Abstract When athletes use dietary supplements it is easy for them to ignore the long term effects of these supplements in order for them to gain temporary advantages. If not used correctly, dietary supplements can lead to irreversible damage to the body or even death. Understanding the advantages and drawbacks of using supplements is important when applying them to your everyday life. In this paper, a variety of supplements commonly used by athletes for weight loss, muscle gain, and energy enhancement will be discussed. Their effects on the body will be explained as will the pros and cons of each. The ongoing debate on whether or not athletes should be allowed to use them is also discussed. The knowledge of what you put into your body can …show more content…
For example, there are supplements that can help athletes surpass their regular limit of energy. One that is widely used by athletes and non-athletes is caffeine. Caffeine is most commonly known to be found in soda, coffee, and energy drinks. There are also other products that contain it such as ice cream and yogurt. A common misconception of caffeine is that it gives you artificial energy when you consume it. However, what it is really doing is tricking your body into thinking it is not tired. Adenosine is a neurochemical found in all human cells. It promotes sleep, and also dilates the brain’s blood vessels to increase oxygen intake (Nichols, 2014). As the day progresses on, the adenosine in the body builds up more and more. When there is a certain amount of adenosine in the body, sleep is the response it triggers. The nervous system has receptors that keep track of the levels of adenosine and when it recognizes that there is too much, your body begins to feel tired. Caffeine comes into play as it blocks those receptors from realizing you have a certain amount of adenosine in your body. Now that your body cannot recognize the neurochemical, it also causes the blood vessels in your brain to constrict which minimizes pain. When the build-up of adenosine has nowhere to go, the brain begins to fire neurons at an increased rate. This …show more content…
It has also been proven to increase the amount of endurance shown when exercising. This liberty of choosing when your body gets tired is easily misused. When the caffeine finally wears off, the adenosine that built up has its chance to be processed through your body’s receptors. Because your body is not always fit to handle a huge wave of adenosine flooding through your receptors, it cause you to crash to recuperate. When people continue to ingest caffeine to avoid the crash, they tend to get symptoms such as: nausea, increased heartbeat, anxiety, insomnia, dizziness, heart palpitations, and vomiting. In extreme cases, caffeine can even cause cardiac arrest. This is why the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has a set amount of caffeine that can be found in a student athlete in order for them to be eligible. Caffeine can be a very useful tool is used with
Adenosine binds onto receptors on the brain cells, which causes people to feel the tiredness and laziness; however, because the two molecules are very similar, caffeine too is able to block the receptors. The excess adenosine is converted into adrenaline which most people are used to experiencing when drinking coffee, a sense of alertness and energy for about 4 – 6 hours. It also helps the natural stimulants work better, so, in a way, caffeine is a stimulant for stimulants. All of this information culminates in the fact that these stimulants that are activated due to the caffeine are what cause the heart to beat rapidly, either too fast for the daphnia to survive, or just enough that they are more active, like humans are when ingesting caffeine. Caffeine also causes hunger as the body is in an “overdrive”
Caffeine is a natural central nervous system stimulant. It is considered a drug that if is overly consumed can be dangerous for one’s body. Caffeine is a temporary energy booster that improves mood and alertness for most people, mainly athletes. It can be an eye-opener in the morning, could be drunk or eaten on practice brakes, and for some, it just became a habit that they cannot go through a day without a cup of coffee before exiting their doorways. Furthermore, it requires good health and stamina for athletes to perform throughout the game, particularly the one in teams,
Pre-workout supplements are a newer category of products that are designed to increase workout intensity and energy. These products are being used by millions of athletes today, and there have been a lot of questions raised about the long-term effects of them. There are a lot of different brands in this industry, but most of the products contain the same main ingredients: Creatine, nitric oxide, vitamin B, and caffeine. There has been quite a bit of research done on these ingredients individually, but together they have not been studied very much, which is why a lot of athletes avoid them. Another problem with these products is that athletes are becoming
The end result is an increase in blood sugar for use as muscle fuel. Basically, it is believed that caffeine raises the general metabolism of the user, which resultantly increases the activity and raises the body’s temperature (wysiwyg://35/http://onhealth.com/ch1/indepth/item/item.34623_1_1.asp).
