Becoming Batman

by E. Paul Zehr

  That sort of pain can also occur when you do some new exercise or movements that you haven’t done before (or recently). You aren’t adapted to them yet (or again), and you are causing a little muscle damage when you move around. This is called delayed onset muscles soreness and typically reaches a peak in discomfort after one to two days and is gone after three days. Whiplash injury is much like what happened to your leg muscles when you came down that hilly trail. Rather than your leg muscles, in a whiplash the neck muscle is stretched and lengthened when the head is snapped forward.

  There is a common misconception that having sore muscles the day after a new or more intense activity is due to the buildup of lactic acid. The soreness is due, instead, to the small microtraumas experienced by your muscles and resolves in a few days, leading to an increased adaptation to the exercise you did. Then when you do that exercise again, it doesn’t hurt so much. Lactic acid is a metabolic byproduct during muscle contraction, but it breaks down immediately into hydrogen ion and lactate. The hydrogen ion concentration interferes with ongoing contractions (leading to muscle fatigue), while the lactate is shuttled off to be used as an energy source in other muscles—your heart muscle actually uses up a lot of it!

  Recovery?

  Everyone, including costumed crimefighters, experiences injury. Now let’s examine whether Batman recovers more rapidly from his injuries because of his training as was suggested by the quote at the beginning of this chapter. It might be supposed that, since Batman is in such great shape, he should be able to recover faster from his injuries. But this is not likely the case. In fact, Batman may be perpetually on the border of overtraining. Before going on a bit more, I should mention that a small amount of evidence indicates that exercise generally might lower cortisol levels and could help increase healing rates. However, in the state of overtraining, which refers to the situation that can occur when the volume of training is too high, there cannot be any meaningful adaptation to training.

  Think back to our discussion of the GAS (generalized adaptation syndrome) in Chapter 3. We talked about how an organism—from bats to Batman—will respond to a given stress in a way that minimizes the effect of that stress. This occurs to minimize any changes in homeostatic balance. However, if the stress is too large, there will be a steady decline in performance. This is what athletes experience when they say they are “burnt out” leading up to major events like the Olympics. I hope they feel burnt out after their events and not before! However, poor timing of training can sometimes result in being in a state of overtraining prior to an event.

  This was shown for Batman in “Knightfall: Part 1: The Broken Bat” (Batman #497, 1993). Bane, Batman’s steroid-laced nemesis, has set Batman up for overtraining by releasing all the criminals from Gotham’s Arkham Asylum. Batman must battle most of the escaped inmates and gets so fatigued that when Bane eventually fights him, Batman is fairly easily defeated. Robin, Alfred, and Nightwing deal with the aftermath of Batman’s injuries sustained during the fight with Bane. These include a broken back, probably in the lower back (lumbar region), which has left Bruce temporarily paralyzed. As it turned out, his lower limb paralysis was temporary, and he made a good recovery after much rehabilitation.

  I don’t know about you, but I am kind of suspicious that Batman can have temporary paralysis and then get better! After all, aren’t spinal cord injuries supposed to be relatively permanent? Yes, they are, despite some excellent work in different animal experiments pointing the way to treatments that might eventually lead to spinal cord repair. However, with strong traumatic injury that doesn’t actually lead to physical tearing or crushing of the spinal cord, it is possible to have a more temporary paralysis followed by recovery. This is a bit like a spinal cord concussion, actually, in that the function of the neurons and nerves in the spinal cord are disrupted temporarily but slowly recover.

  The types of injuries Batman likely sustained would have ranged from the cellular level to the spinal cord itself. Those cellular power-houses the mitochondria would have experienced interruption of their metabolic function. Remember that mitochondria produce energy used by the cells (and hence by the person!). So disrupting their function could have a dramatic weakening effect. Spinal shock can result, which can mean lower blood pressure and temporary reduction of spinal cord function. Spinal cord injury commonly involves stretching or compression of the cord due to movement or direct damage to the vertebrae. So, to counteract this, a doctor would surgically decompress the spinal cord.

  By the way, in several alternate versions of Alfred’s history—or backstory—he has attended medical school, so we assume that he is competent, qualified, and knowledgeable to treat Bruce’s back injuries. I don’t recall ever reading any story where he did a specialization in neurology or neurosurgery, however! Alfred is shown helping treat Batman and indicates to Robin that he needs a certain drug called “decadron” to help with the repair.

  This part of the story bears a resemblance to medical fact. Scientists attempting to repair the spinal cord after traumatic injury have used various “cocktails” of different drugs. A major issue of concern is reducing the swelling and inflammation in the spinal cord that occur within minutes of the initial injury and build up rapidly in the hours after. This inflammation can lead to significant additional damage to the spinal cord unrelated to the first injury. Catabolic steroids work well to control inflammation. Remember that catabolic means to break down. These steroids literally break down tissue and so reduce inflammation. Think back to Chapter 3 when we talked about cortisol and steroid creams for itchy skin. Because of this catabolic property, various attempts have been made to use such steroids in the initial treatment of spinal cord injury.

