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Chapter Goals:
- Give athletes some reliable and recent information regarding the risks and benefits of substances that enhance performance, like anabolic steroids.
- Know the efficacy and adverse effects of dietary supplements over the counter that is used to enhance sport and exercise performance.
- Learn the performance-enhancing supplements that have the same effects of hormones within the body and the ones that improve performance through other means.
- Find out what supplements benefit strength and power performance, endurance performance, or both.
The first priority for athletes is to maintain sound principles of rain, like adequate nutrition, before any supplements or ergogenic acid.
Types of Performance Enhancing Substances
Products that can be sold as dietary supplements.
Any product, besides tobacco, that is intended to supplement a part of your diet will have one or more of these ingredients.
- Vitamins
- Minerals
- Herbs or other botanicals
- Amino acids
- Dietary substances used to increase total dietary intakes
- Concentrates, metabolites, constituents, or extracts
Products must also be intended for ingestion and can’t be advertised as conventional foods or as single items in a meal or diet.
Hormones
Anabolic Steroids
This manmade derivative of testosterone
Dosing
- Typically used in a stacking Regimen, where they are administered with several different drugs simultaneously.
- One anabolic agent’s potency may be enhanced when consumed with another.
- A lot of people take anabolic steroids on a cycle. This means for some weeks or months and then discontinued for weeks or months.
- Many athletes take drugs in pyramid patterns where dosages increase over weeks and decrease later.
Who uses anabolic steroids?
- Olympic athletes, pro athletes, college athletes, and high schoolers have been seen to use steroids.
- Many steroid users don’t use them for sports.
Efficacy
- Muscle mass and strength
- Increased protein synthesis in muscles is likely with steroid use.
- Changes happen for recreational and competitive users.
- Increased athletic performance.
Psychological Effects
- Anabolic steroid usage can change aggression, arousal, and irritability.
Adverse effects
Associated medical problems may be overstated.
Many side effects will reverse when you cease using them.
Side effects differ among people but may include:
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Cardiovascular
- Lipid profile changes
- Increased Blood Pressure
- Lessened Myocardial Function
Endocrine
- Gynecomastia
- Lessened sperm count
- Testicular atrophy
- Impotence and Transient Infertility
Genitourinary
- Decreased sperm count and testicular size in males.
- Menstrual irregularities, Clitoromegaly, and Masculinization in females.
- Gynecomastia and libido changes in males and females.
Dermatological
- Acne and male pattern baldness
Hepatic
- Increased risk of tumor and damage to the liver.
Musculoskeletal
- Premature epiphyseal plate closure.
- Increased risk for tearing tendons.
- Intramuscular abscess
Psychological
- Mania
- Depression
- Aggression
- Mood swings
Testosterone Precursors
Performance changes may not happen with prohormone use, but athletes may have a greater risk for adverse side effects like those associated with anabolic steroid use.
Human Chorionic Gonadotropin
HCG offers no enhancement in performance for women, but it can increase testosterone production in men.
Insulin
Increases the synthesis of protein, but hypoglycemia side effects can be fatal.
Human Growth Hormone
Efficacy
No studies on efficacy in athletes
The anabolic potential of GHG and its ability to reduce body fat have given rise to HGH use in athletes.
Adverse effects
Growth hormone is used as replacement therapy for people with deficiencies and can be effective. Osages for athletes give significant risks for acromegaly.
Erythropoietin
EPO injections have to do with increases in hematocrit and hemoglobin.
Some health risks are increased blood clotting, higher systolic blood pressure, hurt thermoregulatory systems, and dehydration while aerobically exercising.
B-Adrenergic Agonists
These can increase lean mass and decrease stored fats.
B-Blockers
These can reduce anxiety and tremors while performing.
Dietary Supplements
Essential Amino Acids
EAAs may augment the synthesis of muscle proteins in healthy people.
Leucine is a main part of regulation in stimulating muscle protein synthesis. It activates the Akt/mTOR pathways in skeletal muscle, which is important for synthesizing skeletal muscle protein.
Arginine
Claims associated with arginine supplementation are the ability to raise nitric oxide levels, raise muscle blood flow, and improve performance when exercising.
There isn’t much evidence that arginine supplements do this.
Oral arginine supplementation is not recommended for healthy athletes.
B-Hydroxy-B-Methylbutyrate
HMB stimulates the synthesis of proteins and decreases the breakdown of proteins by inhibiting ubiquitin proteasome pathways. It may be an effective supplement to reduce lean muscle loss in a catabolic state.
HMB is most effective when you have adequate training stimuli. For the untrained, it requires little training stimulus. For the trained, it requires high intensity and high volume resistance programs.
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Nutritional Muscle Buffers
B-Alanine
Sodium Bicarbonate
Sodium Citrate
L-Carnitine
L-Carnitine study’s show unclear efficacy in its role as an ergogenic acid that increases lipid oxidation.
It may increase exercise recovery times.
Creatine
Importance of Creatine to Exercise
It has the ability to rapidly rephosphorylate ADP, which depends on the enzyme creatine kinase and creatine phosphates availability in muscles.
Creatine Supplementation
These supplements increase the creatine content of muscles by about 20%, with a saturation limit.
Creatine supplementation has been shown to raise max strength, power, and amount of lean body mass in trained and untrained people.
Creatine is safe and also pretty inexpensive.
Efficacy
Significant ergogenic benefits have been shown.
Body Mass Changes
Prolonged creatine supplementation has shown increased body weight, mostly with fat free mass. This is mostly due to total body water increases.
Adverse Effects
Creatine does not enhance risks for dehydration and cramping.
Stimulants
Caffeine
Efficacy
Increased time until exhaustion
Unclear sprint and power effects
Caffeine is ergogenic in 3 – 9 mg/kg of body weight doses before exercise.
No benefit after the 9 mg/kg of body weight.
Decreased feelings of perceived exertion, an improved capacity for work, and mental alertness increase.
Adverse Effects
Causes anxiety, GI disturbances, Restlessness, Insomnia, Tremors, and Heart Arrhythmias, And increases the risks for heart illness.
Physically addicting
No harmful fluid imbalances when exercising have been found.
Preworkout Energy Drinks
The most common ingredients are: caffeine, carbs, B vitamins, Tyrosine, and ginkgo biloba
Efficacy
Effective for raising resistance training volume performance, but not as responsive during other anaerobic exercises.
A minimum of 2 mg of caffeine per kg of body mass has increased cycling and running performance.
Ephedrine
Efficacy
Effective when used with caffeine
Improves mostly Aerobic endurance
Adverse Effects
Lots of adverse effects, like death
Banned by most governing institutions.
Citrus Aurantium
Efficacy
May contribute to the suppression of appetite, increased rate of metabolism, and lipolysis.
Time to fatigue improves when combined with caffeine
Adverse effects
Increased blood pressure and vasoconstriction
It is on the NCAA’s list for banned PEDs
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Tyler Read
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