Antibiotics and performance

fred_hack said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth? Seems like it would be
hard to test a bunch of sick people taking antibiotics in a lab
environment.

I think it depends on the illness and the antibiotic. I had this happen
several months ago, performance dropped off by 1/2, though I felt normal
walking around. Dip in ability started on day three after beginning. Got
worse on day 9 of 10 day regime, then seemed to be better, returning to
normal after that.

This time, no drop in performance, but different antibiotic.

Thanks,
-Hoff

But, that's the type of illustration people always give, myself
included. There is no control for the performance drop that is due to
the drug and the drop that is due to the illness. Maybe you rode bad
because you were sick? I'm mostly curious if there is a basis in
medical research or pharacology for this statement, or if it's
something that bike racers say a lot, so it must be true.

fred_hack said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth? Seems like it would be
hard to test a bunch of sick people taking antibiotics in a lab
environment.

Eliminate illness as an uncontrolled variable: do a double blinded
experiment on healthy people: give antibiotics to one half and a
placebo to the other (neither half nor the people giving them the pills
knowing what they are taking) and monitor performance of both groups.
I'd guess this has been done, but don't know any references.

Nigel Grinter
Well-Spoken Wheels Inc.
www.wellspokenwheels.com

On 10 Nov 2005 16:51:11 -0800, "fred_hack" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth? Seems like it would be
hard to test a bunch of sick people taking antibiotics in a lab
environment.

Some antibiotics have secondary effects which may be amplified by
exertion; in such instances, you can induce additional problems by
riding while on them. Also, anything from the tetracycline group will
increase your chances of getting a nasty sunburn; in some cases, the
side effect continues for a week or more after the last dose was
consumed.
--
Typoes are a feature, not a bug.
Some gardening required to reply via email.
Words processed in a facility that contains nuts.

Quoted message said:

fred_hack said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth? Seems like it would be
hard to test a bunch of sick people taking antibiotics in a lab
environment.

Eliminate illness as an uncontrolled variable: do a double blinded
experiment on healthy people: give antibiotics to one half and a
placebo to the other (neither half nor the people giving them the pills
knowing what they are taking) and monitor performance of both groups.
I'd guess this has been done, but don't know any references.

No study references here, but antibiotics *could* kill off beneficial
gut bacteria. Diarrhea is a common complication:
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/amox_ad.htm (I picked amoxicillin
because it's near the beginning of the alphabet). Diarrhea will make it
tough to ride at any level.

Jeff

fred_hack said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth?

The infection hurts your body, not the anti-biotics.

Greets, Derk

JeffWills said:

No study references here, but antibiotics *could* kill off beneficial
gut bacteria. Diarrhea is a common complication:
http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/amox_ad.htm (I picked amoxicillin
because it's near the beginning of the alphabet). Diarrhea will make it
tough to ride at any level.

Especially for the person riding behind you!

Seriously, I have taken both Doxycycline (against Lyme) and Amoxicilline
over a longer period and never had diarrhea. Of course you can have this
problem, but you don't have to. If your body handles the anit-biotics
without any side effect the medicine itself won't influence performance.

It's bad for your body, though, to continue training whilst you have an
infection. It's potentially mortal, because you can end up with an
infection of the heart. This seems to happen more often than is widely
know. Even a simple throat ache should make you train less intensive or
even better: rest till th einfection has been cured.

Greets, Derk

fred_hack said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth? Seems like it would be
hard to test a bunch of sick people taking antibiotics in a lab
environment.

Is there a (cycling) Doctor in the house?????

Quoted message said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth? Seems like it would be
hard to test a bunch of sick people taking antibiotics in a lab
environment.

Being sick is not the only reason people take antibiotics.
Tetracycline is commonly prescribed to control acne. People who
travel to countries where sanitation and water treatment are poor
often take antibiotics prophylactically.

Cattle and poultry are fed antibiotics to help fatten them up for
slaughter and to control infections in the poor conditions under which
they are raised. Where do you think those antibiotics end up? They
end up in your food.