  I think this is what the comic’s writers were referring to with decadron. The generic name of this steroid is dexamethasone, and it is now commonly used to reduce inflammation typically found with rheumatoid arthritis. Back in the 1960s and 1970s many steroids were evaluated for this use, two of them being dexamethasone and methylprednisolone (MP). Despite mixed results, MP remains a commonly used drug intervention for treatment of spinal cord injury and is typically administered as soon as possible after the injury (there may be key window extending only to six to eight hours) and for 24 to 48 hours postinjury. So, it is quite accurate for Alfred to seek such treatment for Batman.

  Having now looked at steroid use for something you probably didn’t anticipate, let’s continue a bit further with our talk of steroids in a performance context. Let’s address the question: Would Batman have taken steroids as part of his training to build up his strength and reduce his likelihood of injury?

  Does Batman Take Steroids?

  Steroids are covered a lot in the media, particularly when the Olympic Games are on or when Major League Baseball enters spring training. Unfortunately, baseball’s home run leader, Barry Bonds, and one of its top all-time pitchers, Roger Clemens, have both been the focus of continuing controversy stemming from allegations that they used steroids and other banned substances. Other potential Hall of Famers are also under investigation. In this context, steroids seem like they have a well-deserved bad rap.

  However, steroids actually are necessary for your body to function. We have seen that in Chapter 3 and elsewhere in the book. But, what the media is covering and what I am going to talk about here are anabolic steroids that are not produced by your body to help it function; they come from a jar or a syringe. They can do some good in the short run, but it comes at a price. This price can include a heavy toll on much of your body, including many of your internal organs.

  If Batman needs an edge, is it worth it for him to take steroids? What would he become if he did take steroids? Steroids did play a key role in that Batman: Venom story arc from 1993 that I keep referring to. The “venom” used by the infamous Bane is a steroid derivative that gives great strength and superhuman muscle adaptation. It also makes you crazy, though, as Batman found out. At the very beginning of this story arc Batman fails
in his attempt to save a kidnapped girl. To save her from drowning, he has to lift and move a huge boulder, but he is just not strong enough and the girl dies. Batman trains even harder as a result of this failure and eventually seriously injures himself. Then he goes in search of something to make him stronger and falls prey to a scientist who wants to set him up with a dependency on his supersteroid, which is also the formulation for the venom that Bane uses. The evil scientist eventually tells Batman that he can have all the strength he desires without any work by saying, “One capsule will replace all that sweaty grunting and groaning you must do to keep in shape.”

  Is that realistic? Well, anabolic steroids are basically a stimulant for muscle growth. Recall that anabolic means building up. However, the muscles still need the stress stimulus to get stronger, which comes from doing actual training. And going back to our fictional batworld for a moment, also notice that the one who gave the drug to Batman is an evil scientist, who neglected to mention the small side effect that involves going insane and becoming a complete slave to this drug.

  To understand how anabolic steroids work, let’s focus on testosterone. It is the primary male hormone and is manufactured in the testes as well as in the ovaries of females and in small amounts in the adrenal gland of both sexes. This hormone regulates many functions across the life span, notably during embryogenesis and puberty. In the adult male, testosterone is responsible for regulating protein metabolism, sexual and cognitive function, and bone remodeling. The proper name for anabolic steroids is actually anabolic-androgenic steroids (AASs). That is because it is impossible to separate completely the muscle-building role from the role in promoting secondary sexual characteristics, such as body hair and genitalia. Perhaps surprisingly, the term “primary sexual characteristic” refers to whether a person has ovaries or testes and not to other features that distinguish the sexes.

  Although testosterone was first discovered as a specific chemical in the body in 1935, the history of its use for enhancing performance dates back to Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard (1817–1894) in 1889. He self-injected testicular extract from nonhuman animals and found that doing so resulted in some form of antiaging and increased vitality. In 1896 a colleague of Brown-Séquard also self-administered testicular extract and examined the effect on finger strength (which increased). The practice of using steroids to enhance athletic performance really hit its stride behind the “iron curtain” in the 1960s and 1970s when many female East German athletes were thought to have taken AAS.

  The two main commonly observed outcomes of AAS use are the increase in muscle mass and strength and the effects on the brain giving rise to euphoria and aggression. AAS works to increase strength in three (more threes!) general ways. First, these steroids help improve the use of ingested nitrogen and protein, which leads to more muscle building. This occurs largely through messenger RNA activity. Remember in Chapter 2 we learned that this is the part of the cell involved with protein construction.

  Second, recall from Chapter 3 the whole balancing act that the endocrine system uses to maintain homeostasis. Increased anabolic activity would normally be balanced by catabolic activity, but when AASs are used, this balance is disrupted. So, catabolic activity is blocked and more protein buildup occurs.

  Last, the use of AAS produces a euphoric “high,” increased aggression, and lessened fatigue. These can all serve to allow for more vigorous and more frequent training that will then maximize muscle building.

