Drugs and ergogenic aids to improve sport performance

Abstract

The use of biochemical aids to enhance athletic performance has a long history. In our current sporting culture we attempt to divide these between the accepted legal ‘ergogenic aids’ and the unacceptable performance-enhancing ‘drugs’. It is unclear whether this distinction would have been made 2000 years ago when Pliny the Elder reported the effects of Horsetail juice on performance. Interestingly, the sporting ergogenic effects of horsetail haven’t passed the test of time. In the middle ages its astringency, due to its high silica content, made it ideal for scouring pewter and wooden kitchen utensils. The juice's current ergogenic properties are more refined, its main use being in bath and shower products where a ‘natural conditioning effect’ is required. Perhaps more controversially, hidden amongst his 600 books, Claudius Galen, the 2nd century Greek physician to the gladiators, mentioned the positive effects of eating herbs, mushrooms and testicles. Galen believed that the right testicle was hotter and purer than the left, though whether this led to differential performance-enhancing effects was not rigorously tested. We shouldn't think that modern people are unusual in being obsessed with winning at all costs. Philostratos's (200 AD) view of the Ancient Greeks was that “They made war training for sport and sport training for war.” He was less impressed with his generation of sportsmen who “spent too much time eating, drinking and fornicating instead of actually training”. This was reflected in their poor choice of ergogenic aids. Although the ancient Spartan athletes trained on a meat-full diet of bulls, oxen, goats and deer, athletes of his generation ate white bread, poppy seeds, fish and pork [1]. They treated sports as “more of a hobby than a way of life”. Grumpy old men are clearly not a modern phenomenon! Clearly, if not actually preparing for war, … The use of biochemical aids to enhance athletic performance has a long history. In our current sporting culture we attempt to divide these between the accepted legal ‘ergogenic aids’ and the unacceptable performance-enhancing ‘drugs’. It is unclear whether this distinction would have been made 2000 years ago when Pliny the Elder reported the effects of Horsetail juice on performance. Interestingly, the sporting ergogenic effects of horsetail haven’t passed the test of time. In the middle ages its astringency, due to its high silica content, made it ideal for scouring pewter and wooden kitchen utensils. The juice's current ergogenic properties are more refined, its main use being in bath and shower products where a ‘natural conditioning effect’ is required. Perhaps more controversially, hidden amongst his 600 books, Claudius Galen, the 2nd century Greek physician to the gladiators, mentioned the positive effects of eating herbs, mushrooms and testicles. Galen believed that the right testicle was hotter and purer than the left, though whether this led to differential performance-enhancing effects was not rigorously tested. We shouldn't think that modern people are unusual in being obsessed with winning at all costs. Philostratos's (200 AD) view of the Ancient Greeks was that “They made war training for sport and sport training for war.” He was less impressed with his generation of sportsmen who “spent too much time eating, drinking and fornicating instead of actually training”. This was reflected in their poor choice of ergogenic aids. Although the ancient Spartan athletes trained on a meat-full diet of bulls, oxen, goats and deer, athletes of his generation ate white bread, poppy seeds, fish and pork [1]. They treated sports as “more of a hobby than a way of life”. Grumpy old men are clearly not a modern phenomenon! Clearly, if not actually preparing for war, …