Will Altitude Tents be banned?

Kurdt, you start by calling it "man-manipulated" air and then call it "man-made" air to try and support your logic. The two principal tent systems currently on the market both work the same way. They have molecular filters that filter out approximately 25% of the oxygen (from sea level air approx 20%oxygen/80%nitrogen, to 15%oxygen/85% nitrogen) which provides the SAME OXYGEN concentration to the lungs as being at 9000' does (although altitude reduces the oxygen concentration by reduced air pressure). The reduced oxygen from a tent or from altitude causes THE SAME hormone stimulation that increases production of EPO, HGH, IGF-1, and all the other good stuff. A search of medline/pubmed on altiude tents and altitude training found no studies where people achieved a hematocrit over 50 from altitude tent use or altitude training. Tents and altitude provide THE SAME stimulus to the respiratory system and THE SAME response.

HEPA air filters to reduce allergans produce man-manipulated air. Air conditioners produce man manipulated air. Deep fat fryers produce man-mainpulated potatoes call french fries. Should any of them be banned? I think not.

Kurdt wrote:

So, tents maybe banned someday soon, and maybe PR?s/KK's/LA's records will deserve asterisks ??

Final conclusion: tent users are not cheaters(because they are not legal...right now) in my book, but the TENT IS a gray area of what SHOULD AND SHOULD NOT BE considered legal/illegal....AT BEST. I bet it will be banned soon, and the Hematocrit test could be used.

Yeah, you've just got it all figured out. I wonder why USADA and WADA haven't snapped up someone of your obviously high caliber with so much experience and knowledge. I bet they're watching this forum, expect a job offer any second now.

Asterisks? Not unless Frank Shorter's deserve asterisks because he may have taken synthetic nutrients or Emil Zatopek's deserve asterisks because he wore man-made Army boots for training. So, how does a hematocrit differentiate between tent users and those who train in, say, Mammoth Lakes or the Nandi Hills?

In response to the people who question my sources and claim that there is no proven study on this topic, Jerome who regularly posts on the Marius Bakken website is currently in the middle of a PHD at Oxford which is looking into Hypoxia and the tent issue, any facts that I have stated come from his results. I'm sure he would be happy to discuss.

So, how does a hematocrit differentiate between tent users and those who train in, say, Mammoth Lakes or the Nandi Hills?[/quote]

They don\'t need to, dummies! They just ban everyone living above sea level and give people who are too skinny some weights to carry so it\'s fair for all the fat bastards.

Slg Edith

OK again, this is a tiring subject because I always seem to be repeating myself and no one seems to read my posts carfeully. I'll try again.

Using an altitude tent/nitrogen house is not the same as training at altitude because:

1. You are only taking one part of the hypoxic high altitude environment (the low oxygen partial pressure) and putting it into a tent. You are not having to deal with all the other entities of a high altitude environment such as climate or terrain etc..

2. The low oxygen partial pressure in a high altitude tent/nitrogen house is obtained by altering the mixture of gases in the air by pumping in more nitrogen. Thus the oxygen/nitrogen ratio of the gases has changed from the 20%/80% ratio that is in atmospheric air. So this gas mixture cannot be described as air. You will be breathing a specific mixture of gases which will be specifically altering the level of EPO in the blood (thus leading to a higher red cell count). How similar is this to taking a drug ?

3. Each individual has a very specific EPO response to hypoxia. It has been known for a long time that different people will respond differently to hypoxia in terms of their EPO response. Linked to this we know also that people respond differently to altitude training at a similar altitude (eg of a study on this: Chapman et al 1998 "Individual variation in response to altitude training" in the Journal of Applied Physiology".) Given that you can precisely control the level of hypoxia in a high altitude tent/nitrogen house, you can set this level to give you as an individual the maximum EPO response. This would be harder to acheive by training at different altitudes because of the climactic factors involved. How similar is breathing this precisely controlled level of hypoxia to taking a drug ?

