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HGH and Olympic Performance Enhancement at the
Beijing Games
At the 2008 Summer Olympics, more than eleven
thousand athletes from all around the world will meet in Beijing in
the spirit of international pride and competition. Although the
majority of these representatives will likely arrive with the intent
to square fairly against their opposition, a significant portion of
these athletes will be attempting to flaunt the rules put forth by
the International Olympic Committee and try to cheat their opponents
by utilizing Performance Enhancing Drugs such as Human Growth
Hormone, EPO, and Testosterone.
Although the IOC takes impressive measures in
order to maintain the integrity and fairness of the games, there will
be numerous men and women who will attempt to beat the random PED
Testing performed by Olympic Officials. Unfortunately, performance
science will always be one step ahead of the enforcement community,
and there will always be those who slip through the cracks and boost
their performance without setting off any alarms.
Chinese Cracking Down on PED Abuse
Beijing Olympic Organizers say that they will make
unprecedented efforts in attempting to catch Athletes who are
engaging in the use of PEDs such as Human Growth Hormone shots in
order to cheat their competition. They will have forty one different
drug testing stations, and 4,500 participants will be selected at
random for drug testing in order to deter the use of Performance
Enhancing Drugs. These facilities will be set up both at the Olympic
Village and on site at the various competition locations. All drug
testing will be performed under the guidance of official chaperones
in order to make sure that the urine and blood samples provided by
athletes are not tainted or faked.
Although Random Enforcement Testing will level the
playing field significantly, it is still inevitable that some of the
Olympic Athletes will get away with cheating with absolutely no
repercussions.
The Inevitability of Performance Enhancing Drug
Usage
Peter Sonksen is an English biologist who
specializes in endocrinology and drug testing. He tells reporters
that there are men and women across the world that utilize techniques
such as blood doping while still arriving at the Olympics and passing
all PED tests. Peter Sonksen is one of many scientists that are
working to develop new and innovate ways to monitor for Performance
Enhancing Drug usage in order to ensure fairness in national and
global competitive events such as the Olympics.
Developments in HGH Blood Testing
Sonksen most recently developed a new test that
allows officials to more accurately test for Human Growth Hormone
Usage. It has been very difficult to test for Human Growth Hormone
Performance Abuse in the past, but new strides in testing technology
are quickly making the task easier.
How Long Does HGH Stay in your System?
The problem with testing directly for HGH is that
Injections of Human Growth Hormone do not stay in the system for an
extended period of time. HGH is designed by Mother Nature to
disseminate throughout the body rapidly as it is secreted by the
pituitary gland. After only minutes, all Human Growth Hormone
released into the blood stream is converted to derivative forms such
as Insulin-like Growth Factor One.
Monitoring IGF-1
Luckily for proponents for fair athletic
competition, IGF-1 remains in the Blood Stream for four to ten hours
after Human Growth Hormone has been converted, and IGF-1 remains
active when connected to a cell receptor for up to three days. New
techniques such as Sonksens new drug testing method monitor for
higher levels of IGF-1 in the blood stream and in its activated form
in the cells.
Sonksen understands that the current methodology
of PED drug testing will still leave many left slipping through
undeterred, but he is still pleased that the Beijing Olympic
Committee has been so proactive in monitoring for Performance
Enhancing Drug Usage. Du Lijun is the chief officer of the Chinese
Anti-Doping Agency and is responsible for drug testing at the Beijing
Games. Sonksen believes that Lijun is performing his task dutifully,
but the culture of Performance Enhancement always seems to be a step
ahead of those who enforce fair competition.
The PED Arms Race
Athletes are proactive at finding new means to get
the edge over their competition. They are made aware of new Drug
Testing Techniques and immediately begin to figure out how to work
around these tests and build up their performance without being
caught. In the end, its a constant evolutionary arms race. As
scientists get better at catching cheaters and preventing certain
forms of doping, athletes are able to find new and original methods
of performance enhancement. Its a metaphorical race in which the
scientists will inevitably always be one step behind.
Because of the difficulties in catching cheaters,
drug testers have to be proactive and on their toes in order to
discover those who are using methods such as Human Growth Hormone
Injections in order to enhance their performance.
Julian Chang is the head medical representative of
the Hong Kong Olympic team. He says that the reason why athletes are
always a step ahead is that before Anti-Doping officials can test for
a substance, they must first discover that it is being used for
performance enhancement. The secretive nature of peak athletic
performers makes this very difficult. The primary tool in the battle
against PEDs is the spectrograph. Spectrographs are tools which
identify particular chemicals and can alert Drug Testing Officials to
unusual spikes of certain substances within blood and urine samples.
