Anti-Doping

[JasonWelbourne]

I want to know what anti-doping means exactly.

Does the use of psuedo-/ephedrine or caffeine and it's related naturally occuring substances disqualify a person from making records?

 

[naiad]

Originally posted by JasonWelbourne
Does the use of psuedo-/ephedrine or caffeine and it's related naturally occuring substances disqualify a person from making records?

I think so. Caffeine is a stimulant drug, although it is naturally occuring. I don't know about pseudo-/ephedrine, but it is probably banned too.

Caffeine would almost certainly have a negative effect on apnea performance, so it would be bad to get disqualified for taking something which makes performance worse! :duh

I have never heard of anti-doping.

Lucia

 

[JasonWelbourne]

Caffeine and ephedrine are almost indespensible in mty ability to breathe and clear my ears...

 

[robbyzuniga]

Anti doping I believe means any external chemical drug you take to enhahce your performance in sports. In apnea is quite diferrent as caffeine and psedoephedrine increases heart rate and consequently reduces your ability to hold your breath.

There are also other drugs that may increase your performance, but in freediving it won't prove so beneficial. Examples are EPO, steroids like: deca durabolin, primoteston depot, equipoise, primobolan, clenbuterol etc... This are for increasing testosterone levels but in the long run, it will damage your phisique and can give serious and adverse effects, physically and phsychologically.

I believe the only steroid that cannot be detected is HGH or human growth hormone yet(correct me if I'm wrong). In conclusion, in the world of apnea there aren't really no short cuts, and a regular routine with other natural techiniques will prove more beneficial than any other drug in the market.

Roberto Zuniga

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Various forms of heart medication such as blood pressure reducers or adrenalin reducers are forbidden in games such as sailing and shooting, and are to find on the IOC forbidden list. Using these kind of drugs will definitely aid freedivers, and I think it's only a matter of time before someone makes use of them, if not already.

Chris Engelbrecht

 

[JasonWelbourne]

So the sport is basically closed at the professional level to anyone with high-blood pressure. That's interesting. It seems self-explanantory, on one level, but then again, it is such a wide spread condition...

 

[CEngelbrecht]

The IOC rules do allow an athlete with 'special medical conditions' where they need medicine otherwise illegal, to take this medicine given that a ceritified doctor declares by signature that this medicine is indeed necessary. Of course, this has meant that suddenly a heck of a lot of fi. swimmers are astmathic, but then again if doctors are caught lying about declarations, then they are elligeable to loose their license by International agreement, so maybe people actually speak the truth about that.

A freediver with high blood pressure can be allowed to make use of otherwise illegal medicine, given that a doctor signs a note that says it's needed. Of course, if a freediver has high blood pressure that badly, I wouldn't want that doctor to ok him/her for competitions in the first place...

Chris Engelbrecht, Copenhagen

 

[JasonWelbourne]

Thanks for the info.
It is interesting how anything which exists to an 'extent' can be blown up big enough to call a 'medical condition'
I personally, am trying to learn how to dive without any modifiers which means I have to detox from caffeine here soon.
Wish me luck!

 

[Aquagenic]

What about the blood?

Hey I have heard of some athletes in various sports removing their own blood, storing it, then re-injecting it shortly before competition. This "doping" adds thousands of red blood cells into the blood stream therefore allowing greater oxygen stores, which leads to better performance.

Any thoughts?

~Picksmith

 

[DeepThought]

Blood doping could be dangerous because you are risking getting blood clots in your brain and other organs. Not to mention the strain you might give your cardiovascular system with a sudden large increase.
The way the IOC fights blood doping (and the usage of EPO, a hormone that gets your hematocrit levels higher) is to disallow any athlete with over 50% hematocrit, in the excuse it is unhleathy for him to compete.
This rule doesn't count for freediving I think since it is not that uncommon for freedivers to have above 50% hematocrit that was developed as an adaptation by your body and not by doping.
This natural adaptation is also supposed to be healthier since the body changes the blood's viscosity with other blood elements.

So in theory I think freedivers can do blood doping and not get caught, am not sure of that.
If someone feels it's that important for him/her to cheat and risk their lifes inorder to win, it's their problem I guess.
By the way, the risk of getting blood clots incraeses with extreme depths due to all the plasma shift.

 

[CEngelbrecht]

To add to DeepThought:
The hematocrite issue and the 50% thing has become obsolete the last couple of years. Before they couldn't trace EPO which hightened the illegal value of hematocrite, so they slammed the hammer on anyone with a value over 50 (in road cycling and a few others, in skiing I think it was 55). Nowadays methods have been developed to trace EPO, so the 50% number is no longer necessary.
For freedivers this means that having a hematocrite over 50 (which can occur naturally, aparently) is not a problem (doping-wise), as long as EPO hasn't been used to get it.

Chris Engelbrecht, Copenhagen