3 ms·
I think the question with drugs is slightly different. Nobody cares how much vitamin C you take, because although making sure you're not vitamin C deficient ha
by gwd 5y ago
I think the question with drugs is slightly different. Nobody cares how much vitamin C you take, because although making sure you're not vitamin C deficient has an advantage, at some point taking more doesn't help you at all; and if you take the maximum amount that your body will absorb, there are no health detriments. Same thing with creatine: taking creatine isn't "natural" in the sense that you'll end up with 2-3x as much in your system as you would "naturally"; but after a point, your body just stops using more; and if you take that amount, you won't have any health issues.
With anabolic steroids however, if there is a "maximum amount that your body will absorb", it's far beyond what causes long-term health problems. This leads to a Prisoner's Dilemma type situation, where if most competitors are taking dose X, and one person takes dose X+1, that one person get an advantage; but if all competitors take does X+1, nobody has an advantage, but they all suffer health consequences.
I don't inherently see a problem with any particular sport openly advertising that competitors may use up to dose X of any particular drug or steroid, where X has been reasonably shown to be a safe amount. The problem is, is it possible to test that only X has been taken, rather than X+1? If it's only possible to test that 0 (or a negligible amount) has been taken, then the only enforceable limit is 0; and an unenforced limit is effectively no limit at all.
- sandworm101 5y agoAll Olympic competitors sacrifice health for the sport. We are long past seeing them as healthy. The starvation diets in runners that lead to hormone shutdown are probably the best known example. Just as with many professional team sports, if you want to win you must accept lifelong consequences.