Blood doping has become a huge part of sports. Athletes and scientists are constantly exploring new ways of increasing performance. Blood doping isn’t exactly new but we are finding ways to alter chemically what can be done naturally. A great notoriety has been achieved by this process for what it can do in endurance events. It increases red blood cell mass therefore increasing the amount of oxygen that can be delivered to your muscles. There are variety of ways this can be achieved. This subject was brought to my attention at the last Winter Olympics when some Norwegian cross country skiers were disqualified because they had received injections of their own blood just before the competition was due to start,1 to 7 days. The procedure takes several weeks altogether. The blood is extracted from the athlete, centrifuge, then frozen, which halts the aging of the cells. Then a week or less before the competition the blood is reinfused. What this achieves was a higher red blood cell count allowing the muscles to utilize more oxygen, increasing endurance. In some cases it has been shown to increase endurance as much as 30%(Robertson, 1982).

During intense exercise, oxygen gets depleted, the muscles then cannot act at their greatest potential. This lack of oxygen causes the muscles to produce lactic acid which in turn will cause muscle soreness and brings about fatigue. Any kind of blood doping will cause the muscles to increase their oxygen levels and extending the amount of time before the body is fatigued. As you can see this is a tremendous benefit to athletes especially in endurance events.

There are some legal and safe ways to achieve the same sorts of results the Norwegian skiers were hoping to achieve without resorting to infusions. The method that comes most readily to mind is high altitude living/low altitude training. Aerobic capacity can be increased in this way because living or sleeping at high altitude stimulates a hormone in the body called erythropoietin, which causes more red blood cells produced. Athletes who live and train at high altitudes do not get as good results they would if they trained at sea level because they can’t absorb as much oxygen in the thinner air. Endurance athletes have been utilizing this procedure for years. It does not produce such dramatic results as blood infusions do but it does it without the risks. One scientist from the University of Colorado, Boulder, named Igor Gamow created what he calls a High Altitude Bed, an invention that simulates sleep up to an elevation of 18,000 feet.. There is a vacuum that pulls air out of the chamber and the "altitude" can be adjusted based on the air vacuumed from the chamber. This process is called holistic blood doping and is both legal and safe and can increase hemoglobin concentration up to 23%.

There have been cases where blood doping has gone wrong like in the case of the 1984 U.S. Olympic cycling team. The results were a huge success, the team had not performed well in past Games, but because of this blood doping the team won a record nine medals. The bad news came afterward, the athletes did not use their own blood but the blood of others because they did not have the time before the competition to use their own. Some of the team members contracted hepatitis from the tainted blood. Also, not all parties agree that blood doping is a beneficial process. Some scientists believe that a large infusion of red blood cells increases blood viscosity, which cause a decrease in blood flow and cardiac output. Others say the heart is not designed to pump such thickened blood and can cause problems later such as phlebitis and septicemia.

During the eighties and nineties there was no easy way to determine if an individual was "blood doping". New and more sophisticated methods are constantly being applied to monitor individuals looking for an unfair advantage. Scientists will keep producing new undetectable methods while others will keep looking for new methods to track artificial performance enhancement. There will always be athletes who will use anything that will give them an advantage be it illegal, immoral, or dangerous.
 
 

References

Caitlin Don H., Murray Thomas H:Performance Enhancing Drugs, Fair Competition, and Olympic Sport. JAMA 1996;276:3:231-237.

ISLH XIVth International Symposium. Verbruggen H: The EPO Epidemic in Sport.

ISLH XIVth International Symposium . Cazzola M: Erythropoietin Pathophysiology, Clinical Uses of Recombinant Human Erythropoetin, and Medical Risks of its Abuse in Endurance Sports.

Gamow Igor R: Effect’s of Blood Doping and Gamow’s High Altitude Bed.(1982)