- Woo, morning trainiacs.
Just finishing up a Team Trainiac Zwift Ride.
Awesome turnout today.
145 people cruising around.
We had Run-Watopia.
So you might've seen recently the pro-triathlete
Andrew Starykowicz has been popped for doping.
But in my opinion, with fairly questionable causes,
reasons, circumstances.
And it got me thinking.
If it's that easy for him to get banned for a year
and have to give back prize money for doping,
how easy could it be for us to encounter that ill fate?
So we went through that,
and it's a lot easier than you think.
I'll give you some tips.
(upbeat music)
All right, so here's what happened with Andrew Starykowicz,
old Starkey.
Back in 2019, he became a little bit ill.
The doctor that he was working with
prescribed him a prescription to address the illness,
and this was before several races.
Now, Starkey, knowing that these were prohibited drugs,
they needed a therapeutic use exemption, a TUE.
We're gonna talk about that a lot.
He ended up applying for it and then going to race.
Now, what happened was
a lot of paperwork has to go through
to get a therapeutic use exemption.
He still continued to race.
The exemption came back after the races.
Now, he's in a situation where they've gone back and said,
you raised without a therapeutic use exemption
with banned substances,
and because the therapeutic use exemption was denied
due to the fact that there was an alternative medicine
that could have been prescribed,
he now has to pay back
the winnings that he ended up accumulating
in those several races.
And take a look at his social media profile
over the next few weeks,
he might be putting out some sort of a statement
about how it happened in his own words.
I'm sure I'm paraphrasing
and missing something a little bit,
but that's kind of the understanding that I've got.
Now, this begs the question,
if it's that easy that you get sick,
you get a prescription
and then all of a sudden you are doping,
even though it's something that you can get
a therapeutic use exemption for,
I started thinking,
what are all the things that we triathletes as age groupers
are commonly doing that isn't acceptable?
And when I started looking into it,
there's a lot.
And what I wanna do is give you some guidelines
about things that are very likely for you to happen
knowingly, unknowingly,
but now that you know about them,
you can at least deal with it in such a way
that you won't be penalized.
First thing, let's start off with prescription testosterone.
This is a really, really common thing
that is starting to be prescribed
for particularly older adult men
as we start getting close to 40 and older,
especially endurance athletes
who end up getting their hormones beat up.
There was actually a study done of Ironman Kona athletes
that showed more than half the athletes that were tested
had sub-optimal hormone levels.
And my speculation is that
this actually skews more good than the average population,
because these athletes are in Kona,
they are a fair bit, you know, resilient.
They can get through some of these things
and push through and still be functional.
I think that it's very, very common
for endurance athletes to have hormone issues.
I myself have hormone issues.
Now the thing is that you can,
yes, get testosterone prescribed.
Just because it's prescribed
doesn't mean that it is acceptable.
You have to have a TUE, a therapeutic use exemption
that matches up with a doctor's prescription
for this to be okay.
So is it okay?
It can be.
Is it always okay?
No, you have to jump through some hoops
to make sure that when you're addressing your health
and improving your hormones,
you are doing so in a way that is approved.
Next thing, B12.
Yeah. Well, it's not actually that B12 itself is bad.
Thank goodness,
because when I dig into a lot of friends and fellow athletes
whose biomarkers I can review,
B12 is something that is really commonly low
in endurance athletes,
particularly in female endurance athletes
from what I've seen.
So it's not actually the B12 that's banned,
but what is banned is cobalt.
And in a lot of B12 supplements,
cobalt has trace amounts in it.
So what you need to do is,
I mean, essentially look at the history
of the company that's manufacturing it,
see if there are traces of cobalt in the ingredient.
And what we've got here is a situation where
you have a supplement that a lot of people need
that can often be tainted with something that is banned
and you might not know that you are actually ingesting it.
How to deal with that.
Look for companies who are banned substance free certified
and have that history of,
well, essentially no history of showing tainted products.
Next is inhalers.
Inhalers, even if being used to treat asthma
are banned at all times.
That is unless you have a therapeutic use exemption,
which you can get approved.
But even at this the amount that you can take
is governed by USADA.
What USADA says is that,
in order to calculate how many puffs you can have per day,
you need to find the medication and dosage on your inhaler
then multiply it by the number of puffs per day
that you have been prescribed.
Then compare that to the dosage
of what has permitted dosage range.
As an example, albuterol is commonly delivered
in dosages of 90 micrograms per actuation.
You might see 90 MCGs per actuation or just 90 MCGs.
This means you're getting 90 micrograms per puff.
(whoosh)
The water permitted dosage is 800 MCGs over 12 hours,
which means you could use up to eight puffs in 12 hours
and still stay within the permitted dosage range.
But my take on this is what happens if you need more?
Too bad, so sad according to these rules.
Next is fertility drugs and insulin.
Yeah.
Now not all fertility drugs
and insulin medications are banned,
but they fall within the category
of hormone and metabolic modulators,
things that change your hormones and metabolism.
