injuryupdate
24-09-2005, 06:44 AM
Attended the AFL Grand Final symposium on Friday morning at Telstra Dome. Quite a few good speakers but my highlight was actually (from left field) Paul McCrory, speaking in his capacity as editor of the BJSM on recent topics of interest. It seemed like from left field as McCrory normally covers concussion.
Almost all of the 'hot topics' he covered were related to performance-enhancement rather than injury treatment. The main take home points were that:
(1) Blood doping, or its equivalents, is now almost certainly everywhere in world endurance sports. This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that there is so much scientific literature showing how effective it is, yet there are still so many ways to make it undetectable. The latest way to make it undetectable is one of the earliest - the Lasse Viren method of autologous blood transfusion. Even if ABT is not desired, some forms of EPO are available that are still undetectable, whereas the few positive tests may still fail to hold up in court.
(2) Blood spinning is gaining in popularity, again because it is undetectable, WADA can't decide whether it is legal or not, and there is some evidence it might help performance. This process involves taking one's own blood out, having the serum & platelets taken out, stimulating the platetes to release growth factors, and then injecting the new (but still one's own product) growth factors back into the body.
I'd be interested to hear of any more info on this.
(3) McCrory also talked about whole body vibrations, which incidentally is the subject of a review in the latest BJSM. However, I thought his enthusiasm for this may have been a little premature, as I'm not convinced yet by the literature I've seen. I thought this may have been better off in Peter Brukner's talk, which covered the 'trendy' new treatments and modalities that haven't been proven. Brukner's highlight was lambasting the APA for endording the hypoxicator (altitude simulation) machines, when at best these are small performance enhancers but have nothing to do with physio.
Almost all of the 'hot topics' he covered were related to performance-enhancement rather than injury treatment. The main take home points were that:
(1) Blood doping, or its equivalents, is now almost certainly everywhere in world endurance sports. This conclusion can be drawn from the fact that there is so much scientific literature showing how effective it is, yet there are still so many ways to make it undetectable. The latest way to make it undetectable is one of the earliest - the Lasse Viren method of autologous blood transfusion. Even if ABT is not desired, some forms of EPO are available that are still undetectable, whereas the few positive tests may still fail to hold up in court.
(2) Blood spinning is gaining in popularity, again because it is undetectable, WADA can't decide whether it is legal or not, and there is some evidence it might help performance. This process involves taking one's own blood out, having the serum & platelets taken out, stimulating the platetes to release growth factors, and then injecting the new (but still one's own product) growth factors back into the body.
I'd be interested to hear of any more info on this.
(3) McCrory also talked about whole body vibrations, which incidentally is the subject of a review in the latest BJSM. However, I thought his enthusiasm for this may have been a little premature, as I'm not convinced yet by the literature I've seen. I thought this may have been better off in Peter Brukner's talk, which covered the 'trendy' new treatments and modalities that haven't been proven. Brukner's highlight was lambasting the APA for endording the hypoxicator (altitude simulation) machines, when at best these are small performance enhancers but have nothing to do with physio.