Sport Doping with Placebo Effect Pills

Persons caught using any type of performance enhancing drug that can escape testing face the abrupt loss of their career, embarrassment and possible confinement.

So why do athletes and some fitness fanatics continue to look for the holy grail of performance enhancing substances?

The taking of substances known to enhance performance for the sake of personal gain or national pride goes back thousands of years. It has always been widespread but hidden within a somewhat limited group of people. Only with the expansion of professional sports has the numbers of athletes in professional sports grown so much in numbers.

With this growth so did the numbers of athletes turning to performance enhancing substances increase in number. While the percentage of athletes using such substances stayed nearly the same, the actual numbers of athletes using such substances increased dramatically.

With the amazingly large revenues that television generates and the super star attention star athletes get, with the attendant endorsement contracts, the reason to take performance enhancing substances becomes more than many athletes can resist. New performance enhancing drugs appear too frequently.

If they are able to pass through current testing without detection the use spreads quickly until some unlucky athlete falls on his sword in sacrifice for the rest of the abusers. No sport is immune from the use of these substances.

The latest substances of choice come in pill form. Most athletes using these drugs do not want to know what they contain. As long as their coaches or advisers agree performance improves it is safer not to know what the so-called potency pills contain. The use of these pills has had some unintended consequences.

The generic name, hiding the true composition, at least part of the time, allows the sale of significant amounts of placebo pills. As is well known, some people benefit from placebo ingestion. This is because they believe their well-being increases or their performance improves. It does so because of the confidence they have within themselves. When the level of needed performance is no longer obtainable, the use of low strength or placebo potency pills ends.

Athletes then turn to stronger substances in desperation. At that point, it is just a matter of time before the cat is out of the bag. So the controversy continues. Many athletes see a double standard when society promotes performance enhancement in sex but not in sports. They see no difference between special materials in swimming suits that give an extra advantage to some and potency pills for sports.


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