How about a nurse, I do have a lot of initials after my name and I
stayed in a holiday inn express once.

It is always about acclimatization. What is your body used to. Kidneys
usually excrete antibiotics(ABX). The liver metabolizes them, blood
stream carries them, Dying bacteria release toxins into the blood when
exposed to ABX's. There are a thousand ways of effecting the body but
the net is less total energy to go around.

Here is a myth. "The medical community knows how every medication
administraion will turn out." HAH! No, we dont. Every medication is an
experimen and we dont know how it will effect you personally. We hope
it does what the package insert says it will. Illness is always about
some stressor affecting the body and antibiotics are their own stress.

(ABX)They happen to be elimanating some other stress so the total net
is improved health. Every drug costs something physiologically. If you
are on an antiobiotic, your natural well-tuned immune system has failed
and is already trying to tell you to slow down. Here is one more reason
to be careful when on antibiotics. If they enhanced performance, we
would have great scandals. Not like now of course.

666.org said:

Cattle and poultry are fed antibiotics to help fatten them up for
slaughter and to control infections in the poor conditions under which
they are raised. Where do you think those antibiotics end up? They
end up in your food.

yeah, and it's a realy shame. Should be forbidden immediately. We'll all end
up with bacterial infections that can't be controlled by antibiotics any
more. Luckily, I saw a documentary on Phage treatment in Georgia (not the
US!) where viruses are used to kill bacteria.

http://www.phagetherapy.com/ptlinks.html

I saw a US fireman in this doc, whose foot would be amputated in the US
because antibiotics didn't work any more and he was cured in Georgia using
Phage therapy.

Greets, Derk

Hoffer said:

Nevertheless, my point was I already had the infection and was riding just
fine and the dip in ability didn't occur until 3-4 days after starting the
antibiotic. That tends to sway me towards the hypothesis that it was the
antibiotic, not the infection that caused the problem. Just one data
point.

I read an article in a cycling magazine special about health and the dr. who
wrote it says it's not the antibiotics, but the illness itself that causes
severe fatigue.

Greets, Derk

fred_hack said:

But, that's the type of illustration people always give, myself
included. There is no control for the performance drop that is due to
the drug and the drop that is due to the illness. Maybe you rode bad
because you were sick? I'm mostly curious if there is a basis in
medical research or pharacology for this statement, or if it's
something that bike racers say a lot, so it must be true.

Nevertheless, my point was I already had the infection and was riding just
fine and the dip in ability didn't occur until 3-4 days after starting the
antibiotic. That tends to sway me towards the hypothesis that it was the
antibiotic, not the infection that caused the problem. Just one data point.

Thanks,
Hoff

Derk said:

Hoffer said:

Nevertheless, my point was I already had the infection and was riding just
fine and the dip in ability didn't occur until 3-4 days after starting the
antibiotic. That tends to sway me towards the hypothesis that it was the
antibiotic, not the infection that caused the problem. Just one data
point.

I read an article in a cycling magazine special about health and the dr. who
wrote it says it's not the antibiotics, but the illness itself that causes
severe fatigue.

Greets, Derk

The symptom wasn't severe fatigue. In fact there was no fatigue at all and
just walking around I felt fine. On the bike, I just did not have the
'oomph' and had to cut my speed in half and the time to 30 min. The illness
was just a mildly infected sebaceous gland that had been lanced. The
antibiotic was just to make sure that after the in-office surgery that
there's be no sequelae. So in my case, that one time, it was the
antibiotic.

Thanks,
Hoff

Hoffer said:

So in my case, that one time, it was the antibiotic.

The problem is that there's know way ever to be *certain* it was the
antibiotic, since you could also have caught a minor virus by chance during
that period.

Greetings, Derk

Derk said:

Hoffer said:

So in my case, that one time, it was the antibiotic.

The problem is that there's know way ever to be *certain* it was the
antibiotic, since you could also have caught a minor virus by chance during
that period.

