Sports Pharmacy: Counseling Athletes About Banned Drugs

Sports Pharmacy: Counseling Athletes About Banned Drugs

Any advantage to a sportsperson will increase their chance of winning the medal and endorsements in million dollars. In such a cutthroat competition, the use of performance-enhancing substances (PESs) has become increasingly popular. Besides the health risks, people who use steroids without a prescription are breaking the law. Drug testing for all athletes is common, and those who fail a drug test for steroids can face legal consequences, including jail time, monetary fines, being banned from an event or team, or forfeiture of trophies or medals. Steroids, growth hormones, and related drugs all have legitimate therapeutic uses, and compounding of specialty products for unique situations is at the core of good pharmacy practice.

Some successful Malaysian badminton players, weightlifters, and wushu athletes were also caught in doping scandals, believed to be caused by inadvertent use of banned substances [5]. Another individual, identified as an “alternative medicine practitioner” and a “naturopathic” medical doctor from Arizona, was indicted as a coconspirator and will be tried separately later this year. This Arizona physician fled to Latin America after he was indicted.2 He made contact with the U.S.

USOC Drug Education and Doping Control Program Guide to Banned Medications

Conceptualization, J.T., M.D.M., M.N., and S.K.; methodology, M.D.M. and S.K.; investigation, K.C.Y., M.D.M., and S.K.; data curation, K.C.Y., M.D.M., and S.K.; writing—original draft preparation, K.C.Y.; writing—review and editing, G.M.P., M.N., M.S.S., and S.K.; project administration, S.K. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

  • He was also asked to surrender his silver medal from the 2012 Summer Olympics.
  • In the summer of 2004, Maneafaiga was an undersized 180-pound running back trying to make the University of Hawaii football team.
  • Abuse of substances or methods to enhance the performance is becoming very common in the sports, which often destroys the spirit of competition.
  • The results show the lack of awareness of the community pharmacists on the doping definition published by WADA which clearly states that athletes should be responsible for everything they ingest, and even accidental intake of banned substance would violate the doping rules [22].

The websites described were located at a point in time, so these data should be updated on a regular basis as online offer is constantly changing. This study serves as a backbone for future research related to the proposed topic, including more prohibited substances from the same category. Moreover, emphasis should be placed on ergonutritional education on which supplements are allowed, but also on the proper way to select them, e.g., brands, modes of administration, timing of ingestion (Malek et al., 2014). The risks of their consumption do not only extend to a sanction by WADA, but also to adverse health effects (Badawy et al., 2021). These facts highlight the importance of professional advice before the consumption of these substances. The consumption of doping substances seeks to improve some of the four main dimensions of sports –skill, strength, endurance and recovery-.

Effects of a multidimensional anabolic steroid prevention intervention

Yes, if you take prescription anabolic steroids under the supervision of your healthcare provider for a medical reason, anabolic steroids are generally safe. Response rate was 66% (103 males and 95 females, mean aged 43.4 ± 8.4 years). Of our respondents, 25% have been confronted with doping over the last 12 months, either for the purpose of providing information on a product or providing the product itself.

  • Additionally, WADA reported in 2017 that only 0.3% of doping tests were positive for beta-blockers, suggesting that the drugs were infrequently misused by athletes [25].
  • Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) use is 11% among gym athletes, 39% among bodybuilders and 67% among weightlifters (Birzniece, 2015).
  • Holyfield has not been tied to Signature but to Applied Pharmacy in Alabama, which also is part of the investigation.
  • Being aware of the kinds of pressures kids deal with in sports can help you make sure that your child isn’t at risk.
  • Some evidence suggests certain individual ingredients in workout supplements can improve muscle-building and physical performance.

“There are a lot of things that go into trying to identify whether guys are using performance-enhancing drugs,” Coberley said. “If anybody had the answer, they’d be spotting people that do it. We keep our radar up and watch for things that are suspicious and try to protect the kids from making stupid decisions.” “I just ate. I ate 5-6 times a day,” said Clint Oldenburg, who played for Colorado State starting in 2002 and for five years in the NFL. Oldenburg’s weight increased over four years from 212 to 290, including a one-year gain of 53 pounds, which he attributed to diet and two hours of weight lifting daily. While other major sports have been beset by revelations of steroid use, college football has operated with barely a whiff of scandal.

Students posted such extraordinary weight gains across the country, in every conference, in nearly every school. Many of them eclipsed Alzado and gained 25, 35, even 40 percent of their body mass. In nearly all the rarest cases of weight gain in the AP study, players were offensive or defensive linemen, hulking giants who tower above 6-foot-3 and weigh 300 pounds or more. Four of those players interviewed by the AP said that they never used steroids and gained weight through dramatic increases in eating, up to six meals a day. Two recently decided cases illustrate the point that pharmacists can easily step over the boundaries of legal behavior by pursuing business opportunities that, while profitable, are also illegal.

While some medications may provide benefit to an athlete in improving their fitness and/or performance, they are intended to be used under the supervision of health professionals for the treatment of specific illnesses. When the medication is being misused to gain an unfair competitive advantage, it may also produce significant negative consequences to the person’s health [2]. Therefore, “performance-enhancing drugs” are banned for use by athletes under the prohibited list published by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) [4].

Doping in the sport in Burkina Faso: Knowledge, attitudes and practices

Given the size of the firms, it is also likely that these firms are, at most, repackaging or relabeling products manufactured elsewhere. This suggests that steroids can do bad things in terms of cardiomyopathy, but that if you stop, that most of it will recover. However, there is still bad news that goes with that good news, namely there is another effect and that is hardening of the arteries. Steroids mess up the balance of your cholesterol fractions and lead to accelerated, greatly accelerated, hardening of the artery, so-called atherosclerosis. And the way that we test that is you get in a CAT scan machine and you get a shot of an agent that has a high molecular weight so that the X-rays of the cat scan can see it.

A broad range of pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements and herbal drugs have been used historically as performance promoters, doping or ergogenic aids. In this context, the role of pharmacists in prevent adverse events, drug interactions or any drug related problems, as doping issues, was described. Its actions can be important to contribute with a multi professional clinical health team, leading athletes Andriol to use these resources in a rational way, promoting and optimizing the therapeutic when its necessary. According to WADA, there are more than 660 sport organisations accepted the World Anti-Doping Code in 2019, including the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA). According to the WADA code, all athletes (elite or non-elite) under the signatories will need to comply with the prohibited list.