Skier's back full of blue 'crab meat'
Bode Miller. (Getty)
Olympic ski champion Bode Miller has posted a bizarre selfie of blue "crab meat" shrapnel that surgeons extracted from his back.
The American skier recently underwent back surgery to ease pain caused by the wear and tear of his sport and was left stunned by what doctors found inside his spine.
And like most modern day athletes he was quick to take to social media on Wednesday, posting on Instagram pictures of the blue shrapnel that was extracted during the procedure.
"This is what they took out of my back. The doctor wouldn't let me eat it. Looked like nerds," Miller posted.
This is what they took out of my back. The doctor wouldn't let me eat it. Looked like nerds
A photo posted by Bode Miller (@millerbode) on
Of course the shrapnel wasn't a handful of the popular candy, nerds, but a byproduct of his herniated disc that according to Dr Stu McGill, a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo, has the "consistency of crabmeat".
Dr McGill said the substance was caused by repeated bending of the back delaminating spinal fibres which opened a gap where inner-gel sqirted into the spinal chord.
"The gel is then attacked by your immune system, which turns it into that crabmeat-like substance," Dr McGill said in an interview with US magazine Men's Health.
"That material has the consistency of crabmeat - hard, gristly, rubbery crabmeat."
He said the substance triggered back pain and while it can often be flushed out by the immunity system, it often had to be removed.
Dr McGill said the action of skiers like Miller, who won gold at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, constantly bending for speed was the perfect recipe for the problem to occur.
"Hitting bumps and banking turns at 90-plus miles an hour (145kmh-plus) in a flexed position is really a perfect storm for getting a vertebral disk to delaminate," he said.
He then went on to explain the odd colour of the shrapnel.
"The medical staff dyed it for some reason," he said.
