Why the heck is it so hard to find some good EPO nowadays?



Has anyone ever really even tried EPO? How much does it really help / cost? It's probably not something I would consider unless I really started to get serious about racing.
 
WINGNUTT said:
Has anyone ever really even tried EPO? How much does it really help / cost? It's probably not something I would consider unless I really started to get serious about racing.
cost nothing! if you can get to train at altitude during your training sessions, or simulated, when i used to run i used to have ****** i cant rememer what it was called, but it restricted air flow by 30%.
 
closesupport said:
cost nothing! if you can get to train at altitude during your training sessions, or simulated, when i used to run i used to have ****** i cant rememer what it was called, but it restricted air flow by 30%.

There's no evidence that training at altitude increases red blood cell count/haematocrit/haemoglobin etc. Performance increases are small and seem to result from increased lactate buffering capacity and possibly other intramuscular adaptions at the cellular level.

Restricting your air flow while you train is bizarre and counter-productive. That's why I take my asthma medication.
 
Roadie_scum said:
There's no evidence that training at altitude increases etc. Performance increases are small and seem to result from increased lactate buffering capacity and possibly other intramuscular adaptions at the cellular level.

Restricting your air flow while you train is bizarre and counter-productive. That's why I take my asthma medication.
who said anything about red blood cell count/haematocrit/haemoglobin, http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/K/KidneyHormones.html,
Erythropoietin >>to increase the production of red blood cells. Stimuli such as bleeding or moving to high altitudes (where oxygen is scarcer) trigger the release of EPO. << line one,

maybe you need to give sports science info a browse, more so the fact of live hi train low the effects and drawbacks.

http://www.sportsci.org/traintech/altitude/wgh.html

what asthma medication are you on. probonol, di-proprionate or fluticasone proprionate. maybe the good ol trusty ventolain inhailer with pulmicourt. brycanyl <- which i don't like cause it makes me shake as a side affect.
 
closesupport said:
who said anything about red blood cell count/haematocrit/haemoglobin, http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/K/KidneyHormones.html,
Erythropoietin >>to increase the production of red blood cells. Stimuli such as bleeding or moving to high altitudes (where oxygen is scarcer) trigger the release of EPO. << line one.

i beg to differ.!

You can beg all you like but you won't be right. Where do you find all these random links?

The very link you posted to states that EPO increases haematocrit. In testing at the AIS (research has been published - go look it up) no increase in haematocrit was found during altitude training. That is an old hypothesis which is beginning to look very weak.

Maybe, just maybe, long term living at altitude stimulates red blood cell growth. This isn't clear and certainly doesn't equate with the benefits to athletic performance of synthetic RhEPO.
 
Roadie_scum said:
You can beg all you like but you won't be right. Where do you find all these random links?

The very link you posted to states that EPO increases haematocrit. In testing at the AIS (research has been published - go look it up) no increase in haematocrit was found during altitude training. That is an old hypothesis which is beginning to look very weak.

Maybe, just maybe, long term living at altitude stimulates red blood cell growth. This isn't clear and certainly doesn't equate with the benefits to athletic performance of synthetic RhEPO.
not random links, i look for the hormones related, from when i studied human biology and the endocrine system.

http://www.sportsci.org/news/news9703/AISblood.html RhEPO these levels you reffering to or even

TESTS FOR EPO ABUSE

[size=-2]Will G Hopkins PhD, Physiology and Physical Education, University of Otago, Dunedin 9001, New Zealand. Email: will.hopkins=AT=otago.ac.nz. Sportscience 4(2), sportsci.org/jour/0002/inbrief.html#EPO, 2000 (1051 words)[/size]