The problem with this set-up is that until a
doping technique is identified, these unnatural spikes are
meaningless because there is no proof that they are the result of PED
usage. Certain signifiers may be causes of concern, but until a case
can be made against them, there is no real way to tell if an Athlete
is a legitimate competitor is trying to cheat the system, much like
Marion Jones did with Human Growth hormone in the Sydney Olympic
Games.
Marion Jones PED Abuse
Marion Jones was put in prison after it was proved
that she committed perjury by lying to United States civil
prosecutors denying her use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. In
addition to this, her Olympic medals were stripped and she was
retroactively disqualified and eliminated from Olympic Records.
Marion Jones is one of the best examples of why it
is so difficult to test against Athletic Cheating with PEDs. Jones
was evaluated over one hundred times before events and was never
caught using the drugs. Although later on, she was implicated and
punished severely, it is clear that the majority of those who utilize
Hormone Injections and other forms of Performance Enhancement will
not be caught.
Marion Jones was caught largely because of her
celebrity status. Jones was primarily using a steroid known as
tetrahydrogestrinone, otherwise called THG. The hormone is referred
to by the athletic community as The Clear because of how it was
possible to take the Androgen hormone while easily passing random
drug testing. She originally claimed her trainer provided it to her,
calling it Flaxseed oil so that she could use it and still
claim ignorance.
The drug company which provided her trainer the
THG, known as BALCO, was eventually raided and she became a target of
investigation. This is when she lied to investigators. Drug testing
techniques continued to improve as she continued to compete, and she
lied to prosecutors and traded a guilty plea in order to arrange for
more lenient sentencing.
HGH as a Performance Enhancing Drug
Although Marion Jones was finally caught because
of her use of THG Testosterone, it is likely that she utilized a
number of other techniques in order to cheat her competition as well.
One of the most common methods of performance enhancement today is
Human Growth Hormone. Bio-Identical HGH was originally created in
order to treat growth disorders in children, but it has been more
recently shown to be effective in treating Adult Human Growth Hormone
Deficiency as well. Although there are a number of valid uses for HGH
among adults, especially those over the age of thirty with a
diagnosable and symptomatic deficiency, it has also been discovered
to be a highly potent tool for performance enhancement.
Why Do Athletes Use HGH?
Athletes who take HGH shots generally do so for
three reasons.
The first reason is that Human Growth Hormone
burns calories and fat in order to provide enhanced endurance and
energy during training.
The second reason is that HGH has the ability to
enhance muscle strength. When combined with vigorous training, Human
Growth Hormone Injections have the ability to amplify the effects of
exercise, giving athletes an edge over their competitors.
The third reason that Athletes use HGH is because
the drug greatly reduces downtime which normally results from extreme
physical exertion. This allows athletes to recover from exercise
sessions more quickly. Quicker recovery time means that people who
use HGH can exercise more often without feeling the painful effects
of overexertion, giving them more training time in comparison to
their honest competitors.
The Futility of Early HGH Testing
In the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and the 2006
Olympic Winter Games of Torino, no athlete was caught using HGH
Injections. IGF-1 Testing was not available for the 2004 and 2006
Olympics and injected Human Growth Hormone does not have to be
present in the body in order to provide Performance Enhancing
Benefits. It is also relatively easy to avoid being caught using
Human Growth Hormone shots as well, because current testing only
detects HGH within the body for one to three days after injection.
This gives a much more significant window for
enforcement, but HGH therapy provides benefits for months after a
month long cycle of injection. As long as athletes know when drug
tests will be performed, they can easily avoid detection. Experts
continue to improve their methods, but it may be years before a
fool-proof HGH Test becomes available in order to stem its widespread
use. For now, word of mouth and financial investigations are the
primary means by which illicit HGH usage is discovered.
Harsh punishments and retrospective
disqualifications are two of the biggest tools of deterrence
available today. Although it wont catch all of the minor players,
athletes of significance such as Marion Jones and Roger Clemens will
often be caught as rumors and evidence of their PED usage become
undeniable.
Why Are PEDs so hard to Track?
Those athletes who use Human Growth Hormone for
Performance Enhancement are likely to have been using the substance
regularly for a period of months before an athletic event such as the
Olympics. The Olympics are such a huge international contest that it
is simply impossible to drug test all competitors in the months
leading up to the Olympics. Since the benefits of HGH stick around
even after use of the Hormone has subsided, it is possible to quit
usage weeks before drug testing begins while still maintaining a
clear advantage as a result of HGH Injections.
Julian Chang is pessimistic
about current enforcement of Human Growth Hormone Detection. He says
that the only way to get caught using Human Growth Hormone is due to
stupidity and carelessness.
