This Man Was Paralysed 4 Years Ago. Now He’s Joined The 100 Club

Loeffler overcame a spinal condition to be the strongest he's ever been. Image via Imgur

By Ali Eaves

In high school, Alon Loeffler pushed himself to be a dedicated 100-metre sprinter, posting the third-fastest time in Victoria.

Then during year 10, he came down with a stomach flu. It was nothing out of the ordinary—until one day after getting off the couch to answer the doorbell, he collapsed. When he looked down at his foot, he realised he could barely move it.

"Lying on that floor was the scariest moment of my life," says Loeffler, now 21, a student at Monash University. "I had to drag myself up by my arms, using the couch.”

His mother, a physician, had been in the shower. When he told her what had happened, she knew something was wrong. At first, doctors dismissed him—they said it was just a virus that would go away. But the paralysis progressed throughout his toes, then his fingers. His mum took Loeffler to the emergency room.

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After five days of being poked and prodded in the hospital, he got his diagnosis: myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord. It’s a rare condition that strikes only 1,400 people worldwide each year, according to the Transverse Myelitis Association.

Doctors said it was probably a side effect of the stomach bug. After killing off the virus, his body attacked itself. On the MRI, his spine looked as if it had been eaten by moths—the myelin sheath around his spinal cord was raw and patchy due to antibodies attacking it, Loeffler explains, so his nerves didn't have proper protection and couldn't function correctly.

The condition left the once-elite sprinter unable to walk or even stand without clutching his IV pole. He was bedridden for three weeks.

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Fortunately, steroid treatments calmed the inflammation. With the help of physical therapy, he relearned how to walk and, eventually, run again. Loeffler was lucky; in many cases of myelitis, the symptoms can be permanent. He came out of the ordeal with a new appreciation for what his body could do. "To even be able to run was one of the most amazing things," he says. "I feel like I was given a second chance, so why not push through and become the strongest I can be?"

He started hitting the gym. At first, trying to push his body beyond what it could do before was rough. He didn’t know much about nutrition or training to gain strength. "A lot of times I felt like a fool," he says, "but I stuck with it. I always remembered promising myself to get stronger."

Early in 2014, Loeffler finally found a regimen that worked for him—thanks in part to guidance from online fitness forum Reddit Fitness. There he read up on the basics of strength-training, asked for help on his lifting form, and posted updates on his progress.

“People think Reddit is just a news website, but it’s a community,” he says. “I can read anything about nutrition, or fitness, or what program is best.”

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Loeffler's program consisted of lifting three to four times per week, alternating squat/bench press days with deadlift/overhead press days. He also does interval stationary cycling twice a week. Once he discovered that the program was working, he set a personal goal of squatting 100kgs. That’s almost twice his body weight before he started bulking up. (Now he's 61kgs, at 167 centimetres.)
Seven months into training, he reached his goal.

"It's been a hell of a journey," Loeffler says, "but I can say it's pretty much over now. I'm going to keep at it with the training, but I can look back at it and be satisfied that the myelitis is officially in the past."

When he shared the good news on Reddit, his post on the forum exploded overnight. In the morning, he woke up to congratulations from thousands of people all over the world. In the comments, a theme emerged: do not take your health for granted.

"Going to the gym shouldn't be a chore," says Loeffler. "Every day I get to push myself to get to my goals. I've loved every second."