4. The LATEST research on intermittent hypoxia and human cells shows that intermittent hypoxia of 1hr on 1hr off is giving a bigger induction of genes regulated by hypoxia (such as EPO) compared to continuous hypoxia alone. This is due to a relative upregulation of the transcription factors controlling these genes during intermittent hypoxia. For those of you who say this is BS you are not up date with respect to the field of hypoxia research. There are several papers published and you can read abstracts of these if you do a simple Pub Med search on the internet. For example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11299293&dopt=Abstract

Should someone start to use an altitude tent using the intermittent hypoxia technique, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suggest that this could give a bigger epo response than just continuous hypoxia alone. Preliminary results from studies done in the laboratory in which I am working do in fact suggest this but they have to be confirmed. This EPO response could not be achieved by an individual simply living and training at altitude.

All of the above are nothing like using shoes, driving a car etc - you are breathing a mixture of gases which is having a specific effect on a physiological pathway which can lead to an improvement in endurance performance.

I mentioned some time ago on this website that the latest generation of drugs that could increase red cell count work by stimulating the kidney itself to produce more EPO and that these were being used on patients with chronic renal disease in the hospital in which I work. Last week a link to some news about the drug 'repoxygen'was put up on this website. This drug works in this way. If used in sports it will be tricky to detect because the drug has a rapid clearance from the body.

So there is one scenario where someone breaths a synthetic hypoxic mixture of gases to increase their EPO production in the kidney and another scenario where someone takes a drug to increase EPO production in the kidney. How similar are the two ? I am not sure but when I consider the latest developments of pharmacology and gene induction I feel that we really are coming into a difficult area of what can be considered as 'legal'or 'illegal'.

If tents are decided as being illegal then I agree it could be difficult to test for them. However we should bear in mind the components of the test for synthetic EPO. There is a direct test which looks at the electophoretic mobility of sythetic EPO which is slightly different from natural EPO because the synthetic EPO has a different overall electric charge. There is also an indirect test which looks at several markers of synthetic EPO abuse in the blood (these include: haematocrit, reticulocyte haematocrit, serum EPO, soluble transferrin receptor, percentage macrocytes).

Perhaps research on these indirect markers could reveal indicators of having used a hypoxic tent/nitrogen house. It is a long shot - but if we consider the latest drugs which are cleared very rapidly from the body then I feel that overall drug testing needs to move towards assessing these indirect markers rather than just trying to test for the drug itself if the tests are to be at all effective in the future.

Hope this is food for thought :)

So, tents maybe banned someday soon, and maybe PR?s/KK's/LA's records will deserve asterisks ?? [quote]

In that case every result since tents became available would have to be nullified since it can't be down to individual athletes to put their hands up to using one!

And what happens about the really big *unfair* advantages in sport, like running professionaly and training full-time because of sponsorships, college or army placements etc, all very unamateurish and against the early Olympic ideal and unfair on people who have to earn their living outside of running?

--Edith

Sean Kelly = lacks sexual stamina.

Marathonman is not talking about amaturism or facilities, he is talking about performance enhancement which is the topic of this post. Also very interesting and refreshing on this site, he is stating only facts and his post is not blinded by opinion, He is also onbviously far more knowledgable on the subject than anybody who has posted prviously, in light of this I think, until somebody can argue to the contrary we have to accept his post as the current state of affairs. Which is, hypoxic tents DO have a different affect to altitude training and consequently more reearch is needed to find a way of testing for their use.

I thought the point of banning drugs was to protect the health of the athlete and avoid a MAAD scenario where folks were forced to make a choice between their long-term health and performance. How would banning a harmless tent further this goal? If drugs were safe, why would they need to be banned?

waz wrote:

Marathonman is not talking about amaturism or facilities, he is talking about performance enhancement which is the topic of this post. Also very interesting and refreshing on this site, he is stating only facts and his post is not blinded by opinion, He is also onbviously far more knowledgable on the subject than anybody who has posted prviously, in light of this I think, until somebody can argue to the contrary we have to accept his post as the current state of affairs. Which is, hypoxic tents DO have a different affect to altitude training and consequently more reearch is needed to find a way of testing for their use.