The Future of PED Testing
There are new techniques available which can make
HGH usage a more risky proposition. One new strategy involves
freezing drug samples. World Anti-Doping President John Fahey has
come forth and told Australian reporters that there is now a protocol
in place to hold Olympic competitors accountable for following the
rules. Olympic Anti-Doping officials are using techniques in order to
freeze blood and urine samples for as long as eight years without
degrading the sample. By doing this, they can retest samples at a
later date if any allegations arise regarding PED abuse or if new
tests make it easier to test for particular banned substances.
In addition to this, there are a number of new
tests that are being developed which can trace other substances
frequently used as performance enhancing drugs such as IGF-1 R3,
peptide hormones, and clenbuterol. These substances have been shown
to produce physiological benefits similar to those of Human Growth
Hormone.
Timeline of PED Abuse Cases
Although in the 90s and early 2000s, drug testers
repeatedly discovered endemic Performance Enhancing Drug Abuse among
Chinese competitors, the Chinese seem to have cleaned up their act
significantly. Below is a list of significant cases which involved
Chinese PED use:
In 1994 a group of 11 Chinese competitors at the
Asian Games in Japan were found to test positive for Performance
Enhancing Steroids. Among the 11 athletes who were caught, 7 were
members of the swim team. As a testament to the effectiveness of
Steroids as a performance booster, 3 of the swim team members
achieved world championship times.
In 1998, a Chinese swim team member named Yuan
Yuan was apprehended with a distributive quantity of HGH while
preparing to board a plane at the Sydney, Australia International
airport. She was caught just prior to the world swimming
championships. In the same year, 4 of her teammates were discovered
to have been cheating as well. Over the course of the 90s, a total of
38 swim team members and/or swim coaches were caught with Performance
Enhancing Drugs across the ten year span.
In 2000, 4 Internationally renowned Chinese track
athletes were handed down a two year total ban from competitive track
and field events as a result of being caught utilizing Performance
Enhancement Drugs.
Also in 2000, Chinese Track coach Ma Junren was
discovered to have been utilizing Performance Enhancing Drugs such as
Steroids and Human Growth Hormone in an attempt to create a team of
what could be considered super-athletes. Junrens track team
recorded many incredible track times, blowing away their competition
and fuelling suspicions that he was facilitating cheating among his
pupils. Eventually, his utilization of PEDs was discovered by
national officials and he was fired from his position as Chinese
Olympic coach.
Largely as a result of Junrens misdeeds, forty
athletes representing the Chinese Olympic team were banned from
making the trip to Sydney, Australia. Among those in the group,
twenty seven were not able to pass a drug test. As a result, the
entire group of forty was banned from competition.
In 2001, four more Chinese star track athletes
were punished or completely banned from world track competitions as a
result of PED use.
Two years later, Shang Shichun was uncovered as a
cheater in 2003. She broke 3 world records for his strength
performance in weight lifting completion. Her trio of gold medals
were all revoked as a result of her disqualification.
In 2005, Chinese Anti-Drug agents raided a track
facility in the province of Liaoning. As a result of the raid, drug
agents discovered a refrigerator loaded with enough banned
Performance Enhancing Drugs to supply the entire facility. Eight
track and field athletes from the facility tested positive for PEDs.
Source:
http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/621/story/442667.html
The Conscious Evolution Institute
Articles like this outline the risks associated
with misuse and abuse of HGH shots, Testosterone patches and gells,
and other forms of performance enhancement. Success breeds prying
eyes, and the most successful are at the highest risk of being
discovered abusing these drugs. Even national heroes such as Lance
Armstrong are not immune to such scrutiny.
For what Purposes are HGH and Testosterone
Legal?
Although we in no way condone the use of HGH or
Testosterone as a performance enhancer, articles such as these
highlight the amazing changes that can result from the use of these
hormones. We only provide Hormone Replacement Therapies for patients
who show a clinical need for HGH or Testosterone as a result of a
diagnosable clinical deficiency. As we surpass the age of thirty, our
hormone levels naturally begin to decline. As a result, eventually
all of us will begin to age at an increased rate as a result of
hormone deficiency. Some of us experience this decline faster than
others, which can result in premature aging.
If you are suffering from Low-T or HGH Deficiency,
you are a perfect candidate for Hormone Replacement Therapy as a
treatment for Hypogonadism and Hypopituitarism!
The Amazing Benefits of HGH
The benefits of Hormone Replacement Therapy using
Testosterone or Human Growth Hormone are immense. Proper hormone
balance is a key to extending life and making it both more enjoyable
and more rewarding. If you are interested in using Hormone
Replacement as an Anti-Aging Treatment, the Conscious Evolution
Institute is here to help.
We can provide all of the testing required in
order to both diagnose your deficiency and prove whether or not you
are a valid candidate for the amazing treatments that we have to
offer.
If you would like to learn more about Human Growth
Hormone, Testosterone, or other forms of Hormone Treatment, call CEI
today. Our highly qualified staff would be more than happy to answer
any and all of your questions.
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