Greetings, Derk

Ah, yes, a minor virus, with no other symptoms. Or perhaps my brake pad was
rubbing the rear wheel.

Thanks,
Hoff

Hoffer said:

Ah, yes, a minor virus, with no other symptoms. Or perhaps my brake pad
was rubbing the rear wheel.

Last year I noticed suddenly that my speed against the wind dropped from
28-30 km/h to about 20 km/h. I was riding at max. heartrate and couldn't go
any faster. Only about a week or 10 days later I got a throat infection,
but I am convinced that this performance drop had to do with the infection
I got later on.

I only say that what seems evident to be related doesn't always have to be
the cause of something. I don't say that it can't be the antibiotics you
took, I only say it still can have other causes.

Greetings, Derk

Hoffer said:

fred_hack said:

People always say that taking antibiotics hurts your race performance,
even at the tail end when you are feeling better. IS there any medical
basis for this, or is it just a cycling myth? Seems like it would be
hard to test a bunch of sick people taking antibiotics in a lab
environment.

I think it depends on the illness and the antibiotic. I had this happen
several months ago, performance dropped off by 1/2, though I felt normal
walking around. Dip in ability started on day three after beginning. Got
worse on day 9 of 10 day regime, then seemed to be better, returning to
normal after that.

This time, no drop in performance, but different antibiotic.

I think this is an important distinction -- antibiotics are very
different, some are extracted from natural sources, some are
synthesized, and the mechanisms they use to inhibit organisms vary greatly.

I have had 2, 5-week courses of (same) antibiotics this year. My illness
was a local infection (colon), and while the signs of
infection/inflammation diminished within days, my overall sense of
strength/endurance continued to decline while I was taking the
medication. It took weeks to get my strength back (after completing
courses).

I can't prove it, but I think my weakness was medication rather than
illness/deconditioning related. My 2 episodes were 7 mos. apart. Both
times I was on 2 drugs simultaneously, Flagyl and Levaquin, both are
relatively new synthetics, the latter being in the class known as
flouroquinolones, compounds with known common side effects. Powerful
drugs -- in combination they virtually sterilize your GI tract.

The good news is that my power (such as it was) returned (slowly) and
since each episode caused me to lose 10 lb, my climbing improved a bit.

Quoted message said:

Last year I noticed suddenly that my speed against the wind dropped from
28-30 km/h to about 20 km/h. I was riding at max. heartrate and couldn't
go
any faster. Only about a week or 10 days later I got a throat infection,
but I am convinced that this performance drop had to do with the infection
I got later on.

Seems like quite a delayed reaction, perhaps too much so to be related to
the gestation period of a cold or throat infection, but who knows? Maybe the
body's fighting it off for a while, relatively well, and then finally caves
in?

But for what it's worth, I've often noticed issues with my heart rate in the
day or two preceding a nasty cold or flu bug. Typically it (the heart rate)
just won't respond in a normal fashion; instead of revving up as you
increase effort, it tends to start too high and sometimes plateau at a lower
rate than normal, more quickly than normal. Or, there was one time when it
simply stayed way up there and just didn't want to settle down... at an
effort that should have been something around 140, it was near 160 despite
feeling like I was flat and not putting out a lot of horsepower.

Heart rate monitors are fascinating things; they give you a lot more
information than just how hard you're exercising. It takes a while, but you
start to see how they not only mirror how you're feeling at the moment, but
often presage what's to come. I waited way too many years to get one!

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles
www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

"Derk" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Hoffer said:

Ah, yes, a minor virus, with no other symptoms. Or perhaps my brake pad
was rubbing the rear wheel.

Last year I noticed suddenly that my speed against the wind dropped from
28-30 km/h to about 20 km/h. I was riding at max. heartrate and couldn't
go
any faster. Only about a week or 10 days later I got a throat infection,
but I am convinced that this performance drop had to do with the infection
I got later on.

I only say that what seems evident to be related doesn't always have to be
the cause of something. I don't say that it can't be the antibiotics you
took, I only say it still can have other causes.

Greetings, Derk