[size=+2]E[/size]PO (erythropoietin) is a hormone produced by the kidneys. It travels via the circulation to the bone marrow, where it keeps the supply of red cells ticking over. More EPO means more red cells, which boost endurance performance by transporting more oxygen to the muscles. A sojourn at real or simulated altitude is a safe and legal way for an athlete to get more EPO. Injections of EPO are even more effective: athletes can expect enhancements in endurance performance a massive 5% or more (Sawka et al., 1996; Birkeland et al., 2000). But injections of EPO can make the blood so thick with red cells that it clots throughout the circulation and kills the athlete. Amongst cyclists alone EPO abuse is thought to have caused 20 sudden deaths in recent years. Not surprisingly, EPO is on the IOC's list of banned substances.
[size=+2][/size]Unfortunately there has been no dependable and fair test for EPO abuse. The International Cycling Union (UCI) now tests for the thicker blood by measuring the proportion of red cells (the hematocrit or packed-cell volume) in a blood sample. By itself, this test is not a good indicator of EPO abuse, because a few athletes have a naturally high hematocrit, while others can get a high proportion from altitude training. A cyclist exceeding the upper limit is therefore not banned for EPO abuse, but is simply not permitted to compete because of the health risk. In any case, cyclists can cheat the test. When told they are to be tested, apparently they have 10 minutes to report to the medical team. Why 10 minutes? A cynical informant claims that's long enough for an athlete to run 500 ml of saline into a vein. By diluting the blood, the saline immediately brings the hematocrit down by a few percent. The normal hematocrit for "clean" elite cyclists is around 44% (Saris et al., 1998; Schumacher et al., 2000). So it's possible for a cyclist to take enough EPO to increase the hematocrit to around 52%, then infuse saline just before the test to bring the hematocrit back below the limit of 50% (or 51%, to allow for error of measurement). As a bonus, the saline infusion itself almost certainly enhances performance in long hot events like the Tour de France.
You can't really blame the athletes for cheating, or the UCI for allowing the cheating to continue. Selfish behavior by athletes and their sporting bodies is driven by genes that evolution can't eliminate from the gene pool of social animals. Those of us who inherit the genes are driven to cheating when we figure the rewards outweigh the risks. Sure, but one of the rules of public competitive sport is that we must catch and punish the cheats. What to do in the case of EPO abuse?
A better test would help. Right now there are two on offer: a urine test and a blood test. The urine test, which has just been published in Nature (Lasne and de Ceaurriz, 2000), is based on the technique of immunoblotting to directly detect the artificial "recombinant" EPO that the drug companies produce for treatment of patients. The authors of the test first showed that it worked on urine from patients taking recombinant EPO, then they turned their attention to frozen samples of urine from 102 cyclists in the 1998 Tour de France. A routine test for EPO revealed 28 positives. When the authors immunoblotted the 14 samples with the highest concentration, all were positive for recombinant EPO. If we assume at least half of the remaining 14 were positive, at least 20% of competitors abused EPO during or immediately before the Tour.
Scientists at the Australian Institute of Sport have been working on the blood test for the last couple of years, and they're hoping the International Olympic Committee will adopt it for the games in Sydney. The test is based on detecting the effects of EPO on red cells, rather than EPO itself. The AIS team have found that a sensitive and specific indicator of EPO injections is an increase in the number of immature red cells (reticulocytes) in the blood. By analyzing the properties of these immature cells with state-of-the-art equipment, they can distinguish between athletes who have injected EPO and those who have had a natural increase in red cells from real or simulated exposure to altitude.
How good are these tests? My guess--and it is a guess, because no-one at the AIS will comment--is that the urine will test positive only if the last injection of EPO was within a few days of the test. Any earlier and the EPO will have disappeared from the circulation and therefore from the urine. The blood test might detect an injection within the last couple of weeks, because that's about how long it takes the new red cells to mature. If the IOC decides to use either of these tests at the Sydney Olympics, athletes will simply stop injecting a week or so before arriving at the Games village. The ergogenic effect of a course of EPO injections lasts several months, because that's the lifetime of red cells in the circulation of athletes training hard. So the cheats will win again, but hopefully for the last time. The real value of these tests will be apparent when they are used for random testing between the Olympics. Athletes at Sydney will seem to be clean. Athletes at Athens really will be clean.
updatered.GIF