A lot of these modulators are sold on bodybuilding websites
under the headline SARMs, you might see.
Now, those you absolutely do not wanna take.
When it comes to insulin, you can take it.
Again, you need a therapeutic use exemption,
which is the same for female athletes
who are taking clomiphene for fertility purposes.
You need a therapeutic use exemption for this as well.
Next, donating blood.
Now, donating blood, I'll say that.
That is totally okay,
but the act of putting blood in and out
starts to end up running into some,
yeah, some different areas.
For example, donating blood, okay.
If you're on dialysis,
again, you need a therapeutic use exemption.
If you are donating, say plasma, like in my case,
I have really rare blood as a man to have O negative blood,
which is what I have.
Apparently I'm like one in 20,000.
So there are actually companies here locally
that pay a lot of money for my blood.
I know.
I sold it during university.
I was poor.
But this is prohibited
because the donors own red blood cells,
my blood is taken out,
they separate it from the plasma,
put my red blood cells back in,
and then it's mixed with other products
to help put it in and assimilate it back with my body.
Totally not okay.
Now, I wasn't doing triathlon at the time,
but I can tell you back when I was doing that,
that I really never felt any sort of
performance enhancement,
and it was something that I did for a few bucks,
and because it was something that helped.
I think it was helping mothers who lost a lot of blood
in childbirth.
I believe that was what I was helping with.
It was like 15 years ago, I don't remember.
Related to that is the next issue that is fairly common
and becoming more common, vitamin IVs.
Vitamin IVs are an alternative to taking oral medication.
Oral medication specifically with pills,
with capsules, with liquid.
It tends to get broken down
by a lot of the stomach acids in the process of digestion,
so the bioavailability of everything that you ingest
from your daily vitamins
isn't really as much as if you just put it
straight into your system with a vitamin IV.
Makes perfect sense, right? Yeah.
And a lot of people have had great success with this.
I think that this is particularly useful
for endurance athletes who just about all of us
have some sort of a gut or digestive problem
because we spend so much time training and racing
with as much as 80% of the blood supply
that is meant to normally go to our stomach, in our limbs,
pumping our arms and legs as we are swimming,
biking or running.
So a lot of us have digestive problems,
and you would think that a vitamin IV
would be a good way to combat some of the issues
with nutrient deficiency.
Well, not so much.
The simple act of getting an IV,
particularly a vitamin IV, banned.
Can't do it.
Next is stimulants.
Now there's a belief that if you take too many energy gels
or too much Coke that has caffeine,
or you're taking caffeine pills in a race
and you get tested afterwards,
they are going to test for unacceptable amount of caffeine.
Now, I looked into the rules
and I didn't see anything that specifically said this,
and I found something that specifically said
that this is not the case,
it's really just a myth,
but what I did find is that
people who are being treated for ADHD with stimulants
for additional focus,
that there is another chance of problems
and that you need a therapeutic use exemption,
it's not just cool across the board.
If you know more about the caffeine
or just like general caffeine,
let me know in the description below,
but I couldn't find much on that.
Finally, the last thing, weed.
Now, it kind of goes without saying
that if you get tested for taking illegal drugs,
you're probably not gonna pass a blood test.
The thing about it is that there's this massive gray area
of some states and provinces in North America
making it legal, others still have it as illegal.
And with all of the benefits that athletes can derive,
with lower inflammation,
with lower stress hormones,
with improved sleep, for recovery,
like all of these things that do help a lot of people
with hemp CBD and THC,
it's very, very common
that a lot of people are starting to look to these products.
What you saw that says about it, however,
is that THC, banned.
And there's a lot of governing bodies
that haven't yet really adopted any sort of policies on CBD.
But the fact of the matter is that THC is still banned.
Now what happens is there's a lot of people
that might try to go with a governing body
that does allow CBD,
but because it's such a new industry,
there's a lot of CBD products
that still contain trace amounts of THC.
So it doesn't matter
if you have a therapeutic use exemption,
doesn't matter if you didn't know that it had THC in it,
if you test positive for THC,
you fail the blood test.
Now, here's the thing to know about all of this
as you're thinking about all of the things
that you could potentially get in trouble for.
Most of the time, the people that get tested are pros
or people who win age groups,
win overall races are competing,
and what they're taking or not taking
makes a big determinant on things like prize money,
like who qualifies for what, things like that.
But for the vast majority of us triathletes,
we aren't going to get blood tested.
So I'm not saying that it's okay
to go out and take performance enhancing drugs,
very, very much not.
What I'm saying is that don't let all of these,
I think in some cases,
little too stringent requirements
sway you from taking care of your health.
If you are somebody who is competing
for overall performances and funding and things like that,
you have to be very, very cautious of this,
rightfully so,
but if you're just a weekend warrior,
wants to go into a race here or there,
I would say you don't have to be merely as worried
about all of this and take care of your health first.
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