rrdd wrote:
Bad Wigins wrote:Nobody gets upwards of 7g a day of creatine from food, not even mostly-carnivorous me.
This is far from true. It is easily possible to get that much creatine from food.
Sure, if you're a competitive eater.
Perhaps you don't know how much meat 1.5 kilograms is. Think 13 quarter-pounders.
Bad Wigins wrote:
Sure, if you're a competitive eater.
Perhaps you don't know how much meat 1.5 kilograms is. Think 13 quarter-pounders.
1.5 kg of meat is not a lot. That's an amount of meat that anyone could eat in a day. That's not even close to what a competitive eater would eat so nice try. Someone who really likes meat or who is purposefully trying to get that much creatine from meat could easily consume that much in a day.
noce wrote:
So here's a question: when you drop in thyroid hormone for ferritin or food (which I assume is the whole point of this thought experiment) what changes? Why is it harder to answer?
I think it is because hormones *define* who we are. They are not just part of a healthy diet. They determine the structure of our bodies, and how our body responds to a stimulus.
The question does not get harder at all to answer. Food is generally harmless. Taking hormones is not. It's an easy question.
luv2run wrote:
Creatine combined with good weight training works. Creatine allows for more work to be done.
My experience with the stuff has been a mild hypertrophy that gives a phantom performance boost at the start of a workout due to not needing as much of a warmup. The difference disappears once I'm properly warmed up and the real workout begins.
If loading creatine has any effect, it should be in phosphate metabolism. But I've never heard any sprinter or coach claim to get farther than about 80m on phosphates. Or taking shorter recovery intervals due to supposedly regenerating ATP faster. Or doing more interval reps due to the extra creatine. And I think there are as many drawbacks as benefits to the extra sarcoplasm, particularly dehydration in warm weather.
Xenon, if you insist on a binary definition of "cheating" (either yes or no), then you are forcing the conversation to be about where exactly to draw a fixed, rigid line. Probably the only place to justifiably draw such a line is in the letter of the IAAF rules (which appears to be the NOP approach in my opinion).
On the other hand, you could ask "How ethical is it", "how fair is it", "is there any moral issue with" this person taking iron supplements. Personally I'd say no. I think there is some ethical issue with hypothyroid medication unless there seems like a very fair medically convincing case that the person is "abnormal" and that this hurts their performance if they are "normal".
The interesting difference, as you identified, is the question of if more always helps as opposed to the dichotomy of "normal" vs "abnormal". I think it's sketchy to supplement on something where more is generally better beyond the "normal" range. But I don't know what specifically falls into such categories... Anyway, I wouldn't consider it "cheating", but I wouldn't want to do it myself.
rrdd wrote:
noce wrote:So here's a question: when you drop in thyroid hormone for ferritin or food (which I assume is the whole point of this thought experiment) what changes? Why is it harder to answer?
I think it is because hormones *define* who we are. They are not just part of a healthy diet. They determine the structure of our bodies, and how our body responds to a stimulus.
The question does not get harder at all to answer. Food is generally harmless. Taking hormones is not. It's an easy question.
Well, not so fast. You can take hormones safely. Plenty of runners do, with a prescription, because they have been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. Even steroids and EPO have legit medical uses, and can be safe. So I don't think this comes down to safety.