Thought experiment about cheating in sports

Why are you asking the same question twice?

No, you could eat high iron foods or suck on rusty nails

with oranges rich in Vitamin C.

fred wrote:

No, you could eat high iron foods or suck on rusty nails

with oranges rich in Vitamin C.

But that would take months at the very least, and this athlete wanted his iron up before a race two weeks from his first blood test.

The primary reason to take supplements is to allow you to overtrain--gotta stay "healthy." If those supplements help you be competitive at a level high enough to make good money, and you get yourself a juicy contract by taking supplements, then yes, you are cheating.

fred wrote:

No, you could eat high iron foods or suck on rusty nails

with oranges rich in Vitamin C.

EPO or blood transfusions can be used to treat people with very low blood counts, but would still be considered cheating. I think that is what she is getting at.

Rexing

4 the $ wrote:

The primary reason to take supplements is to allow you to overtrain--gotta stay "healthy." If those supplements help you be competitive at a level high enough to make good money, and you get yourself a juicy contract by taking supplements, then yes, you are cheating.

So assume for a second (whether or not this is true) that heavy training causes low serum ferritin. An athlete who is iron-deficient supplements to bring up his ferritin so he can continue to train hard and not become anemic, but does not reduce his training load. He gets faster and this happens to land him a contract. Is he cheating? Why or why not?

Hardloper wrote:

fred wrote:

No, you could eat high iron foods or suck on rusty nails

with oranges rich in Vitamin C.

EPO or blood transfusions can be used to treat people with very low blood counts, but would still be considered cheating. I think that is what she is getting at.

That is one thing to think about. This is open-ended though. I want to more closely examine where people draw the line between cheating and not cheating, regardless of what's legal by WADA standards. This is especially interesting when it comes to TUEs, though.

xenonscreams wrote:

fred wrote:

No, you could eat high iron foods or suck on rusty nails

with oranges rich in Vitamin C.

But that would take months at the very least, and this athlete wanted his iron up before a race two weeks from his first blood test.

Why would that take months at the very least? I don't think you know what you're talking about

It's a moral question concerning the twisted reality of a

fantasy situation. The response is to respond only to

reality, otherwise people will try to generalize from

an hypothetical illusion.

fred wrote:

It's a moral question concerning the twisted reality of a

fantasy situation. The response is to respond only to

reality, otherwise people will try to generalize from

an hypothetical illusion.

You're missing the point of a thought experiment.

rrdd wrote:

xenonscreams wrote:

But that would take months at the very least, and this athlete wanted his iron up before a race two weeks from his first blood test.

Why would that take months at the very least? I don't think you know what you're talking about

No, the iron is not cheating in either case. It is

1) an ordinary component of ordinary food

1.1) the effective dose can be obtained by food.

2) something to which all athletes have equal access

3) does not have harmful side effects in performance enhancing doses, so it does not come down to who is willing to destroy themselves to win and who isn't.

I threw 1.1 in there to contrast with creatine, which I would consider cheating if it were genuinely effective, which it isn't. Nobody gets upwards of 7g a day of creatine from food, not even mostly-carnivorous me.

If iron improved performance in non-deficient people, still no amount would be cheating, any more than a big shot putter would be cheating by eating extra calories to gain even more mass. Food is food and the consensus has always been that food is fair.

Also you've written that you live in the NW, you should check your local DEQ water tests and see if there's enough magnesium in your tap water. Mg++ is just as important for performance as iron but is generally overlooked because deficiency is difficult to diagnose medically.

Creatine combined with good weight training works. Creatine allows for more work to be done.

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.

Hardloper wrote:

How long is it supposed to take to recover from iron deficiency by sucking on rusty nails???

How long do you think? You can figure this one out Hardloper.

Steroid inhaler for asthma. Cheating?

Didn't nature make you weak?

xenonscreams wrote:

...

heavy training causes low serum ferritin. An athlete who is iron-deficient supplements to bring up his ferritin so he can continue to train hard and not become anemic, but does not reduce his training load. He gets faster and this happens to land him a contract. Is he cheating? Why or why not?

So, try this one out: heavy training consumes lots of energy. An athlete with a large caloric deficit increases his caloric intake so he can continue to train hard and still have energy, but he does not reduce his training load. Is he cheating?

Obviously not.

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.

Thanks for this response. It is the kind of discussion I wanted to generate!