W3 Spin|Internet news blog

Numerous professional and semi-professional athletes credit drugs with improving their performance on the fields but they may want to thank their brains instead of the human growth hormone, the most increasingly used drug in athletes today.

In a new recent double-blind trial funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency, in which neither the researchers nor the participants knew who was receiving the HGH and who was taking the placebo, the researchers asked participants to guess whether or not they were on the real drug.  Then they examined the results of the group would guess that they were on HGH when, in fact, they had been receiving the placebo.  This group improved at four fitness tests measuring in endurance, power, spirit capacity and strength.  The study participants that guessed correctly that they were taking a placebo had in fact not improved at all, according to preliminary results presented at the Society for Endocrinology meeting held earlier this year.

A recent study performed by the World Anti-Doping Agency really showed athletes, doctors and scientists the power of the mind. However there is no proven evidence that HGH will make a person run faster, cycle up the hill faster or hit a ball farther than their competition.  There are some studies however that has linked HGH to tissue growth and repair.  There are no conclusive studies that prove taking HGH improves athletic ability.

There are many health complications yet to be discovered regarding the side effects of HGH because the long-term use of the human growth hormones has thus far to be fully studied; however a few side effects that have been linked to HGH include insulin resistance which could lead to diabetes, stiffening of the joints which could lead to inactivity because of the joint pain and Corporal Tunnel Syndrome.

Many athletes use HGH because there is no clear-cut test besides a blood test to detect the use of this band doping substance.  The NFL, Major League Baseball and many other professional sports teams are reluctant to use blood tests because of their invasive nature.  Earlier this year, two Virginia professors began working on a new urine test to detect the use of HGH in athletes.