With all of the reports of how many athletes are getting caught using performance enhancing drugs, it begs the question- just what are these athletes using? An article produced by Health and Science tackles this very question. According to the author (Bonnie Berkowitz) the drugs fall into the following categories:
- Muscle-Building Steroids
- Hormone enhancement
- Drugs that hide other drugs
- Calming Beta Blockers
- Asthma drugs
- Recreational drugs
- Anti-inflammatory steroids
- Other
As you can imagine with this many ways in which an athlete can obtain a substance to enhance performance, regulating these is extremely difficult. What could be seen as a protein shake to some could actually be considered a performance enhancing drug by the organization and can get an athlete banned from competing. A simple medical condition such as asthma requires the use of steroids to handle flare-ups so that has to be heavily documented for any athlete that is getting tested for performance.
Now there are drugs that are actually used to calm a person down to help improve performance in accuracy for competitions such as shooting or archery. So, not only are they testing for drugs that speed up performance, they are now testing for drugs that calm.
Some athletes have a condition known as Attention Deficit Disorder that requires them to take medication that could falsify a urine test taken for doping. This is one of the many conditions that have to be documented by physicians to ensure they are not abusing the drug and so the athlete can take the medication they need to focus while knowing if they went into a random drug test, it could fail the NCAA standards. It is all about documentation and balance.
As you can see there are many drugs that are listed on the “Performance Enhancing Drug” list that actually are prescribed to an every day person for medical needs. It is when someone else, who doesn’t have the disease, abuses it that there is an issue. Navigating through those difficult waters could be overwhelming and costly.
Eric Walter
Source:
Group 4-Sport Management Seminar 