Tuesday, January 22, 2008 Performance-enhancing substances
(Part 1)
MARION Jones is a sad story of fame to shame. She was a track and field star of the Sydney Summer Olympics, in September 2000. She won 3 gold and 2 bronze medals. However, in shame she had to give back those medals following her admission that she was taking a designer steroid a performance-enhancing substance from September 2000 to July 2001.
Now, that she had pleaded guilty of lying, the International Olympics Track and Field officials are prepared to remove her name officially from the record books, strip her title and ban her from future Olympic competitions.
Barry Bonds is a major league baseball player of the US San Francisco Giants who broke Hank Aaron's all time record of 756 home runs at bat. This athletic feat deserves admiration from baseball fans everywhere including a congratulatory message from U.S. President George W. Bush.
However, public reactions were mixed. Some newspaper headlines were not complimentary such as "King of Shame" of the New York Daily News and "King Con" from the Boston Herald. The reason was the slugging power of Barry Bonds was tainted with suspicion that he was using a performance-enhancing substance. This suspicion will haunt Barry Bonds for a long time.
Performance-enhancing substance (PES) is not new in the competition game. Anabolic steroids use were common among athletes in international competitions until the sport organizations began testing for steroid compounds and have prevented athletes from competing and even confiscated their awards or medals if found positive for banned substances.
A difference of 1 inch, 1 second or 1 percent may not be significant to us, but for a competing athlete it is either the agony of defeat or a road to fame and fortune. To have the advantage, athletes will do anything including the use of substances to enhance their performance. Substances like strychnine with brandy, heroin, cocaine and ether soaked tablets or sherry and raw eggs were used to augment performance. Even in the movies, like one of the Rocky series of Sylvester Stallone or the Bruce Lee movies. In one of the scenes of hand-to-hand combat, Bruce Lee was wounded and bleeding. What he usually does is touch the bleeding site and taste the blood. Then he will emit that feline sound, his signature cry telling his opponent that now he is really mad. Karate chop here, karate kick there, then the karate hold and the opponent got whipped to death. The fans went home cheering and satisfied.
The taste of blood as depicted in the movie will give the performer the added power like the Aztec Indian warriors who believed that by eating human hearts will give them strength in battle and competition. Through the years from the time of the Aztec Indians of central Mexico to the present, the name and nature of PES (performance-enhancing substances) have changed but its use have increased. In the U.S. more than 90% of professional, 50 percent of college and 8-11 percent of high school athletes admit to the use of PES.
A substance is considered performance enhancing "if it benefits sports performance by increasing strength, power, speed, or endurance or by altering body weight or body components. Furthermore, substances that improve performance by causing changes in behavior, arousal level and/or perception of pain should be considered performance enhancing."
This will include taking drugs where medical indications are not present or in doses that exceed the recommended dose for medical treatment. Drugs that concerns weight control either to gain or to lose weight are also included such as over-the-counter diet pills, laxatives and diuretics to lose weight.
Agents that mask the adverse effects or detectability of another performance enhancing substance, those that increase the oxygen capacity of the blood and supplements promoted to enhance performance, appearance and academic performance are also considered performance enhancing substances.
For anyone participating in competition winning is the only goal. For professional athletes, it is the route to fame, fortune, show business and politics. Our society adores winners. We idolize champions. Our children are aware that winning is the most important goal. What is fair and right may be lost in ones desire to be the champion. Competitors will do anything to obtain an easy advantage to succeed. Sometimes one may be engrossed in his desire to win that he will forget what is fair and right and do a short cut using PES forgetting the importance of training, hard work, sacrifice and determination.
In Pediatrics, many teenagers are now using PES, not only the adolescent athletes to enhance their performance, but also non-athletes wanting to improve their appearance or to excel in academics. PES is not without dangers. Some are now banned because of their dangerous adverse side effects.
Despite the insufficient data on the efficacy and safety of PES (performance-enhancing substances) adolescent athletes and non-athletes continue to use the substance. This is not difficult to understand since more than 80 percent of school age children are not informed properly about the danger of PES (Policy Statement, American Academy of Pediatrics, 2005). (To be continued)
