info. on EPO

[Pego]

Re: info. on EPO

To rigorously verify a pharmacological agent's efficacy, you need a representative sample and compare it to the placebo equally representative sample. Then you can hope that "everything else is the same", which even then usually isn't. When you throw several drugs in the mix, you've got nothing. Joeshmoe, that's what Asterix and the rest of us are trying to tell you, not that EPO is not a powerful agent.

[joeshmoe]

Re: info. on EPO

I know that it isn't so "proven" that you could do a write up in a scientific journal. that said, how about this quote from the artice

"IT WASN'T UNTIL I ADDED EPO to my diet, two weeks later, that I began to notice serious differences"

what he, and others who use this drug find out, is that the performance enhancment is greatest when using this drug, compared to growth hormone. obviously steriods may come close, but way too risky as far as getting caught. the athlete i know wouldn't even dream of using steriods as, he said, "i'd be busted easily." so, in conclusion, rigorously verified? no. anecdotally 'proven' with lab numbers to back it up? yes. one does recover slightly better with GH but only because it is/was undetectable was it in vogue. it reallydoesn't do enough for a distance runner. steroids? they might do plenty, but too risky for detection. epo? gauranteed results, with nearly no chance of detection, if played right.

take the maration trials for instance. if someone who q'd with a 2:17-2:19 hopped on epo for the 4 months prior to the trials, then got off 3-4 weeks before race day, they would have a legit shot at making the team. think i'm talkinbg out my rear? no way, the amount of hard training one could handle on epo could give that longshot a real chance at being top 3-5.

i suppose what i'm trying to say is, if stuart stevens had ONLY taken epo, he probably would have had almost the same exact performance benefit as he did experimenting with so many different combos (since he didn't do the GH right to begin with and didn't do the steriods for very long).

[Asterix]

Re: info. on EPO

Ah, so now we are starting to qualify just where EPO is top dog and other drugs are "useless". I'll definitely agree that the marathoner is going to get far better bang for his buck taking EPO than HGH, but I would think it's is fairly safe to say that the 100m man would be quite the opposite. In fact, in the latter case, I'd even posit that EPO is "next to useless" for him, throwers and football types.

That being said though, I still stick with the point Pego made with respect to the experiment in the linked article, regardless of your friend's anecdotal experience, no one can say definitively what benefit he derived from any of the individual drugs in his smorgasboard.

[joeshmoe]

Re: info. on EPO

that's why i said FOR A DISTANCE RUNNER it is the best bang for the buck. that would insinuate that it would not be ideal for a sprinter (i.e., a NON-DISTANCE RUNNER). obviously, something that helps with the addition of muscle mass would be more beneficial to an anaerobic type than to an aerobic type. and, again obvious, an anaerobic type would not derive the same benefits from epo that an aerobic type athlete would.

simple fact is, all we are ever going to have is "anecdotal" "evidence", since nobody is ever going to do a scientific study on the performance enhancing benefits of epo, GH, etc. all we will ever see is that the drug of choice for distance runners (by way of what is most widely abused (through rumor, mostly) and what the largest percentage of TOP LEVEL athletes are busted for) is epo (or darbo, or aranesp, etc). if this person makes the oly team, perhaps ther ewill be a way to post it without revealing who it is, and we can then debate all over again whether or not it is "proven" that it has the greatest effacicy (sp?). just kidding, i'm tired debating drugs.

joe