Is it ethical to use performance-enhancing drugs in sports? Do you agree that while sports promote fair play and honesty; the thought of using drugs weakens the said values? On this episode of The New Helix Experience podcast, Tim Frey shares about Performance Enhancing Drugs In Sport 101.
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00:00:01 Speaker 1
What’s up guys? Today I am talking about performance enhancing drugs in sport. Why maven podcasting about this? Well, I get a lot of questions about this, especially in like the whole natty or not.
00:00:12 Speaker 1
Is this dude natural? What’s he doing, you know, do you think this athletes natural and just off the bat here guys?
00:00:20 Speaker 1
There’s a very high percentage of elite athletes that are doping in sports, so hate to break it to you. Anyone at the pinnacle of their sport are probably use.
00:00:28 Speaker 1
Something, and that’s just how it goes. At the moment. There’s this whole illusion that we’d like to believe that everyone is is doing the right thing, and they’re being fair.
00:00:37 Speaker 1
But you know, you know honestly. It’s probably not so. Before we go too deep. In this podcast, I wanted to go into like the history and evolution of performance enhancing drugs in sport so.
00:00:48 Speaker 1
It’s been used for.
00:00:49 Speaker 1
Entries ancient Greeks and Romans used various substances like stimulus, alcohol and some other things to boost their physical and mental performance.
00:00:58 Speaker 1
In the more modern eras, performance enhancing drugs have been used in early in the 20th century, so anabolic steroids were first synthesised in the 1930s and they.
00:01:08 Speaker 1
Used by athletes you know. Essentially, really since the 1950s. So there was a big, like German, Romanian, Russian kind of doping scene at that time.
00:01:18 Speaker 1
They were the first to get on it, then governing bodies kind of cottoned on. And then you know the the modern day testing kind of comes to where it is now. So we have like other performance.
00:01:28 Speaker 1
Drugs such as stimulants and blood boosting agents. They’ve been used extensively in sports as well.
00:01:34 Speaker 1
And essentially like the whole performance-enhancing drugs thing has been a controversial issue in sports for as long as I can remember.
00:01:41 Speaker 1
Obviously, it gives the athlete an unfair advantage, quote-unquote, and there are some serious health consequences as far as the research states, but I guess more commonly in other sports where they do.
00:01:54 Speaker 1
Abuse it so you know on the the topic. There I did bring it up, but like is an unfair advantage if everyone else is doing it.
00:02:02 Speaker 1
Personally, I don’t think so. I do know that there are a lot of top level people locally internationally that are using performance enhancing drugs.
00:02:11 Speaker 1
Is it fair if everyone else is doing it? I don’t believe so, so I want to go through the potential health risks associated with performance enhancing drugs. You can have a serious amount and a serious range of health.
00:02:22 Speaker 1
Issues, especially with high doses or for long periods of times. Some side effects include like cardiovascular problems.
00:02:31 Speaker 1
So that’s particularly from anabolic steroids. That can increase your risk of heart attack, stroke, and high blood pressure, high blood pressure.
00:02:39 Speaker 1
Next one we got liver damage, anabolic steroids, and other performance enhancing drugs can cause liver damage and potential liver tumours, although these statistics.
00:02:50 Speaker 1
On this are quite.
00:02:53 Speaker 1
Unknown, and there’s not a bunch of research into this at the moment, but it’s just what doctors hypothesise Next up, we’ve got hormone imbalances so they can disrupt hormone balances, leading to a bunch of side effects like guy named Asia, which is enlargement of the breast in men and reduced fertility. So you can imagine a dude is jabbing.
00:03:13 Speaker 1
Growth hormone and testosterone and doing blood boosters for like a long period of time. His natural ability to produce those are going to be dwindled and then you know, once he comes off he’s going to be pretty ******.
00:03:26 Speaker 1
Next up we got.
00:03:27 Speaker 1
Mental health issues. So anxiety depression are the main ones mainly from stimulants as they do probably most mess with your nervous system as you guys can imagine like a stimulant and upper is going to really stimulate everything to do with your nervous system and then the last two I’m not.
