Blood doping: How Athletes Cheat the Game

Blood doping: How Athletes Cheat the Game

Is winning so glorious that an athlete would want to win a medal out of cheating through blood doping?

Blood dopping is an illegal way to enhance performance among athletes. This method to boosts athletic performance is banned by sports organizations including the world-renowned Olympics.

Blood doping to boost athletic performance is cheating!

@healthbiztips by Arlene Gentallan

Blood doping: winning by cheating
How does blood doping works?

Blood doping works by boosting the oxygen carrying capability of the blood. When muscle receives more oxygen supply, the individual is able to perform better and endure longer duration of physical activity with minimal fatigue.

Blood doping is especially advantageous to athletes who participate in a sports activity where endurance and stamina is a key to victory like marathon and cycling.

However, this method is strictly banned in sport events because it is an unnatural way to boost physical performance. Strength and endurance should be built through rigorous practice and training, not through a bag of blood or drug enhancers. Like the use of performance enhancing drugs, blood doping violates the philosophy and rules of a fair game and friendly competition.

Sports events celebrates naturally-built human strenght, not the puny strategy of blood doping.

Blood doping methods

Blood doping can take several forms. The most notorious are erythropoietin injection, blood transfusion, and synthetic oxygen carrier transfusion.

1. Erythropoietin injection

Erythropoietin is naturally released by the kidneys in response to low oxygen level to trigger the bone marrow of bones to produce red blood cells. However, athletes who practice blood doping abuse erythropoietin's function by injecting themselves with it's synthetic form. Red blood cells are blood component that facilitates the transport of oxygen throughout the body.

Using erythropoietin injection as a form of blood doping is often hard to detect because the narrow window of time synthetic erythropoietin can be detected in the blood.


2.  Blood transfusion

Blood doping can take the form of a blood transfusion, in which an athlete, even without valid medical indication, receives an intravenous infusion of blood product to increase circulating levels of red blood cell. Red blood cells' primary function is to transport oxygen throught the body. The athlete could either receive his/her own pre-extracted saved blood (autologous transfusion) or blood from another person (homologous transfusion).

In homologous blood transfusion, there is a risk that the athlete receiving the blood can develop life-threatening blood transfusion reaction, even when blood typing and crossmatching is done.


3. Synthetic oxygen carriers

Blood doping by introducing synthetic oxygen carriers works like blood transfusion in increasing the blood's oxygen carrying capacity, although in this type of blood doping method, no actual blood is transfused. Instead, chemicals that acts as oxygen carrier in the blood stream is infused to an athlete.

A good example of synthetic oxygen carriers is hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier (HBOC).

Blood doping can kill an athlete

Blood doping doesn't come without risk to an athlete who practice it. It can lead to serious health issues, even death. Increasing circulating blood cells thickens the blood which causes the cardiac muscle to pump harder to be able to propel blood throughout the body. This leads to an increase in blood pressure and pulse rate.

The increase viscosity of the blood owing to blood doping can increase the individuals risk of developing deadly blood clots, which can cause a sudden heart attack or stroke.

How to catch athletes who exercise blood doping?

To maintain the integrity and honor of a competition, it is fitting to remove cheating athletes. Several tests can determine if an athlete is guilty of blood doping.

The World Anti-doping Agency uses "Athlete Passport" in which laboratory test (usually blood and urine test) is compare from previous tests to detect significant difference that can point out a potential blood doping practice. Synthetic oxygen carriers can be determined from blood samples.