Limits Of Ped Testing In The Olympics And Professional Athletics

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 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 to catch athletes using PEDs such as Human Growth Hormone shots to cheat their competition.

They will have forty-one drug testing stations, and 4,500 participants will be randomly selected for drug testing to deter the use of Performance Enhancing Drugs.

These facilities will be set up at the Olympic Village and on-site at the various competition locations. All drug testing will be performed under the guidance of official chaperones to ensure 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 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 men and women worldwide 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 innovative ways to monitor Performance Enhancing Drug usage to ensure fairness in national and global competitive events such as the Olympics.

Developments in HGH Blood Testing

Sonksen recently developed a new test that allows officials to test for Human Growth Hormone Usage more accurately. It has been challenging 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 bloodstream is converted to derivative forms such as Insulin-like Growth Factor One.

Monitoring IGF-1

Luckily for proponents of 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 Sonksen's new drug testing method monitor for higher levels of IGF-1 in the bloodstream and 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 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 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, it's a constant evolutionary arms race.

As scientists get better at catching cheaters and preventing certain forms of doping, athletes can find new and original performance enhancement methods. It's a symbolic race in which 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 to discover those using methods such as Human Growth Hormone Injections to enhance their performance.

Julian Chang is the head medical representative of the Hong Kong Olympic team. He says that athletes are always a step ahead because 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 that identify particular chemicals and alert Drug Testing Officials to unusual spikes of certain substances within blood and urine samples.

The problem with this setup is that these unnatural spikes are meaningless until a doping technique is identified because there is no proof that they result from PED usage.

Specific signifiers may be causes of concern, but until a case can be made against them, there is no natural way to tell if an Athlete is a legitimate competitor trying to cheat the system, much as 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 mainly 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 effortlessly passing random drug testing.

She initially 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 the investigation. This is when she lied to investigators. Drug testing techniques continued to improve as she competed, and she lied to prosecutors and traded a guilty plea 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, she likely utilized many other techniques to cheat her competition. One of the most common performance enhancement methods today is Human Growth Hormone.

Bio-Identical HGH was initially created to treat growth disorders in children, but it has been more recently shown to be effective in treating Adult Human Growth Hormone Deficiency. Although there are several good 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 to enhance endurance and energy during training.

The second reason is that HGH can 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.

Athletes use HGH because the drug dramatically reduces downtime, commonly resulting 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 compared 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 unavailable for the 2004 and 2006 Olympics, and injected Human Growth Hormone does not have to be present in the body to provide Performance Enhancing Benefits.

It is also relatively easy to avoid being caught using Human Growth Hormone shots 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 injection cycle. 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 to stem its widespread use. For now, word of mouth and financial investigations are the primary means of discovering illegal HGH usage.

Harsh punishments and retrospective disqualifications are two of the most comprehensive deterrence tools available today. Although it won't 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 vast international contest that it is impossible to drug test all competitors in the months leading up to the Olympics.

Since the benefits of HGH stick around even after the Hormone has subsided, it is possible to quit usage weeks before drug testing begins while still maintaining a clear advantage due to HGH Injections.

Julian Chang is pessimistic about the 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 that 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 to freeze blood and urine samples for as long as eight years without degrading the sample. By doing this, they can retest samples later if any allegations arise regarding PED abuse or if new tests make it easier to test for particular banned substances.

In addition, new tests are being developed to 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 named 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 before the world swimming championships. In the same year, 4 of her teammates were also discovered to have been cheating. 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 due to 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, national officials discovered his utilization of PEDs, and he was fired from his position as a Chinese Olympic coach.

Primarily due to 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 could not 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 wholly banned from world track competitions due to PED use.

Two years later, Shang Shichun was uncovered as a cheater in 2003. She broke three world records for his strong performance in weight lifting completion. Her trio of gold medals was revoked due to 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 gels, 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 this highlight the tremendous 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 due to 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 due to hormone deficiency. Some of us experience this decline faster than others, resulting 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 key to extending life and making it more enjoyable and 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 to both diagnose your deficiency and prove whether or not you are a valid candidate for the unique treatments that we have to offer.

Call CEI today if you want to learn more about Human Growth Hormone, Testosterone, or other forms of Hormone Treatment. Our highly qualified staff would be more than happy to answer any and all of your questions.

Word Count: 2661