00:03:46 Speaker 1
There’s so much health risks, but obviously like doping violations and legal consequences.
00:03:52 Speaker 1
We’ve got some, uh, I wanted to go through potential alternatives to performance enhancing drugs, especially if you’re not like a professional athlete at the absolute pinnacle of your sport.
00:04:02 Speaker 1
There’s a bunch of things you could do before you think about turning to something like this, the first one being nutrition and diet like a well.
00:04:11 Speaker 1
Balanced diet rich in nutrients, carbohydrates, protein. Healthy fats is definitely going to optimise performance from what I’ve seen. You know, I’ve I’ve been a strength coach for 13 years now.
00:04:23 Speaker 1
Have a masters degree and strength conditioning worked with over 3000 athletes. Everyone from Olympic gold medalist to NCAA champions.
00:04:29 Speaker 1
I’ve seen people at the absolute pinnacle of their sports and they have not been nailing all of these things.
00:04:34 Speaker 1
So for people who think that performance enhancing drugs are the next step for them without optimising these things, I think they’ve probably got another thing coming.
00:04:42 Speaker 1
So nutrition and diet is the 1st.
00:04:44 Speaker 1
Thing next one training.
00:04:46 Speaker 1
And conditioning needs to be optimised for each.
00:04:49 Speaker 1
Third thing here is like visualisation techniques. Goal setting, self talk. They’re all going to improve mental focus. Fourth thing is sports psychology and a councillor to develop your mental skills and strategies to improve your performance. And the fifth thing here is I’ve got the effective strategies around recovery up sleep using ice bars.
00:05:08 Speaker 1
Compression, massage therapies. All those types of things. So are you or the person in question.
00:05:15 Speaker 1
Do they have their nutrition and diet down Pat? Are they training? Are they doing conditioning? Are they using psychological techniques?
00:05:21 Speaker 1
Are they doing sports psychology or working with the counsellor and or are they doing the recovery strategies they need to become the best athlete they can be? So to summarise, I’d probably say most athletes.
00:05:36 Speaker 1
And not and.
00:05:36 Speaker 1
They could squeeze a lot more juice from there then if they are at the pinnacle of the sport.
00:05:41 Speaker 1
There was a research study I did read when I was.
00:05:43 Speaker 1
At Union it.
00:05:44 Speaker 1
Was you know a couple of professional athletes and they were high level ones. They were given a quiz and they said, you know, if you could become an.
00:05:51 Speaker 1
Olympic gold medalist.
00:05:53 Speaker 1
By using performance sensing drugs and shave 20 years off, your life expectancy. Would you do it? And I think like 90% of them chose yes on that.
00:06:02 Speaker 1
So quite a lucrative thing to do if you are at your pinnacle of your sport. Obviously there are risks associated with this, which most people are happy to float the risks for the potential rewards.
00:06:14 Speaker 1
And then you know the other question is like is it ethical? Obviously no, but I think that it’s definitely more ethical if everyone is doing it that you’re competing against.
00:06:26 Speaker 1
And, you know, in terms of making a spectacle or or a like a sports event out of a particular sport, you know maybe we should have a an Olympics where everyone is just allowed to juice up and and go and perform sensing drugs.
00:06:40 Speaker 1
And then we have the Clean Olympics as well. And we’ll see which one is the greatest spectacle to watch. And definitely think the one where everyone is.
00:06:46 Speaker 1
Is juicing up would be much more fun.
00:06:47 Speaker 1
To watch. So in summary, here guys is.
00:06:51 Speaker 1
Understand that most people at the pinnacle of this border, probably using performance sensing drugs in some way and just not getting caught.
00:06:57 Speaker 1
There are a bunch of health risks associated with using them, and there are a lot of things you can do before you would consider using a performance-enhancing drug as the consequences probably outweigh it, especially if you’re not a professional.
00:07:12 Speaker 1
Athlete, thanks for listening.
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