Deer antlers? Yes, deer antlers.
They harvest the so-called velvet antler (a soft coating that covers deer antlers) in New Zealand, freeze-dry it and then grind it into a powder. It then gets shipped to the United States, where it gets put into either capsules or liquid extracts that can become a simple mouth spray. You can buy it for $68 a bottle.
For the elite athlete, experts say it’s essentially a human growth hormone, one of the substances organized sports is trying to keep out. The difference here is deer antlers are natural, not synthetic, and properly discovering it in a test falls somewhere between extremely challenging to virtually impossible.
Best anyone can figure, first you need to run a blood test (which leagues such as the NFL or Major League Baseball don’t do). Then you need to run a blood test at the exact proper time. Otherwise, nothing comes up.
“You can find it,” Jonathan Danaceau, a director at a World Doping Agency approved lab, told ThePostGame in its report about new Raiders coach Hue Jackson’s connection with a supplement company that produces the spray.. “But saying whether this is synthetic or natural is hard to determine. It’s only detectable in blood, and most anti-doping tests are done in urine.”
It’s a loophole for the athlete – turning drug tests into intelligence tests. You have to be stupid to fail one. The benefits of deer antler – or more specifically the substance IGF-1 that comes from it – are clear. IGF-1 is banned by everyone.
“It’s one of the proteins that is increased in human growth hormone … it’s considered performance-enhancing,” Danaceau said.
“It’s similar to HGH in that it aids in recovery. It helps build tissue, and strengthen tissue – more than you can ever do by training alone. Any preparation that is not naturally occurring is banned. Taking IGF-1 through deer antler is banned as well.”
So it’s banned, but difficult to detect, which leaves sports leagues in a quandary.
http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/slant/201101/latest-ped-gives-sports-deer-headlights-look
for full article.