Sept 8: The blood and urine tests will both be used at the Sydney Olympics. Any athlete who tests positive in both tests will be disqualified. Some action may be taken against athletes who pass the urine test but fail the blood test.[size=-1]Birkeland KI, Stray-Gundersen J, Hemmersbach P, Hallen J, Haug E, Bahr R (2000). Effect of rhEPO administration on serum levels of sTfR and cycling performance. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 32, 1238-1243[/size][size=-1]Lasne F, de Ceaurriz J (2000). Recombinant erythropoietin in urine. Nature 405, 635 [/size]
[size=-1]Saris W, Senden JMG, Brouns F (1998). What is a normal red-blood cell mass for professional cyclists? Lancet 352, 1758[/size]


[size=-1]Sawka[size=+1] [/size]MN, Joyner MJ, Miles DS, Robertson RJ, Spriet LL, Young AJ (1996). The use of blood doping as an ergogenic aid. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 28(6), R1-R8 [/size]


[size=-1]Schumaker YO, Grathwohl D, Barturen JM, Wollenweber M, Heinrich L, Schmid A, Huber G, Keul J (2000). Haemoglobin, haematocrit and red blood cell indices in elite cyclists. Are the control values for blood testing valid? International Journal of Sports Medicine 21, 380-385[/size]


[size=-1]See[size=+1] [/size]also previous articles on this topic by Stephen Seiler and Dave Martin under Blood Tests on our Sports Medicine[/size][size=-1] index[/size][size=-1] page. [/size]


why RhEPO is much better than altitude training.
 
closesupport said:
not random links, i look for the hormones related, from when i studied human biology and the endocrine system.

Where did you study these things? At a university?


That's not a sentence and I don't understand what you are talking about (because you have not expressed yourself clearly). I have read the article you linked to before. It has no relevance to training at altitude.
 
maybe you need to give sports science info a browse, more so the fact of live hi train low the effects and drawbacks.

http://www.sportsci.org/traintech/altitude/wgh.html

This information is outdated, not peer reviewed and not published in a respectable journal. The published information (largely from the AIS) on the effects of altitude training contradicts the assertions in that article regarding the magnitude of the performance enhancing effect and the action that mediates it.

You cannot get an education by googling every word you don't understand. You need to learn to be critical and systematic.

what asthma medication are you on. probonol, di-proprionate or fluticasone proprionate. maybe the good ol trusty ventolain inhailer with pulmicourt. brycanyl <- which i don't like cause it makes me shake as a side affect.

Ventolin and QVAR preventer.
 
Roadie_scum said:
Where did you study these things? At a university?



That's not a sentence and I don't understand what you are talking about (because you have not expressed yourself clearly). I have read the article you linked to before. It has no relevance to training at altitude.
just read the links to the page, saves me typing it out, reasons why RhEPO is not a clever idea, but a natural introduction of EPO as from training methods, erm. like training in colarado at altitude then traveling to dallas to further complete training.

rather than put ones health at risk! erm i ain't to good at english, i never said i was, i prefare more practical aproach to things. i hate typing, i did enough at college. they aren't words that i don't understand, there words there links to pages that others have already typed, aves me a job.

http://www.brianmac.demon.co.uk/articles/scni5a8.htm

so why don't you ask for real medication like fluticasone proprionate, you won't need the preventer. seretide 125mg 25 micrograms of salmeterol.

ask him weather i'm right or wrong... first find out who he is!
 
closesupport said:
just read the links to the page, saves me typing it out, reasons why RhEPO is not a clever idea, but a natural introduction of EPO as from training methods, erm. like training in colarado at altitude then traveling to dallas to further complete training.

You're right, supplementing hormones is a terrible idea when they are not clinically indicated. I had a further look at that sportsci.org site. It has some good people writing for it, but the information is a little dated. You need to look at the newer journals.

rather than put ones health at risk! erm i ain't to good at english, i never said i was, i prefare more practical aproach to things. i hate typing, i did enough at college.