Yeah, this is how we need to be wasting money. Until you can argue successfully why tents should be banned, you need to give it a rest. You're the most blindly biased person posting on this topic.

[quote]waz wrote:

*Marathonman is not talking about amaturism or facilities, he is talking about performance enhancement which is the topic of this post.*

What do you think *performance enhancement* is all about then, waz? If it's fairness you want, why is living in a tent more relevant than a professional, full-time training programme which not everyone got? If tents help counter the advantages of altitude training then it might even help the more disadvantaged out there, no? Artificial enhancement does not compensate for lack of ability or fitness SO LONG AS THE FIELD IS LEVEL, just raises the overall standard of running! The real deal with drug use is not that it allows runners to run faster -- nothing wrong with that! -- but that it is potentially dangerous and athletes should be properly protected from unhealthy competitive pressures. (Competition itself is sometimes injurious). A lot of the objection to tents and *artificial performance enhancement* is moral throwback to some sporting ideal which (if it ever really existed) is dead and gone.

Edith

The real deal with drugs is that the health issues are a side issue, its only now that we are beginning to look at that side of it, back when the East Germans were doping, long term health issues were not even considered, they were just looking at gaining an upper hand. Administered correctly and under the guidance of a doctor EPO is not dangerous. The fact drugs are an issue ultimately is because they give an unfair advantage, the playing field is no longer level. Surely that is what we all want?

As for full time training etc...blah blah blah Edith, we aren't talking about that, anybody can go fulltime as long as they don't mind having a little less cash in the bank, this is about ethics. The tent issue isn't an argument anymore, marathonman has answeerd all of your arguments. I'm not against things which allow us to run faster as long as they are not hypocritical in terms of the rules. In other words if one person is boosting the performance with EPO and another is using the tent but they get the same benefits where is the difference?

read marathonmans post again, I don't think you have read it carefully enough, or if you had you haven't understood it.

Maybe I'm missing something, but the main objection to the altitude tent is that the mixture of oxygen and nitrogen has been changed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't someone get the same hypoxic effect by breathing in a paper bag? Wouldn't that affect the ratio of nitrogen and oxygen?

On a separate issue, is it then unfair to breathe air that has gone through one of those HEPA filters to remove particles? That is "man-manipulated" air, isn't it?

In response to doh!

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Until you can argue successfully why tents should be banned, you need to give it a rest

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Have you actually read Marathonmans post? Do you understand it?

If so why are you asking again, this is about the fourth time he has posted such an entry on this message board, and every time he does he gets responses like yours, which don't make any sense

Conclusory statements by marathon man are not facts. Here is a revised version of his post.

OK again, this is a tiring subject because I always seem to be repeating myself and no one seems to read my posts carfeully. I'll try again.

Using an altitude tent/nitrogen house is the same as training at altitude because:

1. You are only taking multiple parts of the hypoxic high altitude environment (the low oxygen partial pressure) and putting it into a tent. You still have to deal with all the other entities of a high altitude environment such as climate, training facilities etc..

2. The low oxygen partial pressure in a high altitude tent/nitrogen house is obtained by altering the mixture of gases in the air by pumping out oxygen or pumping in more nitrogen. Thus the oxygen/nitrogen ratio of the gases has changed from the 20%/80% ratio that is in atmospheric air. This gas mixture can also be described as air. You will be breathing a mixture of gases which will be specifically altering the level of EPO in the blood (thus leading to a higher red cell count)just like being at altitude. How similar is this to taking a drug ?

