asthma in pro cycling

I think you might be
I think you might be approaching this from the wrong end…

Here is a medication which assists in losing weight and developing muscle.
Here is a medication which can be legally prescribed for an apparently common illness.
Here is a medication with a short and predictable half life.

Here is a sport where weight loss is acknowledged by everyone to be a most helpful determining factor in performance.

Here is a sport with a long history of non-medical drug use.

Why would a rider not use it?

We could have had exactly the same conversation 20 years ago about EPO; developed to treat anaemia in people with chronic renal failure, not to win bike races; we would struggle to find any research in the same way.

As an aside, look up ‘salbutamol tablets weight loss’ in google…

I think anything that reduces
I think anything that reduces body fat and helps to develop lean muscle mass might just enhance performance in road cycling.

If you want to look at longitudinal studies regarding cortisone use I suggest watching pro cycling videos from the last 20 odd years or so. Then read ‘Breaking the Chain’ by Willy Voet, ‘The Secret Race’ by Tyler Hamilton and spend some time sorting the wheat from the chaff in the Clinic forum on Cycling news.

It’s a dirty sport and has been since 1886.

When I was racing someone suggested that putting raw ginger in your cycling shoes would help keep your feet warm while winter training. A number of people turned up on the next club run smelling like Ginger Nuts. If amateurs will do that for a small perceived benefit, imagine what pros will do to keep and or improve their employment prospects.

Clenbuterol was used in animals to produce leaner meat; less fat, more muscle. Salbutamol is closely related and has a shorter half life. You won’t find studies which confirm it in the same way you won’t find studies (other than a couple of single person samples) that demonstrate how EPO helps to win the Tour.

We are talking about off the record, under the counter, against medical advice use of medication; people tend not to test this kind of thing in any reproducible way.

Trouble is that no-one has
Trouble is that no-one has demonstrated that ergogenic drugs enhance performance in events like road cycling. Here the weight of an athlete is as important as the ability to produce power normally and hence while you may put on muscle mass, that may actually slow you down. Most of the studies I have seen with anabolic steroids look at very short efforts, similar to weight training.

but your impression of a
but your impression of a “performance boost” is simply your body actually responding to the medication and working as its supposed to if you hadnt been asthmatic.

that isnt the effect a non asthmatic would have taking the same inhaler, when I have an asthma attack and I have to use my inhaler, my performance boost is I can breathe again.

Ive taken asthma medication, and even corticosteroids, they certainly dont aid dieting, one of the side effects is water retention, there maybe some placebo effect pro athletes believe they are getting just because so many non asthmatics believe its a performance enhancing drug.

as to why so many pro cyclists get asthma, two reasons, firstly if you are diagnosed with asthma, cycling is one of the few sports its recommended you try because its low impact low-moderate intensity and having asthma does give you an advantage in learning to control your breathing properly, secondly pro cyclists mostly suffer exercise induced asthma, largely because of their training regimes, if you train in cold weather temps below 5C, and you breath that air in through your mouth which after x many hours training on the road is inevitable, your airways are very sensitive tissue that doesnt like 5C cold air being forced across it, and it constricts, or even scars, the airways narrow, you get an asthma attack. Its exactly the same as an allergen asthma attack, its just the trigger thats the same. The more you ride in the cold and force cold air down your airways, the more damage you do, the more the airways constrict, the more asthma attacks you get.

I think that’s right; the
I think that’s right; the drug is used as a weight control/fat loss/potentially lean muscle building agent in that it releases fat and drives up your metabolic rate to burn it. The short half life means you can use it almost as a training aid then 3-4 hours later not be caught by testing.

Having a TUE relating to asthma seems to me to be a kind of get-out-of-jail-free excuse if you do happen to get busted for it.

I’ve administered this drug for years to other folk, and always been aware of the rise in heart rate that it causes, but didn’t know it could be used in this way.

daddyELVIS wrote:Here’s an

daddyELVIS wrote:

Here’s an interview with a coach from the Nike Oregon Project:

http://www.runnersworld.com/elite-runners/former-nike-oregon-project-coach-not-surprised-by-doping-allegations

A good read and gives some clues about modern doping. This comment is quite telling:

“For instance, getting a Therapeutic Use Exemption for an inhaler can be very easily done. If I take you and run your ass up and down the stairs five or six or seven times, then take you into the doctor, you’re going to be asthmatic and fail the test, and you’re going to be allowed to take an inhaler.

Don’t get me wrong—some of these drugs make life better for certain groups. But if you’re a healthy person, why the hell would you need an inhaler? I was somewhat concerned about that.”

I think what we’re saying here is that a inhaler for asthma relief is really not going to do any good to a healthy (non-asthmatic) pro-cyclist. That’s what the science i’ve dug up so far says.