Its been mentioned in several episodes that doping can have long-lasting positive effects, with cells (or something similar, apologies for my ignorance I cannot find the timestamp again) being created while on illegal substances then lingering/being reactivated long after the user is off drugs/they are out of his/her system.
Does anyone? Potentially @chad have a link to the article/resources this comes from?
Wondering the specifics and if this would apply to transgender athletes?
Thanks in advance
P.S.
Apologies for opening a can of worms, but I would like to be educated on the matter with it being so topical at the moment <3
I think there needs to be more research, both in depth and scope, of various PED’s and how they effect performance long term before a ‘life long ban’ is on the table. There isn’t the ability to pin point a single marker for ‘lasting effects’ so every new drug that gets banned would have to be tested to determine if it falls under the life long ban category or not. And if you just have a blanket ‘all positive tests result in a life long ban’ is too rigid, and doesn’t allow for cases of contamination or in Froome’s case, a deeper understanding of testing procedures and use effects of drugs.
There are also different forms of doping, and some can be the result of honest mistakes. My father’s godson was a professional hockey player, and even when he got the sniffles, he had to go to a specialist who would know whether the medication he or she prescribes do not run afoul the doping regulations. Many professional cyclists also suffer from asthma. One of them claimed that this is because they spend so much time outside breathing in polluted air on the road.
Of course, most are clearcut cases, but a system that is too rigid can punish people who tried their best to be honest.
Yea, it’s kinda crazy, especially if you don’t have the money to go see a specialist for everything. Annoyingly for supplements and even hydration and nutrition the ‘informed choice’ and other such verification protocols are only so good and doesn’t mean anything to the organizations.
As long as there’s any grey area, there has to be some flex in the system, and depending on the sport and level the system is more or less flexible.
There’s a lot of good East German data re: turinabol. Lots of interesting anecdote as well.
For example:
“Effects of an androgenic-anabolic steroid, Oral-Turinabol, on the shot-put performance (in meters, y-axis) of a female athlete (code identification 1/68 in a, 1/69 in b, and 1/72 in c) directly photographed from the secret scientific report of Bauersfeld et al. (13), as one of the numerous examples documented, chosen here because of its historic importance as the first documented case of androgenic doping of a woman (for a detailed account, see ref. (11)). (a) 1968. The rectangle from July 28 to October 13 shows the period of drug administration, and the numbers above each date show the number of tablets taken per week (here, 14, or 10 mg per day). The curve presents the results of the specific competitions, showing the increase of strength and performance in a fully trained woman. At the time of the first drug application in 1968, the athlete had been well trained for almost 14 years. Under the influence of the drug, however, she gained unprecedented muscle strength and improved her records dramatically within a few weeks. (b) 1969. The steroid was given in three cycles and at various dosages, from 7 to 21 tablets per week (i.e., 5mg - 15 mg daily). Without the drug, she could not reach 18 m but when taking the drug, she improved her world record once more, to 20.10 m. (c) 1972. She took even more of the androgenic hormone, with daily dosages of up to 7 tablets per day (35 mg), in four cycles, for a total androgenic load of 1450 mg for the year. This led to her top performances in the winter indoor season (left curve) as well as in the summer (right curve) and another personal best (20.22 m). Note the much lower performance at times off the drug or after only short periods of androgenization. Also, after 4 years of systematic androgenization, her basic strength level even when not taking the drug had also increased by ~1 m, indicative of a residual effect. (14)”
Pretty much impossible to do this research since the athletes who are taking the PEDs illegally obviously aren’t going to be willing to share their data. And there are serious ethical and practical concerns about doing a controlled study - not least of which is that no vaguely serious athlete is going to take part in a study taking drugs which would see them banned from competing in their sport.
Yea pretty much Even with volunteers (there’s a whole world of ‘no rules’ professional weightlifting / body building) for this kind of study it’s fraught with issues, and there are new substances being added to banned lists yearly, and you just couldn’t get the sort of long term data capture required.
Well, actually many doping substances are not only harmful to the body, they can also affect and impair the mind, with effects ranging from anxiety and hallucinations to permanent psychosis having been scientifically linked to doping. But that is when you are using them without the feeling of measure. I’ve been using them some time ago when I just started working out. When taking them you better know where to take them from. I can recommend you to buy steroids online from here as it is a certified place. But not over-use
It’s a tremendously complicated area. My understanding is that anabolic steroids can cause semi-permanent changes (something about satellite cells? I recall reading a paper on this some time ago but can’t exactly remember), but that EPO has a more transitory effect. And then there are ‘grey area’ things for which TUE’s exist, some of which might confer a long-term benefit…
A little off-topic, but I also suspect that there are PEDs or protocols that the testers aren’t even aware of, and that’s where the ‘cutting edge’ is, so to speak.
I definitely think training at higher powers under the influence of EPO would make it easier to retrain to those (or higher than previous) power numbers.
Not to mention the fatigue resistance gains you may get from riding back to back massive training weeks.
