EPO is very popular with the athletes of all levels. It is with this popularity that many athletes have engaged in the use and some are abusing it to give them an added advantage over their fellow competitors in the different sports. However, not much has been written about EPO and therefore there is a need to give some relevant information in a deep context about EPO and this is the subject of this article.
EPO administration is done by athletes to assist in the production of major benefits and this is far much better than the blood doping and many athletes consider it much better than any training which has been set specifically for the improvement of performance in the different sports. Mostly, athletes boost their normal hematocrit levels 3-4% within a short span of less than 4 weeks with a subsequent use of EPO. This is why there have been varying information and criticism about EPO usage among the athletes and many governing bodies in athletics have frowned in the concept of blood doping and they have criticized the use of EPO branding it as cheating in the competitions.
Abuse of EPO has taken center stage in the world of athletics and many people are finding it better to use this shortcut for success and this leads to the abuse. The testing of athletes suspected to have used EPO is a very complicated process and this is why many athletes go unblemished due to lack of specific ways of testing. There are some protocols set for EPO detection but the problem has been accuracy in the specific tests. Very slight differences in the biochemical status of individual under use of EPO show up as compared to the natural body builders and therefore judgments become the hardest thing to do in the process. For the athletes, they have skimmed a strategy in which they take the steroid shortly before they get to the tests since they know that it cannot be detected before duration of 12 hours of administration.
This abuse of EPO as a steroid in athletics comes along with very many dangerous consequences. As with other types of ergogenic substances, side effects are popular with any form of abuse. There are very many health risks which are deadly in nature and are associated with uncontrolled use of EPO and this is why it is important to administer proper control. Very many deaths of cyclists for instant the Dutch cases have been known more to be a cause of the abuse and this has been suspected to be excessive proliferation of he body’s erythrocytes, and this leads to a production of a severe and deadly condition known as polycythemia.
As the normal hematocrit increases, there is a decrease of other blood components for instance plasma and this is what creates abnormal body operation. This polycythemia condition is what causes the blood becoming thicker to a point turning sludgy, and this makes it difficult for the heart to normally pump blood though the vessels to the essential parts of the body and this is what can generate a compilation and eventually death.
