Food: Organic Doping

A potential 16% increase in stamina just by drinking juice from a vegetable.
I wonder how the the WADA will do to control this?

6 months ago Ryan_Liles 39 comments 0 recs |

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Anyone who can get that much beetroot juice

down each day deserves to be immune.

by Seahorse on Aug 10, 2009 11:10 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I think the science may be flawed.

Possibly the people who can do it have the stamina already.

by civetta on Aug 10, 2009 11:35 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Dean Downing claimed to be trying it on Twitter the other day.

Sounds totally foul to me!

"If I were World Road Race Champion, I would wear black shorts. That probably has more to do with me being on the wiser side of 30 and understanding better that the decisions I make now never really go away. White shorts would not be something I'd be proud of...." - David Millar, in Rouleur.

by Albertina on Aug 10, 2009 11:18 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

In the 70's & 80's it was common for riders in the peloton to use caffene suppositories!

How’s that for foul?

by Ryan_Liles on Aug 10, 2009 11:41 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

One word: eeeewwwwwww!

by Albertina on Aug 10, 2009 11:49 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

No one try this at home using nespresso-capsules

although I’m guessing there are are a fair number of idiots on those steroid-forums who have already.

by Jens on Aug 10, 2009 12:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

There was a story a few years ago about a woman who managed to get convicted...

…of manslaughter for giving her alcoholic husband a brandy enema. Apparently, things get absorbed much faster that way, and he died of alcohol poisoning.

You see how calm Vaughters is? That’s because he’s really one giant seething ball of Evil inside. With like, extra Evil.

by Ed K on Aug 10, 2009 1:05 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Cycling weekly also reported on this

Link :
http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/386220/beetroot-juice-could-make-you-ride-for-longer.html

The article also has a link to the original article in the Journal of Applied Physiology for those who might want to read more.

by andrewp on Aug 10, 2009 11:30 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

As someone who detests the taste of beets

Beetroot juice is quite tasty.

by ursula on Aug 10, 2009 11:33 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I think a with little tomato juice and some Tapito I could slam it down pretty easily.

by Ryan_Liles on Aug 10, 2009 11:46 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I can only deal with beetroot if it comes in vinegar

by Albertina on Aug 10, 2009 11:50 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I actually really love beetroot...

… baked, with butter or olive oil. Yum. But juiced… hmmm.

by civetta on Aug 10, 2009 11:54 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It's actually good with celery and ginger

by Seahorse on Aug 10, 2009 12:05 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It's cleaning out the juicer that always does for me.

It’s now firmly stowed away under the sink, alas.

by civetta on Aug 10, 2009 12:43 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

There are other versions of this.

Wasn’t British Cycling’s track success meant to have been built on cherry juice? (yeah right)

by civetta on Aug 10, 2009 11:40 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

They claimed that the chinese runners from the early 90s drank turtle blood

And maybe they did, but it was more likely that they were also juiced up (and maybe that expression alone is a good reason to not mention any kind of juice in this context) on other stuff.

Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang of dancing ninja men who know how to twirl.

by TheFigurehead on Aug 10, 2009 11:49 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Turtle blood? So that's what they called it....

by Albertina on Aug 10, 2009 11:50 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

didn't it turn out to be strychnine?

by civetta on Aug 10, 2009 11:54 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Hmmm... I don't know

Is strychnine performance enhancing?

Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang of dancing ninja men who know how to twirl.

by TheFigurehead on Aug 10, 2009 12:41 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It's a stimulant, believe it or not.

Well, up to a point, anyway… ;-)

These were the so-called catapillar fungus lot, weren’t they?

by civetta on Aug 10, 2009 12:48 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I first encountered strychnine in a Agatha Christie book

They went beyond that point. Anyway, I remember the fungus bit so it’s probably them.

Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang of dancing ninja men who know how to twirl.

by TheFigurehead on Aug 10, 2009 1:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

how on earth did I end up spelling caterpillar like that??

by civetta on Aug 10, 2009 3:54 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Blame Robert Smith

flicka flicka flicka
here you are
cata cata cata
caterpillar girl

Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang of dancing ninja men who know how to twirl.

by TheFigurehead on Aug 10, 2009 4:01 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Unfortunately

the benefit of turtle blood was inadvertently negated for several runners after they consumed rabbit meat

by Telegraph on Aug 10, 2009 2:32 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

LOL!

Staring at the swim team gets you killed by a gang of dancing ninja men who know how to twirl.

by TheFigurehead on Aug 10, 2009 2:42 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

caveat: nitrates and nitrites have been reported as asthma triggers

notably delayed asthma (10 min or so) after eating highly processed meats. It’s been hard to pin that down, because triggers are different for different people.

Also, I miss the issue of whether the cyclists were able to cycle as hard the entire time. It’s certainly possible that they cycled longer because they could not cycle as intensely, which is not necessarily a huge help. I can probably get the full PDF if I log in from work—it may answer this question.

by JFS_PGH on Aug 10, 2009 11:52 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I was going to do the same but it turns out I only have access to this journal up to 2004.

Bah.

by Albertina on Aug 10, 2009 11:57 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Reading it now, but I don't have a med background so there's no guarantee I'll get it...

Throughout the stage all I kept on thinking was: ‘don’t finish second, you can’t finish second again’.--Heinrich Haussler

by majope on Aug 10, 2009 12:29 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think they were cycling as hard, if that's what they mean by "fixed severe work rate."

Subjects did bouts of moderate exercise (cycling for 6 minutes) and severe exercise (cycling to task failure). The subjects’ cadence was recorded to get a baseline, and task failure was defined as falling below 10 rpm of their usual cadence.

During exercise at a fixed severe work rate, BR [beet root] ingestion reduced the amplitude of the O2 slow component and increased the time to task failure by ~16%, suggesting that dietary nitrate supplementation might enhance high-intensity exercise performance.

Apparently, these effects had been demonstrated with nitrite supplements—this study was to see if the same thing would happen with naturally-occurring nitrites from food sources.

Systolic blood pressure also dropped an average of 6 points. It takes about 3-4 days for the full effects to be seen, and they don’t seem to continue to increase after that.

The subjects, of course, were not pros but “recreationally active,” so I don’t know how this might apply to career athletes.

Throughout the stage all I kept on thinking was: ‘don’t finish second, you can’t finish second again’.--Heinrich Haussler

by majope on Aug 10, 2009 1:46 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Re: the issue of controlling this.

I know you were tongue in cheek, but I expect they won’t. Though this does raise the issue of where, precisely, to draw the line between training, diet, and ‘supplement’ / dope. It’s an extremely fuzzy boundary, especially given how utterly useless the term ‘natural’ is in this context.

You see how calm Vaughters is? That’s because he’s really one giant seething ball of Evil inside. With like, extra Evil.

by Ed K on Aug 10, 2009 1:10 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs