As I’ve been doing heavier weight on bench and decline, my eyelids and the area around my eyes keeps turning purple. It looks like someone beat the crap out of me. It seems to happen more on decline but also regular bench. Has anyone ever had this problem? What did you do about it?
Before anyone asks, it is definitely cause by decline and bench, it’s not a coincidence. It happens within a few minutes of doing either and take about a week to go away. It never happens otherwise.
I don’t know what to do, I can’t stop doing these exercises.
[quote]Xen Nova wrote:
whoa… hope u get a response man[/quote]
Whoa… sounds like he just got one.
Anyway… how much are you benching? Any previous problems… anything relating with blood or your face? Unless you’re benching huge loads and straining yourself too hard, or have some other condition, go see a doctor. Come to think of it, just go see a doctor.
That sounds very similar to a condition caused by closed head trauma. The “Racoon” eyes and sometimes bruising behind the ears is indicative of an internal bleeding (normally from something hitting your hard…really hard). You should contact your personal physician and get his/her advice. A bleed inside your head could be nothing, then again, it could be a sign of a bigger problem. Get it checked out.
lmjudek has the best response. Just go see your doctor, because that could be a signal for something else being broken up there. And possible leaking blood vessels around your eyes can never be good. Just get it checked out. Asap.
[quote]lmjudek wrote:
Anyway… how much are you benching? Any previous problems… anything relating with blood or your face? Unless you’re benching huge loads and straining yourself too hard, or have some other condition, go see a doctor. Come to think of it, just go see a doctor.[/quote]
No problems I’m aware of. This happens when I go above about 350 on bench or decline. Or if I do enough reps it can happen with less weight. Today I got it from doing sets of 8-10 on decline at 315.
I’ve been lifting for about 7 years, but in the past year or two I really started taking it seriously and getting bigger. I just started experiencing this about a year ago.
This sucks, I was hoping someone would say, “oh yeah that happens to a lot of people you just need to do this” or something.
I guess I’ll have a doctor look at it, but he’ll probably just say don’t bench heavy weight which is not what I want to hear.
This happens to me all of the time when going heavy. If you hold your breath, it causes increased pressure that causes some capillaries to burst. This leaves the bruising. I would not sweat it. In our gym, it is kind of a badge of honor the day after a maximal effort.
It sounds like you are breaking a blood vessel, and decline would make this condition much worse being the pressures are higher due to the position.
Racoon Eyes is a sign of a “basilar skull fracture”. Battle signs , the bruising behind the ears is another sign of the same.
An Inter-cerebral bleed would not show up this way.
The advice to see your primary care physician is a good one. Dont let them tell you it will just go away. Push for testing to ensure you dont have someting more dangerous brewing and this is a first sign. Dont settle for a blood draw lab test as this wont show anything other than your blood count and if you are anemic. I’d personally was a vascular scan looking for an aneurism.
Many Docs are HMO docs and they dont want to do tests and spend alot of insurence money on a healthy person so you will have to push.