Blood Doping

The purpose of this bioblog is to find out what the process, "blood doping" really is. I'd like to desrcibe some of my views on the issue regarding to blood doping and with sports/competitions. Blood Doping is pretty much the the increase of RBC's otherwise known as red blood cells which gives more oxygen to the muscles which in turn gives energy to an athletes performance in sports/activities. Yet this sounds like a marvelous idea, there are always complications and imperfections when it comes to new methods.

As said in the website below, I'll use this as my first example. The story of how bikers bikers tried to increase their red blood cells, so they could have a boost in performance and agility.
Before in the past, bikers removed their own blood, stored it, and transfused it back just before their race. Now this process, is not so easily used because contestants are tested to see if they have more RBC's than normal. By doing this, the use of "blood doping" has decreased.

We can also compare this to steroids, as it has the same purpose; to boost somebody's energy or willpower than normal. These two practices are let other athletes have an advantage on the other people who trained hard for that event/competition.

Some of the advantages of blood doping is as follows: it is highly effective to improve endurance exercise performance at the elite level of about 4%, It probably decreases the perception of effort during exercise to allow improved performance, and it may be easier to regulate hematocrit (percent composition RBCs of total blood volume) - a tightly regulated ceiling is placed on this value and is used for detection of both blood doping (and EPO use). (http://ezinearticles.com/?Blood-Doping-for-Boosting-Exercise-Performance&id=160863)

Some of the known possible problems and side effects of blood doping is as follows: decrease in cardiac output, a decrease in blood flow velocity, and a reduction in peripheral oxygen content. Some of the other problems that could happen while doing a transfusion is as follows: phlebitis (inflammation of a vein, usually in the legs), septicemia (presence of bacteria in the blood (bacteremia) and is often associated with other severe infections), hyperviscosity syndrome (a group of symptoms triggered by increase in the viscosity of the blood).

All these problems arise just from a simple transfusion. My views on this topic is that it is unfair to other athletes as they are given an extra boost of energy to win, while the real athletes give more than 100% to win fair and square.

References:

http://whyfiles.org/090doping_sport/3.html

http://www.tc.cc.tx.us/~mstorey/beckham.html

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/780258-overview

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001355.htm

http://ezinearticles.com/?Blood-Doping-for-Boosting-Exercise-Performance&id=160863