The beginning of an interesting conversation between Sherdog's Jordan Breen and Greg Savage where they discussed Hormone Replacement Therapy in Mixed Martial Arts is quickly transcribed below.
Jordan Breen - Greg, we had a pretty big day for mixed martial arts in as much as Nate Marquardt broke his silence and discussed Hormone Replacement Therapy and how it impacted the dissolution of his fight with Rick Story. What did you think of his and his manager, Lex McMahon's explanation on the MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani?
Greg Savage - It was interesting, you know, I like that they came out and finally made a statement. I think it's something they probably should have done right away, you never let anyone frame an arguement in a certain light before you get your side of the story out there if you can avoid it. You know, he came clean. I appreciate that. But, it's still an underlying question: Why are these athletes who are in the primes of their careers, training like they are, why are they all coming up with low testosterone levels?
Jordan Breen - Guys in their late 20s and early 30s in many cases coming up with low testosterone.
Greg Savage - It's very rare from what i've read since I heard about this for the last couple days where speculation was rampant. It seems to be a very rare condition yet disproportionately athletes are coming down with it a little more often.
Jordan Breen - And one of the major ways that you could induce low testosterone if you were an aberrant case anyway would be to take Steroids.
Greg Savage - Something he has been accused of and fined for and suspended for in the past.
Jordan Breen - And even acknowledged as much in the interview with Ariel Helwani saying that he felt the legal Andro supplement that he took which was on the banned list of the various athletic commissions under the Association of Boxing Commission and that he was suspended for taking after he beat Ivan Salaverry in his UFC debut.
Greg Savage - I actually talked to Keith Kizer about that on Sunday. I called him to verify some information about the Marquardt incident back then and thats what he said. This supplement he took said right on it [that] you'll test positive for it, it will give you testicular shrinkage, it listed all these bad things right on the bottle. He was like, "Even if it was legal, why would you take something like that?". Another thing you interestingly said, speaking with the world anti-doping agency doctors, the Nevada doctors realized that there are certain times that testosterone therapy may not be the best case scenario when someone has tested for a PED in the past because that is something that will shut down testosterone. Because your body regulates the testosterone levels. If you are pumping all of this stuff into your body, your body is going to be like "Hey, we don't need this stuff". There are apparently two certain parts of the brain that water doctors have identified that they think very likely shut down when there is use of PEDs. A lot of times it doesn't come back. And that is one of the things when they look at therapeutic exemptions in Nevada they will look at that part and if they believe it is self-inflicted low testosterone you will not get TRT in Nevada.
Jordan Breen - The question that comes up to me is, is there even a good reason for a therapeutic use clause for testosterone as far as athletic commissions go knowing that what we are seeing now seems to be at the very least a circumvention of what is intended to be done: test people for steroids, test people for gaining testosterone and powerful hormones so they can train harder, train longer, recover from injury and gain advantage. I've never had an issue with steroid use but surely if the company line for the ABC is going to be "We want all our commissions to catch people who are cheating", how can we allow therapeutic use knowing what we've seen use of it so far?
Listen to the full conversation at Sherdog.com
What are your thoughts on this?
Personally, I believe that it is being used to circumvent the rules and that it should not be allowed by the commissions.
whorestepmom.com
ReplyDelete