NRK casually reports 6000 doses of so-called "asthma drugs" accompany chronic respiratory diseased Norwegians in Pyeongchang

Famed anti-doping reporter Hajo Seppelt thinks differently

After being briefly banned from competing, Sundby, 33, returned to represent Norway at the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, winning two golds and one silver. “It is common practice in Norway to occasionally use asthma medicine in major ailments in the respiratory system... even where the diagnosis of asthma is not specific,” Per Medboe Thorsby, head of the medical committee for Anti-Doping Norway, told Reuters in January.

SVT reported earlier this month that since 1992, as many as 70 percent of Norwegian medals in Olympic skiing events were actually won by athletes diagnosed with asthma. It was also reported that beta-2 stimulators, prescribed to treat bronchial asthma, could help boost the muscle strength of athletes.

Bad Wigins wrote:

30 inhalers means like half their athletes have asthma TUE's?

There should not be TUE's for an exercise-induced condition. If you have asthma all the time, fine. If it only happens when you're competing, then it is not a medical issue, it's a you're-not-the-best issue. It's no different than if a banned PED prevented muscle cramps. Tough luck.

I have "always" asthma, and I think the "exercise-induced" part is BS. When you exercise hard, of course it's hard to breathe!

TUEs should be allowed for asthma in the case of real asthma because you can die from an attack. That said, if you have well-controlled asthma, you should not need to take your emergency (salbutamol/ventolin) puffer very often. Asthma is an allergic/immune disease, and can in many cases be controlled identifying other factors that worsen it and avoiding or treating those problems. Personally, figuring out my other health problems has allowed me to not take any asthma meds in recent years. People diagnosed with asthma should be referred to an allergist/immunologist.

The other thing is, asthma is massively over-diagnosed because many doctors don't require objective testing (eg. spirometry). You can just go into the doctor and say "I suck at breathing when I run," and they will tell you you have asthma and give you puffers. When I was first diagnosed, I was handed a pile of puffers "to see if it makes a difference." People are notoriously bad at deciding if an intervention has been useful (see nutrition), so of course most people conclude that they are necessary. I /my parents opted to get the testing done, but of all the running "asthmatics" I've met, I don't think I've ever met anyone else who was actually tested. It may well be that some of those people do have asthma, but I have my doubts - although my asthma is well-controlled, people *always* remark that my breathing is wild while running if they've never ran with me before.

For asthma TUEs, some kind of standardized objective testing should be a requirement. You can kind of cheat the testing (eg. Salazar stair reps, or by going in when you are sick), but it would at least be a start.

TUEs should be allowed for asthma in the case of real asthma because you can die from an attack.

Disagree. You take the drug, you sit out. Otherwise it's not exactly "life-threatening" IMO, if you are still going to "risk" competing, even with the drug there to "normalize" the breathing.

wheezin wrote:

For asthma TUEs, some kind of standardized objective testing should be a requirement. You can kind of cheat the testing (eg. Salazar stair reps, or by going in when you are sick), but it would at least be a start.

Spirometry is required before a TUE is granted. See: