I have already seen both of these articles The article written by the guy
that doped is more of an advertisement for doping than anything else.
Charitably it could be considered an anecdotal report and subject to the
problems inherent in those. Any study with N=1 should be immediately
suspect. Less charitably one has to wonder about the veracity of anyone how
would undertake such a project. This article really did nothing to help the
problem or legitimately improve anyone's understanding of it.
Outside magazine ran a piece on the GT-B track bikes when I was selling
those. I just remember them saying that the best thing on the bike was the
"silky smooth Suze hubs". I have 30 of these bikes. The hubs are entry
level hubs, very rough and difficult to keep in adjustment. I suspect that
many of the Outside magazine articles are similarly flawed. One needs to
consider the source.
Mike Murray
-----Original Message-----
From: jakebigham [mailto:jakebigham@mac.com]
Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 11:24 AM
To: mike.murray@obra.org
Cc: obra@list.obra.org
Subject: Re: [OBRA Chat] horrible day for bike racing.
More broadly, does it work and can it be detected? Below are links to two
Outside magazine articles which you may find interesting. If he link doesn't
work, just paste the HTML in your browser.
on the question of "does doping work?" I think the answer is a definite
yes. In the hands of a trained clinician anyone's athletic performance can
be improved. Remember the Outside article on the guy (a cyclist) who tried
it?
-------------------------
Drug Test
Everybody knows that many athletes cheat by using performance-enhancing
drugs like steroids, testosterone, and EPO. But what is it like to take
these banned substances? Do they really help you win? To find out, we sent
an amateur cyclist into the back rooms of sports medicine, where he just
said yes to the most controversial chemicals in sports.
http://outside.away.com/outside/bodywork/200311/200311_drug_test_1.html
-------------------------
And on the question "can they be detected by testing?" I think the answer is
a definite "only once in a while"
-------------------------
The Awful Truth About Drugs in Sports
Cheaters can't be stopped. Testing costs a fortune. It's shockingly easy to
beat the system. The drug cops are perpetually playing catch-up. Says who?
Drug-testing expert Don Catlin, that's who. He's the doping detective who
helped break the BALCO scandal wide open-and the man who's about to launch a
radical new campaign to finally solve the problem.
By
Brian Alexander
http://outside.away.com/outside/features/200507/drugs-in-sports-1.html
On Jul 2, 2006, at 8:56 PM, Mike Murray wrote:
Rick C Johnson asked:
"Just out of curiosity can you say what happens when the hemotogical limits
are not respected? For instance is there a greater gain or is a point of
diminishing returns reached? And what are the actual health risks? How much
have these health problems been studied and documented?"
As the hematocrit (the percentage of blood volume occupied by red cells) is
increased the ability of the blood to carry oxygen increases
proportionately. Eventually the benefit of increased oxygen carrying
capacity begins to be offset by an increase in viscosity of the blood. The
increase in viscosity decreases blood flow in smaller vessels as well as
increases the cardiac work required to pump that blood around. Eventually
the increased viscosity will cause congestive heart failure with fluid
building up in the lungs and other parts of the body. More catastrophically
is the concern that higher than normal hematocrits may lead to sludging of
the blood causing things like clots in the lung, heart or brain which could
be immediately life threatening, or in other organs leading to less acute
problems. We know that this can happen in disease states that produce high
hematocrits like polycythemia rubra vera or in some patients with diseases
that produce chronically low blood oxygen levels. It has been suggested as
the cause of several unexpected sudden deaths in athletes, primarily
cyclists, but the actual documentation of this is lacking. The risk is
probably there but will likely never by definitively shown since any study
to investigate this risk would be unethical for several reasons.
Exactly where the costs offset the benefit, even just in terms of
performance enhancement and not risk, is not clear. It is probably
significantly above the allowed limits. The allowed limits are arbitrary
chosen numbers which are about 2 standard deviations from the mean
hematocrit. Since the hematocrit in endurance athletes is generally lower
than the untrained population because of plasma volume expansion this means
that only a small percentage of athletes will be above the limit with an
unmodified hematocrit. In disease states that produce an increased
hematocrit generally the level has to be significantly above the allowed
limits before any health problems are seen that are directly attributable to
the high hematocrit. Of course it is certainly possible that there are
other modifications that happen in disease states that might make things
different from a healthy person that increases their hematocrit rapidly. It
may be that an artificially high hematocrit in a healthy person is more
dangerous than in a person with a disease.
One interesting aspect of all this is that aerobic capacity is not predicted
by hematocrit. In other words, you can have a low hematocrit and still have
an ability to produce high aerobic power output and, conversely, you can
have a high hematocrit and still be slow. Hematocrit is not the sole, or
even the most important, determinant of aerobic capacity.
Mike Murray
_______________________________________________
OBRA mailing list
obra@list.obra.org
http://list.obra.org/mailman/listinfo/obra
Unsubscribe: obra-unsubscribe@list.obra.org