3. Each individual has a very specific EPO response to hypoxia. It has been known for a long time that different people will respond differently to hypoxia in terms of their EPO response. Linked to this we know also that people respond differently to altitude training at a similar altitude (eg of a study on this: Chapman et al 1998 "Individual variation in response to altitude training" in the Journal of Applied Physiology".) Given that you can precisely control the level of hypoxia in a high altitude tent/nitrogen house, you can set this level to give you as an individual the maximum EPO response just as you can by going to the altitude that is optimal for you. This would be no harder to acheive by training at different altitudes if you can afford to do it. How similar is going to a precisely controlled altitude to taking a drug ?

4. The LATEST research on intermittent hypoxia and human cells shows that intermittent hypoxia of 1hr on 1hr off is giving a bigger induction of genes regulated by hypoxia (such as EPO) compared to continuous hypoxia alone. This is due to a relative upregulation of the transcription factors controlling these genes during intermittent hypoxia. For those of you who say this is BS you are not up date with respect to the field of hypoxia research. There are several papers published and you can read abstracts of these if you do a simple Pub Med search on the internet. For example:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11299293&dopt=Abstract

The above study is about rats and says nothing about a 1hr on 1hr off regimen. You can do the same type of training at several places in the US, Europe, and Africa if you have a car or truck to drive from high altitude to low altitude and back again. Should someone start to use an altitude tent or drive up and down a mountain for training using the intermittent hypoxia technique, it is perhaps not unreasonable to suggest that this could give a bigger epo response than just continuous hypoxia alone. Preliminary results from studies done in the laboratory in which I am working do in fact suggest this but they have to be confirmed. This EPO response could be achieved just as easily with careful planning by an individual simply living and training at a site with the necessary access to higher or lower altitude.

All of the above are just like using shoes, driving a car etc - you are breathing a mixture of air which is having a specific effect on a physiological pathway which can lead to an improvement in endurance performance.

So there is one scenario where someone breaths a hypoxic mixture of air from altitude or from a hypoxic system to increase their EPO production in the kidney and another scenario where someone takes a drug to increase EPO production in the kidney. How similar are the two ? I am not sure but when I consider the latest developments of pharmacology and gene induction I feel that we really are coming into a difficult area of what can be considered as 'legal'or 'illegal'.

If tents are decided as being illegal then I agree it could be difficult to test for them.

Hope this is food for thought :)

jeesh, you are so stupid you don't understand the post. your argument isn't even an argument, and you acn't see it. Anyone can sticka new line in somebodys post but that doesn't mean its going to make any sense, you have to have a counter argument. This is what you are saying

Shoes are a performance enhancing system which has similar effects to EPO, a banned drug.

now do you get it?

Slg Edith wrote:

And what happens about the really big *unfair* advantages in sport, like running professionaly and training full-time because of sponsorships, college or army placements etc, all very unamateurish and against the early Olympic ideal and unfair on people who have to earn their living outside of running?

And what about crying for hours after 4th place finishes and then holding up signs and telling lies to the press to try and get honest runners banned.

Geez won't you be able to do any of these things any more?

hey, waz. PROVE to me that you are getting your data from a well-designed SCIENTIFIC study utilizing the proper experimental controls and addressing a falsifiable hypothesis. PROVE to me that the data supporting your claims are statistically significant. Only then will I not scoff at your seemingly overbearing attitude on this topic. ps. if you can't prove these things to me, then direct me to the published research, so that I may make an educated analysis of the data myself. Why do I not do this myself? I have yet to be able to find SCIENTIFICALLY SOUND studies like those you speak of.

DougC wrote:

Maybe I'm missing something, but the main objection to the altitude tent is that the mixture of oxygen and nitrogen has been changed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't someone get the same hypoxic effect by breathing in a paper bag? Wouldn't that affect the ratio of nitrogen and oxygen?

It would not affect the mixture in a desirable manner.

Mostly co2 would be increased and o2 decreased. You wouldn't be able to keep breathing from the bag for very long.