Thyroid Hormone IS Cheating

Keep Sport Pure wrote:

Hey chief, why don't you try a little experiment and get yourself a prescription. If you search hard enough, you will find a doctor willing to prescribe it. THEN, see how it works for you.[/quote]

I am trying that. See a couple posts above, Chief.[/quote]

Didn't see your post from the previous thread, but I think you are playing with fire if you're not truly hypothyroid. Do you know for a fact that your teammate isn't hypothyroid? If you think this is just a "legal" form of cheating, then why would you compromise your own conscience? To my knowledge, Mo, Ritz, and Centrowitz aren't on thyroid hormone, and it didn't seem to give Rupp the same advantages that Mo is purportedly getting from something, this summer anyway.

McFlounder wrote:

How do you feel about thyroid meds and asthma medication?

Dennis Reynolds wrote:

How do you feel about asthma medication?

How do you feel about thyroid meds, asthma meds and girls who take them?

[/quote]

Didn't see your post from the previous thread, but I think you are playing with fire if you're not truly hypothyroid. Do you know for a fact that your teammate isn't hypothyroid? If you think this is just a "legal" form of cheating, then why would you compromise your own conscience? To my knowledge, Mo, Ritz, and Centrowitz aren't on thyroid hormone, and it didn't seem to give Rupp the same advantages that Mo is purportedly getting from something, this summer anyway.[/quote]

That's my point though. I'm currently starting a three part experiment. First I'm going to work up to 120 mile weeks for 8 weeks (just over the typical for me) and add in some higher intensity workouts. Basically to try to simulate overtraining or a level of intensity my body cannot maintain.

I want to see if high mileage, borderline or actually overtraining, will produce a "hypothyroid like" state. It is my hypothesis that it can result in a reduced level of thyroid hormone that would cause a physician to recommend the prescription (thinking I'm an average person).

The second and third parts of my experiment are optional but basically I could use it and see if my times improve when on it, ect. I probably would not do this because I realize the long term repercussions, beyond my competitive running years. My main mission is to see if overtraining/high milage can get me diagnosed as "hypothyroid". I'll report back with my findings either way.

Your post makes the best point; talk to any athlete sufferer of thyroid condition and these armchair "experts" won't come away thinking thyroid meds yield some advantage.

Poor argument - ask any cancer sufferer whether EPO yields any advantage.

If you genuinely suffer from a particular condition, whether that be hypothyroid, cancer or anything else, then those drugs have a legitimate usage.

TUEs, genuine TUEs, are supposed to level the playing field, not create an advantage, but getting a TUE for a condition you DON'T suffer from is legalised PED usage.

GenericID wrote:

Your post makes the best point; talk to any athlete sufferer of thyroid condition and these armchair "experts" won't come away thinking thyroid meds yield some advantage.

Poor argument - ask any cancer sufferer whether EPO yields any advantage.

If you genuinely suffer from a particular condition, whether that be hypothyroid, cancer or anything else, then those drugs have a legitimate usage.

TUEs, genuine TUEs, are supposed to level the playing field, not create an advantage, but getting a TUE for a condition you DON'T suffer from is legalised PED usage.

Where do you draw the line on leveling the playing field though? e.g. what if one person's haematocrit is 38% and somebody else is at 49%?

fatcutter wrote:

One of the Johnson Brother's, this website's owner, is on record as hearing from someone-in-the-know that runners stockpile their supply to use before big competitions to cut fat, clearly a performance enhancer.

There's no way you can do that without medical repercussions, my friend who is treated for hypothyroidism has to manage the dosage carefully. Changing from a 50mg tablet to 75mg has a noticeable effect, any more and undesirable side effects start.

Where do you draw the line on leveling the playing field though? e.g. what if one person's haematocrit is 38% and somebody else is at 49%?

The playing field has nothing to do with total haematocrit (or total TSH for that matter), it has to do with the NORMAL haematocrit (or TSH) for that particular person. If a doctor says that he would expect that person's levels to be above where they are then that can trigger a TUE.

BTW, I don't support TUEs for anything (even asthma), all I'm saying is the argument presented isn't a good one.

go to any of the bodybuilder forums

you'll see the use of thyroid for 'cutting'

also in synergy with growth hormone to maximise GH benefit

it's clearly a performance enhancing drug when misused

Didn't relevant organizations (e.g. IOC, WADA, IAAF) already look at this and decide there is no "PE" in thyroid hormone therapy?

It's not like designer steroids that we don't know how to test for yet. Isn't it more like ibuprofen and caffeine, where we somewhat know the effect, and just don't care?

I saw the other thread recently started about this and wanted to update everyone on my experiment.

So my original hypothesis was that high mileage and over training can induce a short term hypothyroid state. My first attempt was 10 weeks at 100 miles of normal workouts. I felt tired at the end of this training block so I got a Doc to test me for hypothyroidism. Results came back negative, I had normal levels for both TSH and T4...

BUT I tried again very recently. This time 120 mile weeks for 4 weeks and three workouts per week that were to exhaustion, mainly intervals. Felt terribly overtrained as I should have. Went to the same doc, got the same test. Results showed....

Decreased T4 levels.

My Doc said he was going to write me a prescription for levothyroxine but I told him that I wasn't comfortable taking meds. I've debated going on it for the fall training block but I'm kind of a health freak/ anti med guy (as you might guess from the title). So this is probably where my experiment will end. However, if anyone wants to make themselves have hypothyroidism, just overtrain.

Someone else should try to reconfirm my results as all experiments should be reproducible. This reinforces my belief that this drug treatment will be terrible for the sport!

Keep Sport Clean wrote:

Decreased T4 levels.

What was your TSH?

0/10.

Making up a story to convince people that thyroid meds isn't cheating..