  Of course, all this comes at a cost. Chronic use of AAS in extremely high dosage—such as typically found in those using them for the anabolic benefit—can lead to liver damage, elevated cholesterol levels, high blood pressure, decreased ability to regulate blood glucose, extreme mood swings, psychosis, and extreme aggression. In addition to these major health problems, cosmetic changes such as breast atrophy in women and breast enlargement in men, changes in body hair, and acne can all result. Dependency and withdrawal issues are also significant problems. Batman fans may be interested to know in Batman: Venom Batman noticed these problems and worked himself off the venom.

  Another way to increase AAS levels is to increase the metabolic substances that can be converted or metabolized to the desired hormone (such as testosterone). One example you may be familiar with because it was much in the media recently is androstenedione. This legal supplement was the one that the Major League Baseball player Mark McGwire admitted to taking during his then home-run-record-setting season in 1998. Milder forms of steroids such as androstenedione can lead to increases in testosterone level, but these are small. For example, at most about 15% of the dose of androstenedione is converted to testosterone, and this would likely have a negligible performance benefit.

  I must mention that AASs do have huge potential to help people with certain health problems. Examples include counteracting muscle wasting in patients with HIV or in those with unusual hormone profiles. There is also potential benefit in aging that we will discuss in Chapter 15.

  Now we will have a little diversion from all this talk about becoming Batman and ponder the age-old question: Who would win in a batbattle of the sexes?

  CHAPTER 14

  Battle of the Bats

  COULD BATGIRL BEAT BATMAN?

  She may well be the best fighter alive, master of at least a dozen forms and weapons.

  —Batman reflecting on Lady Shiva in “Spirit of the Bat” (Batman #509, 1994)

  Congratulations. Even I have never beaten Shiva hand-to-hand.

  —Batman to the new Batgirl after she defeats Lady Shiva in Bruce Wayne: Fugitive, Volume 1

  In the world of comic books and comic book movie adaptations, the battle of the sexes can be very literal. In the DC Comics universe, there are many femmes fatales who fight with and against Batman. Most notably these include the good, in the form of Batgirl and Batwoman, the bad, in the guise of Lady Shiva, and the sometimes good and sometimes bad and overall we don’t really know, embodied in Catwoman. The earliest to be introduced was Cat-woman, first seen as “The Cat” (Batman #1, 1940). She was later elevated to “The Cat-Woman” in Batman #4 (1940). The first Batgirl (Barbara Gordon, Chief Gordon’s daughter) appeared in Detective Comics #359 (1967). Lady Shiva appeared in January 1976, and the second Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) was introduced relatively recently in Batman #567 (1999). Just to be complete, I should also mention that there was another Batgirl (and a Batwoman) in the 1960s as well. However, she only made a few appearances and wasn’t a major batplayer in the comics.

  Are there reasons to suppose that either Batman or Batgirl might have an advantage over the other? I will outline what would happen if they actually did do battle a bit later. First let’s start by addressing the main issue of whether men and women are different when it comes to exercise capacity and responses to training.

  Many studies have examined any possible gender effects on performance in sports and athletics. Track events have been particularly well studied. In Figure 14.1, running velocity in meters per minute is shown across a historical timescale for the world records in the 100 meter, 400 meter, and marathon events. The triangle and circle shown at the right of each panel indicate the running velocity predicted by Samuel Cheuvront and colleagues for men and women in 2028.

  A couple of other factors must be mentioned when looking at male-female performance differences. First of all, women weren’t always allowed to compete in the same events as men, and therefore no data existed before the 1950s for the 100 meter and before the mid-1980s for the marathon. The difference between men and women was called the “gender gap,” and it was said to be narrowing rapidly in all these events as soon as women first began competing. Second, there has now been a plateauing of the gender gap such that it is now fairly consistently at about 10%. That is, in timed track events men run about 10% faster and thus have finishing times that are about 10% lower than those of women.

  Why does this difference exist? For muscle, there is no clear evidence for any real difference in how men and
women respond to strength training. When discussed as relative changes, the percentage increases in things like muscle cross-sectional area are quite similar between men and women. However, it is important to note that the maximum size of individual muscle fibers in men is about twice that of women. Also, when studies have been done on highly trained men and women—for example, world weight-lifting champions—contractile tissue in muscle takes up to about 30% less of the body mass in females than in males.

  In Chapter 4, I said that maximum strength for weight lifting is roughly equal to the height (in meters) squared, multiplied by a constant. For purposes of estimating weight that they can lift, I have tabulated the heights and weights of the Batman and his four female friends and foes and how much they should be able to lift (shown in Table 14.1). In this rough estimate you will see that Batman is about 30% stronger than the four women.

  Figure 14.1. Performance differences between men and women for world record times in running velocity in meters per minute. Shown across a historical timescale for world records in the 100 meter, 400 meter, and marathon events. The triangle and circle shown at the right of each panel indicate the running velocity predicted by Samuel Cheuvront and colleagues for men and women in 2028.