If you truly believe that epo injections and hypoxic tents have the same risks (blood clots, strokes, etc), then you are woefully uneducated.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Using a altitude tent is considered doping in some countries like Norway and if you use it you will be banned from all sport and organized training for 2 years.
So it is not legal everywhere.

Really? I did not know that.

What was the reasoning and process behind the decision?

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Eliot
blog thing - strava thing

I do not like your woeful attitude, looks like your momma didn't educate you properly. Now if you would come with facts and data instead of insults to push this somewhat debate forward maybe I would have been interested in learning more, I am not a pharmacist or a doctor, sure I'm aware the risks are different but I created this thread to learn and discuss, not to be ridiculed by some random idiot with no class.


And uh, thanks halvard, I add no idea, it is very interesting. Just seems to further my thoughts, but on the other hand those living at altitude do end up with a known advantage.

Far from it. A hypoxic tent simulates altitude when you can't live at altitude. Why do you think so many pro endurance athletes live at altitude (hello Boulder)? Living at altitude, in a hypoxic tent, assists the body in producing more natural EPO.

Synthetic EPO is not natural. It has serious, harmful, sometimes fatal, side effects.

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Rodney
TrainingPeaks | Altra Running | RAD Roller
http://www.goinglong.ca

To a degree, the line between what is legal performance enhancing and illegal performance enhancing can be somewhat arbitrary.

As noted, tent is illegal in some countries, but as far as I know, it is 100% legal to live at altitude. Pretty minor difference there.

Several over the counter medications contain banned substances, even though their performance enhancement might be limited or non-existent. Meanwhile caffeine is clearly documented to have a significant performance enhancement and it is generally fine.

I am not saying we should all be shooting up, only that there is some area where things are arbitrary and hypocritical. OK to have a bag of mass produced saline inserted into yourself for recovery, not OK to have a bag of your own blood inserted into your body for recovery.

People making the rules don't have an easy job or an easy justification in my opinion.

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Ironman Certified Coach

Currently accepting limited number of new athletes

Those Norwegians are tough. Not very logical, but tough.

Synthetic EPO can be hard to control, and causes the body to overproduce RBC's despite what the O2 saturation in the blood would normally dictate. This can lead to "thick" blood, which coupled with the low heart rates in many athletes can cause strokes and clot problems. When people use EPO at a "professional" level, they also use saline and other artificial thinners to reduce this risk. Yes, a general layperson could do it, but it's more difficult and easy to mess up.

Natural reactions limit the amount of production, as it's related to the O2 saturation in the blood that stimulates natural increased production.

The other factor is that unless you need EPO because of disease/injury, etc., if you take EPO for an extended period, it can affect the ability of the person to produce their own EPO after they stop taking the artificial EPO.

And, of course, it goes to the moral argument of PED's in the first place. You could argue (As some of the Scandinavian countries evidently do, I had not known that about Norway) that altitude tents are the same, but the safety effects are what makes the difference in most places. Your body will self regulate where it can't with artificial EPO.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

I remember hearing once that it was idea to recover at altitude but be able to train at lower altitude. I assumed this allowed the adaptive responses to altitude living, but you were able to perform higher training loads due to higher O2 concentrations at lower altitudes.

With this thought an altitude tent could be more beneficial then training and living at high altitude.

The point you are getting at is correct, but what you said is not really correct. The "synthetic" factor has essentially nothing to do with health and safety. Any synthetic recombinant protein hormone can also be produced by protein purification processes giving you a natural hormone. It is just considerably more time and labor consuming to do so. Whether synthetic or natural, over abundance of exogenous EPO can lead to hematocrit levels that are at unhealthy, even fatal levels. This is also not technically a side effect as the hormone is acting on the receptor that it is intended to act upon yielding the specific physiological response. A side effect would be a response due to acting somewhere other than the EPO receptor.

One applies a stimulus to the body that generates a response according to the individual.

One applies the response independent of the individual.

No difference?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Wouldn't it take years or generations of living at a high altitude for your body to "adjust" or produce more natural EPO? Or is this kind of training (living) at high altitude a waste of time.

Just curious.

Why should you let those poor countries with no mountains be able to mimic the same sort of training? I say good on Norway, all countries should press their advantage, either having places to train at altitude or the money to send their athletes to train in those places.

Altitude tent/house.chamber was banned in 2003. Oxygen masks too.
The reason behind was to take away the gray areas.
Looking at the results, especially in winter endurance sports. Norwegians are doing OK with no tents and a country with no high mountains.
You can come a long way with training and an supportive endurance culture.

This is from the women's 30k race in 2011. This is outside the main stadium.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WbfZjsl0JQ

Yes, a hypoxia tent stimulates natural EPO, but through an artificial means.

Personally, I think they should be banned, but since they aren't, athletes are free to use them and it is certainly not cheating.

Just my $.02.

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Chicago Cubs - 2016 WORLD SERIES Champions!!!!

"If ever the time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin." - Samuel Adams

No, your body turns over it's entire RBC supply in ~ 6 weeks, IIRC. Altitude effects take on the order of weeks to a couple months to adapt.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

+1 There is a distinction. EPO is a useful medical treatment option. Whether natural or synthetic, there isn't much difference except in maybe the efficacious dosage. -J

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Life is tough. But it's tougher when you're stupid. -John Wayne

I assume they also banned use of any form of home heating and/or cooling to simulate other natural environments? Wouldn't want people to be tempted into those "gray areas" to get ready for competition someplace hotter or colder than Norway. ([/i]Is there any place colder?)

Thanks for answering that.
It does not take long to see chronic effects from altitude. If it did, no one would be able to climb Everest without being at base camp for years.

This is Scandinavia.
Babies are sleeping outside, also in cold weather
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21537988

devlin: not to get into a debate on adaptation to altitude but in my experience, one's body adapts, at least begins to, pretty quickly. I know in my last mountaineering trip, I was winded the first day at 8000 feet (climbing with a load) but felt pretty good 2 weeks later at nearly 23,000 feet. Clearly my body had adapted a lot...

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Randy Christofferson(http://www.rcmioga.blogspot.com

Insert Doubt. Erase Hope. Crush Dreams.

Hours! http://jap.physiology.org/content/73/3/837 50% boost of plasma EPO after 360 minutes when o2 starved to 75% for only 5 minutes (about 8000 feet of elevation). Is a 50% boost enough to really crank up production of RBCs?

These guys (http://jap.physiology.org/content/83/1/102) had 3 groups, live low-train low, live high-train low, live high-train high. The lab numbers increased for both high altitude groups, but 5km race times were only improved in the live high-train lows (over a span of a couple months).

Someone better at human phys can make better links than me.

Yeah, I'm basically addressing full acclimation, to where you're not in any sort of deficient state. And, body reactions/training have an impact as well. It's been a long time since I looked at the mechanisms (like 1990 in one of my kines classes), but higher stress produced a faster response than just sitting at altitude. And, the ultimate caveat, everyone is different. :)

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

For one, hypoxic tents don't really work anything like living at altitude, and neither work as dramatically as EPO.

As such they are much safer - it is hard to kill yourself by living at altitude because you can't really get your hematocrit was over 50 that way, and you aren't sticking needles of illegal drugs in your veins either.

Since hypoxic tents only simulate the lack of oxygen and not also the lower air pressure, they don't stimulate the same degree of adaptation as living at altitude.

So, no it isn't the same, if it was Froome would be climbing Alpe duez 3 minutes faster.

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
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Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter