Popeye Arms

Apparently, the new cool thing amongst body builders is to create Popeye arms. That is to say, arms that are potentially bigger than their legs. To anyone who is not hoping to turn themselves into a cartoon, this is gross, unattractive, and tragically wrong.

The culprit of these Popeye arms is synthol, a mixture of oils that are injected between the muscle fibres. The effect is purely cosmetic. One's muscles do not improve in strength. Beyond that, though, synthol is potentially fatal to one's health as injection into a major blood vessel can cause embolism. Since the only benefit is in looking like Popeye, it is hard for me to see the benefit.

As for what directly causes this Popeye effect, as gravity does its part, tissues become inflamed. The blood vessels tighten, and the nerves cramp from getting squashed. All told, one is merely guaranteeing deformity through synthol's use.

It's hard for me to believe people would undergo such risk, but as you can see in the picture above, it happens.