doping
Recreational athletes try to increase their performance with painkillers
Many of the drugs that are taken to increase performance are not on any doping list – but they are still unhealthy.
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Doping is not only found in professional sports. Recreational athletes also resort to such means to increase their performance. Not all are illegal, but they are still dangerous.
The numbers are frightening. “12 to 15 percent of visitors to fitness studios in Germany take anabolic steroids,” says doping researcher Perikles Simon. He is a sports medicine doctor at the University of Mainz. That’s more than half a million people. From regular surveys of participants in extreme sports events, the university was able to determine that around 15 percent of marathon or triathlon participants also use aids, some of which are illegal.
What is doped with? In the endurance sport of running, this begins with simple painkillers that are available without a prescription in any pharmacy. You’re not even on the doping lists. Harmless, many might think. Anabolic steroids, steroids and Co. are not that easy to get. But obviously you don’t need to have much experience to find relevant offers online. And can then have the drug of choice usually conveniently sent home from abroad.
Doping has long been part of recreational sport
There was a lot of talk about doping in competitive sports around the Olympic Games. Especially after the spectacular case of the only 15-year-old Russian figure skater Kamila Valiewa. The horror worldwide was great. But if you look at mass and leisure sports, you have to draw the bitter conclusion: doping has long been an important part of it. The motivation of amateur athletes to boost their performance with tablets, powders or injections is multifaceted. Nevertheless, it is also cheating in hobby sports – in itself and in others.
And it’s dangerous on top of that. The “Ärzteblatt” wrote in 2020: “Some football coaches hand out painkillers to players who are prone to injury like candy. Even young people cover up pain with ibuprofen and diclofenac in order to be more efficient. Hundreds of cases of sudden cardiac death on the sports field could be related to the abuse of over-the-counter analgesics. ” In addition, the painkillers, which many consider harmless, can cause serious damage by dehydrating and reducing blood flow to the kidneys. In this context, severe damage was found, especially in marathon runners.
Painkillers do not make running better
But is the risk really worth it? Do such tablets help to increase performance? Do you run faster and with more endurance because you feel less pain? A large meta-study, as was just reported in the “German Journal for Sports Medicine”, shows that no measurable increase in performance can be determined. Not even with a high dosage of 1500 mg paracetamol. What is already morally questionable no longer makes any sense after this clear realization.