly nerve damage c5-c7 area. I followed doctors orders to the letter for about 1 year with no improvement. I changed doctors and found an amazing sports medicine practitioner. Up to this point everything from my shoulder down was suffering atrophy and I was losing huge amounts of muscle and strength in my left arm. My original doctor wanted to literally cut up about 20% of my triceps cut up my forearm muscles and reseat the nerves in a new position which I didn't agree with. My new doctor told me to pick up weight training because the central nervous system when exposed to stresses outside of normal ranges will literally heal itself (pertaining to my nerves) even though it would be difficult with my arm. On his recommendation I started a strength training program(SS)

Over the last 4 months I have regained sensation in my hand/forearm/shoulder/elbow again. My strength is returning to near normal levels in comparison to my right arm and I am gaining muscle mass.
According to a nerve conduction study I had done after starting this program my reaction time to stimulus and the latency of the stimulus to travel up my nerve ulnar nerve has improved drastically along with my other nerve routes.

After watching a lot of your videos online I hear you mention neural/neuron/pathways. In any of your books do you discuss this at length at all and if not do you know anywhere I would be able to find out more on the subject of how exercise effects the nervous system.

Thanks in advance for any help/answers you could share.

[Mark Rippetoe]

I think you probably know more now about how exercise affects the nervous system than either of your doctors. But the one that recommended training to you is really a good guy. You should buy him a beer. As for formal references, I don't know. But someone here will. Perhaps Dr. Sullivan, if he has time.

[Chadlay]

Thanks for the reply. Might as well buy him a 6 pack.
It is a fascinating thing to see what the human body is capable of doing if you put in the effort at the gym.
Went from not being able to open a jar of peanut butter to pulling 400 pounds off the floor with some chalk and effort.
(Also your cue for lower back control helped all my lifts out "Drop your **** between your knees.")

[Mac Ward]

I, for one, would be extremely interested if you would right an article for Starting Strength that describes your entire experience and includes the information you find as you continue your research. I know many people that have combat related injuries, and not entirely the same, they are not entirely different.

Happy for you and your success and I wish you a rapid, full, recovery.

[Chadlay]

Spoke with my doctor at length today during his lunch break. Found out from him that basically the exercise I am doing is very similar to electrical stimulation of the actual nerve itself his opinion. He told me that Peripheral nerves can regenerate from injuries but at an extremely slow rate if no treatment is given or pursued. (2 millimeters a day given that my nerve damage extends from my neck to my elbow thats alot of MM). He gave me the English version of the barebones idea of how the process should / is taking place. Stimulation of a damaged nerve causes the body to release three types of growth factors (He described these to me as proteins for your nerves.. IE building blocks) in different quantities depending on the stimulation. Normally these growth factors are in your body normally for everyday things and maintenance. Apparently the stressful exercise done in a regimented manner has helped me maintain higher then normal levels of these in my blood at is forcing my body to make my nerve cells switch from a normal function to flipping a switch for growth/repair mod. Me being curious asked him if exercise was the answer to all types of nerve damage recovery but was told that nerve regeneration only occurs in the Peripheral nerve system and the the Central nervous system.

So from his explanation and my questions I can only assume that exercise boost the levels of these growth factors which speeds / aids healing.
Looks like many days of happy lifting ahead of me on my long road to full recovery.

I apologize if my information is wrong this was my interpretation of a conversation I had with my doctor over lunch. (P.S. Im just a college nerd who enjoys figuring out how stuff works.)

[zulander]

This is impressive stuff. Is there anything that lifting doesn't cure? AIDS?

[Mark Rippetoe]

I don't know any weightlifters with AIDS. Or fibromyalgia.

[Chadlay]

This is impressive stuff. Is there anything that lifting doesn't cure? AIDS?

Stupidity. I had the trainer at the gym tell me I was going to blow out my knees by squatting too low. He showed me his version with twice the weight of my warmup set and did like 1/2 the rom. I was baffled how he works in a gym and has clients who pay for his "training" knowledge.

[PressesPeople]

Stupidity. I had the trainer at the gym tell me I was going to blow out my knees by squatting too low. He showed me his version with twice the weight of my warmup set and did like 1/2 the rom. I was baffled how he works in a gym and has clients who pay for his "training" knowledge.

But that's not lifting. Maybe if he did real squats it would cure his stupidity

[squat_gnome]

needless to say I found out that trying to catch somebody from falling with 1 arm on a roof is a terrible idea.

Similar accident happened to a relative. We have Hollywood to blame for that.