I definitely agree that it's not worth putting health at risk by taking illegal performance enhancing substances. I think it would make reading your posts a little easier if you took more time with your typing, spelling and grammar. What did you study at college?

so why don't you ask for real medication like fluticasone proprionate, you won't need the preventer. seretide 125mg 25 micrograms of salmeterol.

1. I trust my doctor.
2. Seretide is a preventer.
 
Roadie_scum said:
You're right, supplementing hormones is a terrible idea when they are not clinically indicated. I had a further look at that sportsci.org site. It has some good people writing for it, but the information is a little dated. You need to look at the newer journals.



I definitely agree that it's not worth putting health at risk by taking illegal performance enhancing substances. I think it would make reading your posts a little easier if you took more time with your typing, spelling and grammar. What did you study at college?



1. I trust my doctor.
2. Seretide is a preventer.
its both,x3 times a day, i use instead of pulmicourt and ventaline, works better as well!

i studied telecommununications/Networking but my hobby is
sports science, human biology, medicine and anatomy, plus when i was at college i used to help the new students that where studying sports studies with there work. understanding there assignments and stuff, plus completing there work.
 
closesupport said:
its both,x3 times a day, i use instead of pulmicourt and ventaline, works better as well!

I know what it is.

i studied telecommununications/Networking but my hobby is
sports science, human biology, medicine and anatomy, plus when i was at college i used to help the new students that where studying sports studies with there work. understanding there assignments and stuff, plus completing there work.

I pity them.
 
Roadie_scum said:
I know what it is.



I pity them.
:D you pity them! its easier to explain when you have the question infront of you and have the ability to use the library, find them the source, for there answer, they just worded it there way. i'd find them what they need to know to start from. like you pointed out the internet isn't a good source, if you don't know what your looking for to start with. Anyone could write a website and fill it with nonscence.

they where all getting good marks, plus they came back for further help. i just ain't to good with english grammar nor maths and stuff, although i am english, i was more intrested in physics and biology at school, i didn't really want to know anything else.
 
closesupport said:
:D you pity them! its easier to explain when you have the question infront of you and have the ability to use the library, find them the source, for there answer, they just worded it there way. i'd find them what they need to know to start from. like you pointed out the internet isn't a good source, if you don't know what your looking for to start with. Anyone could write a website and fill it with nonscence.

they where all getting good marks, plus they came back for further help. i just ain't to good with english grammar nor maths and stuff, although i am english, i was more intrested in physics and biology at school, i didn't really want to know anything else.

As i've pointed out to you on several occasions it would help you so much more if you wrote coherent sentences that had a meaning and you had less random links to paragraphs of texts and websites. You don't have to have perfect grammar and spelling, i suspect many of my posts have incorrect grammar etc. however, at present, your posts look like the ramblings of a drunk and deranged non-english speaking person that are hard to understand (there is of course nothing wrong with being a non-english speaking person, and having just got back from france, i've found it easier to understand people speaking in french compared to your posts). i often wonder if you're just trolling.

You seem to frequently point to a text/passage/website of sports science information that is vaguely related to the thread being discussed, but never actually state what the point is. Thus, there's no coherency to your posts and no one knows what you mean. You couldn't possibly have helped students in the past, except to teach them not to write as you do!

It's irresponsible of you to start prescribing which medications people should take, by your own admission you're not a medic or in a related area. You don't know the patients history and you have a sketchy understanding at best of various medical and sports science issues.

ric
 
Roadie_scum said:
There's no evidence that training at altitude increases red blood cell count/haematocrit/haemoglobin etc. Performance increases are small and seem to result from increased lactate buffering capacity and possibly other intramuscular adaptions at the cellular level.

Restricting your air flow while you train is bizarre and counter-productive. That's why I take my asthma medication.

