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| Three Legal Ways to Enhance Your Physical Fitness |
| 'Doping' without doing harm to your health |
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Hartmut Kaiser (emperor)  |
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Published 2008-08-06 04:59 (KST) |
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| This article is only lightly edited and the author is not a medical professional. <Editor's Note> |
As the Olympics in Beijing ("city of the north," literally translated from Chinese) draw closer, the conventional media focus on illegal ways of doping that are applied by many athletes: using male sex hormones or their derivates, such as derivates of testosterone, and growth hormones and its derivates to build up more muscles; using adrenaline, cortisone or cocaine or derivates from these substances to battle fatigue; or using erythropoietin (EPO), or so-called EPO-mimetics, to get more red blood cells that transport oxygen to the muscles.
It is illegal to use these substances unless prescribed by a medical doctor as a cure for an illness. What's more, all of these are very dangerous for human health.
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FROM THE SECTION |
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| I want to tell you about three legal and healthy ways to increase your physical performance.
Creatine is an ingredient of red meat, but it is also available without prescription as a pure substance. It is not harmful to your health if you take only a small dash of it daily, and make a pause of two weeks in taking it every three weeks. It increases your endurance in sports like long-distance running and swimming, but taking too much can cause dehydration, since it leads to the storing of excess water in the muscles. It makes you look more athletic and makes you a little stronger. Taking too much can harm your kidneys.
Resveratrol is a compound of many plants, such as peanuts or wine grapes. The skin of red wine grapes especially contains a lot of resveratrol. You may drink grape juice of red wine or eat peanuts; resveratrol is also available from online shops as a pure substance. Right now, there is a lot of research going on about resveratrol, and papers about it have been published in high-ranking scientific journals like science and nature. Many researchers claim that it has two effects: It lengthens the life span by mimicking caloric restriction, and it increases endurance and stamina in long distance running, cycling and swimming. (See University of Cologne, Germany: "Resveratrol improves health and survival of mice on a high-calorie diet," Josef A. Baur et al., Nature, 2006.)
Of course you should always stay in training, stay physically active. The best advice is that you exercise three or four days a week and rest the other days of the week. When you eat, you should eat carbohydrates in the morning and protein in the evening before you go to sleep.
You should avoid too much fat and too much alcohol and should not smoke. You should take care of your mental balance and peace of mind: avoid stress, enjoy friendships and find a partner that suits you. A happy love and sex life also helps. It is important that you sleep well.
Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling propagated a highly controversial therapy: Mega-vitamin therapy. First, some psychiatrists wanted to treat schizophrenia with this therapy, but as more and more scholars had doubts about its effects, Linus Pauling wanted to use it to increase lifespan. Everybody should be cautious not to overdose on vitamins that are soluble in fat (vitamins E, D, A and K). Vitamin A especially can be very toxic and even deadly for the liver.
Some of the explorers of the North Pole and the Arctic have perished because they ate the liver of polar bears and seals, which may contain an overdose of vitamin A. It is hard to overdose on vitamins that are soluble in water like the vitamins C (ascorbic acid) and folic acid. Yet taking too much of those might cause trouble with your digestion and your stomach or even with your kidneys. I doubt if using mega-vitamin therapy can make you live longer, yet, when it comes to playing sports, it can make you more awake and give you more stamina and endurance (in running, swimming and cycling, soccer, tennis, basketball, etc.). I should also mention that you need not to take vitamin pills, eating a lot of fruit and vegetables should also do it.
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©2008 OhmyNews
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