patch70 said:
Badger South said:
snip
I know -nothing- about the pro cyclist blood doping scene, not even one
scrap.
snip
Sports physicians do believe that there is a noticeable drop in
performance for elite athletes if they donate blood. Thus, most blood
doping elite athletes would prefer to use homologous rather than
autologous blood.
As stated above, blood does not store particularly well so it wouldn't
be very effective to donate prior to the season for autologous use.
Also, if an athlete did use autologous blood, their haematocrit level
would be unlikely to lead to a positive result for a high Hct. Either
they would keep it under the legal level or else they would haemodilute
with lots of fluids (IV or oral) prior to the test.
One thing we might be missing...
Though most donor programs only allow donation every 8 weeks, this does
-not- necessarily mean they could not donate again in one week, or that
this would harm a normal donor in any way (at 228lbs, I could easily give 2
units of blood and in 3 days go out and ride my usual routes, and even show
improvement typical of newbies...
IOW, your red cells return to normo-static levels -very- quickly. You give
200cc of packed cells from an 8-10 liter WB blood volume and it's really
nothing...the body is replacing it from the spleen, and the bonemarrow is
cranking almost immediately.
Studies...are done with a goal in mind. Various quantities of blood
donated, treadmills run...unless you're saying you -are- a sports
physician, and have run such a controlled study, what they -believe- can
be, um, anecdotal. "Oh, don't go donating blood before a race to get pizza
and T-shirt at the Red Cross...it will make you run slower than molassas
tomorrow" type of thing. Heh.
Actually, -improvement- in an 'elite athlete' could be theorized as a
result of donating a few hundred cc of blood. Decreased viscosity, improved
turnover of older cells, iron load dimished...yadda. yadda.
180cc of packed cells, or in a 'pediatric donation', 90ccs would not even
be measurable, the the athlete might say 'whoa, I feel tired..it would be
90% psychological'. Do this 3 times over a month, and you have a spare
unit. Add 270cc of auto blood to an athlete the night before a race, and
the hct might go up 1%. Give 450cc (5 mini units collected once per week
available with 7 days left on exp. date), hct might go up 2%.
The athlete would -not- notice 5 donations over 35 days of 90cc. The body
may hypercompensate.... We sometimes draw 10cc tubes from sick pts, 4 of
them every day for a week just to monitor blood in majorly sick ppl.
Even among a group like those tiny elite cyclists, most of them weigh
135lbs to 170lbs, (guess). Pediatric pts are typically 80lbs or less.
So while blood is important to cyclists, and higher hct is important, and
giving exogenous blood will boost the body, the flip side..._giving_
90-180cc of packed blood will not cause an equal and noticeable 'decrease'
in performance.
IOW, you -get- 2 units of prbc, the hct goes up 1-2%, the TT time goes down
30-45 seconds.
You _donate_ 0.5 to 1 unit of blood, the hct stays the same, the TT time
stays the same. Splitting hairs, hct might go from 45.5% to 45.4% with a
couple hundred cc of prbc donated. TT time might go down 1/2 second or not
at all by the following day. Picking times out of the air, but it's not a
comparable sitch between giving and getting.
You say it -is- homologous administration for state of the art in the
cycling world, b/c you are an insider, run a lab, race director, MD, and
-know- this, I say fine, no prob. Thanks.
But -what- you gave as reasons? uh not so much with the true.
If you are a fan and are conjecturing, then I'm saying I was a
professional, though in the blood bank field, and not the -cycling- field
per se, and -know- absolutely the factoids I'm giving you are not only
true, I did them every day. I ran an apheresis service in addition, was
certified, and licensed.
No big deal, fun to discuss.
-B