Just to clarify - I should have said no evidence that the changes are significant. There is some evidence that there are small changes. They are nowhere near the magnitude seen with administration of exogenous EPO, and unlikely to be the primary mediator of the (small) ergogenic effect of training at altitude.
 
Roadie_scum said:
Just to clarify - I should have said no evidence that the changes are significant. There is some evidence that there are small changes. They are nowhere near the magnitude seen with administration of exogenous EPO, and unlikely to be the primary mediator of the (small) ergogenic effect of training at altitude.
God! i start to type and my head goes blank, i know what i want to say but i can't put it into text.

I agree it is stated that there ain't as much improvement in using Altitude training, than there is in using EPO, but there is increase of haemogloblin, etc that you stated, was incorrect. but as for random links, how can a random link covering information start to finish on altitude training pro's and cons be unrelated?

but at the end of the day, it isn't a banned method like the use of RhEPO it works, it is effective. Plus also it isn't constituted as cheating. if we all went out and took performance enhancing drugs, what would the sport turn into, he did faster and better than i because he had more drugs available.

Training should be just that, the quality and quantity of training and performance made by our own natural ability. oppsed to how many vials you can manage to get through in a course of a week.

or would you recommend we all go out, purchase ourselves a good supply of Steroid like probonal or proprianate and Human Growth hormones to stack, with a good EPO (Sustanate), then we can all become champions, maybe even throw in a spot of androgens for good measure, with a balanced diet you'll see the increase in performance in no time.

Hey! Risk CJD, Heart failure and blood clotting? whats it matter you'd be a champion.

Plus i am english, just not to good with it. I also don't condone cheating.
 
closesupport said:
God! i start to type and my head goes blank, i know what i want to say but i can't put it into text.

I agree it is stated that there ain't as much improvement in using Altitude training, than there is in using EPO, but there is increase of haemogloblin, etc that you stated, was incorrect. but as for random links, how can a random link covering information start to finish on altitude training pro's and cons be unrelated?

The increase in endogenous EPO/haemoglobin is not found in a lot of studies. Where/if it does occur it is unlikely to be the primary mediator of performance enhancement. You said - 'want some EPO, just train at altitude' (or something similar). That is wrong. Under many different protocols endogenous EPO and haemoglobin is unchanged, or changed negligibly (does not reach scientific signifigance). Newer studies have repeatedly failed to find changes in blood parameters like these under protocols commonly used by athletes in altitude training.

The link was outdated and didn't address the issue I raised that endogenous EPO is unlikely to be responsible for the performance enhancing benefit received at altitude.

but at the end of the day, it isn't a banned method like the use of RhEPO it works, it is effective. Plus also it isn't constituted as cheating. if we all went out and took performance enhancing drugs, what would the sport turn into, he did faster and better than i because he had more drugs available.

It is marginally effective and has negative effects for some athletes. When you calculate the cost it probably isn't worthwhile for most. Probably has a place for elites, the very rich and people who live near mountains.

Training should be just that, the quality and quantity of training and performance made by our own natural ability. oppsed to how many vials you can manage to get through in a course of a week.

I don't recall saying anything different.

or would you recommend we all go out, purchase ourselves a good supply of Steroid like probonal or proprianate and Human Growth hormones to stack, with a good EPO (Sustanate), then we can all become champions, maybe even throw in a spot of androgens for good measure, with a balanced diet you'll see the increase in performance in no time.

We can't all be champions (unless we all play different sports). Think about it.

Why on earth do you think I'm advocating the use of illicit performance enhancing substances? I am saying that their effects are greater than that of other training manipulations like altitude, that doesn't mean I think they should be used.

Hey! Risk CJD, Heart failure and blood clotting? whats it matter you'd be a champion.

Um... ok...

I think the CJD you are referring to comes from HGH? That is only a risk with cadaver derived HGH, not the synthetic product.

Plus i am english, just not to good with it.

ok

I also don't condone cheating.

Nor I.