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Comment by somenameforme

5 days ago

Yeah but rhabdo is something literally any e.g. body builder, power lifter, etc could tell you about. Actually if somebody knows what hypertrophy is, they probably know what rhabdo is. It's a pretty normal and big concern in any sort of high intensity weight training.

I can't think of many ways that otherwise healthy and fit younger people can physically nearly kill themselves doing normal activity, so it kind of stands out - let alone it being not all that rare either. Rhabdo has even gone viral in the news like when a while back a couple of Chinese girls nearly killed themselves doing a social media 'squat challenge.' They did 1000, got rhabdo, didn't know what was happening, ended up in the ICU with kidney damage.

It also manifests in other ways too. For instance I had an elderly family member give himself rhabdo during a manic phase he was going through when he started going wild on construction and other physical tasks that were way beyond what his body was ready for.

Basically it's not some super obscure thing you'd expect only a good doctor, let alone a specialist, to know about.

People commonly knowing about Rhabdo is a much newer thing. I never heard people talk regularly about it all before CrossFit become popular

  • Yeah, before CrossFit it would be almost unheard of in the general population, except perhaps with the horseracing community.

    Still, emergency doctors, especially in a hot place like India, should be aware of it.

there's a very large variance in doctors' abilities in India. At the very top they are close to the best in the world, esp with an insanely high workload.

but on an average, not great

Also, a lot of gymgoers and physical trainers I know hadn't heard of rhabdo either (and this is a relatively wealthy part of a tier 1 city)

things are changing for the better however