Caffeine’s mental appeal is just as trendy as its physical purpose. Caffeine has been proven to stimulate the central nervous system. Caffeine stimulates the Central Nervous System at high levels, like the medulla and cortex, and even has the ability to reach the spinal cord in larger doses. The effect of caffeine in the cortex is a clearer thought process and also can rid the body of fatigue. This gives people a greater ability of concentration for 1-3 hours. For athletes competing in sports where quick thinking and rapid reactions are necessary, caffeine can provide a huge edge. However, these results are much more inconsistent than the experiments done on caffeine in endurance sports. (http://www.garynull.com/Documents/CaffeineEffects.htm)
With sportsmen seeking alternatives to illegal and unsafe performance enhancing drugs, “ergogenic aids” have come to their rescue. Ergogenic aids are supplements that enhance the performance of athletes by improving their speed, strength and agility. A number of natural products are marketed as ergogenic aids, which have found a ready market among sportspersons. Their biggest advantage is that they are legal, apart from being safe and effective. Examples of such aids include branched chain amino acids, creatine, medium chain triglycerides, pyruvates and vitamins.
sport to better themselves as an athlete. Many sober athletes work day and night to get
The reason why athletes are so tempted to take drugs for an event, is all because of the fame you get when an athlete's comes first in the sport. Studies shows that companies assign the best athletes in movies, commercials , and sponsorships, which means they get paid each time the movie/commercial gets paid. Did you know that when athletes take steroids their chances of dying in the next five years is very high. The reason why this happens is because the human body can’t develop so fast in a short period of time.
At the heart of sports is the tradition of competition, rivalry, excellence, winning. But where does "doing whatever it takes to win" to cross the line? In recent years, performance enhancing drugs have been no stranger to professional athletes. Although they make the sport more fun, professional athletes should not be allowed to take steroids because steroids are damaging to the body and steroid users receive an unfair athletic advantage.
Historical National Football League coach and manager Vince Lombardi once said, “Winning isn 't everything--but wanting to win is”. The want to win, is real; it is embodied by the usage of performance enhancing drugs. Blood doping increases the count of red blood cells in the body, anabolic steroids accelerate the growth of muscle and strengthen the bones, and stimulants increase alertness, competitiveness, aggressiveness and reduce fatigue. All of these materials have clear benefits but the health implications are still very present. Many cases of injury from these substances have consequences as serious as death. Athletes worldwide put their bodies and health at risk due to the usage of performance enhancing drugs and methods such as blood doping, steroids, and injections. But in retrospect, it harms a lot more than just an athlete’s body; in fact, performance enhancing drugs and supplements plague the athletic playing field worldwide, which leads to social unrest, health issues, and even political issues.
Central Idea: Caffeine can be found in many places and comes in many forms. It can major effects on our body and we can experience major withdrawal symptoms.
Athletes have used performance enhancing drugs(PED) throughout history to increase personal performance and recover quicker. Although, there are many PEDs athletes use, two are used commonly among several athletes in many different professions of sports. Steroids and Human Growth Hormones are those two. Professional teams have specific tests for these two drugs, and the consequences can be severe if an athlete is caught using these substances illegally. The mix of Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen, which makes up steroids, cause significant weight gains, but consequently steroids are very harmful to the liver and can cause permanent damage “Anadrol 50”. Human Growth Hormones is a over the counter drug athletes use to recover faster, and to make strength gains rapidly “Haley Simon Human Growth Hormone”. Both of these performance enhancing drugs are a
Caffeine is demarcated as a drug because it arouses the central nervous system, causing increased alertness. Caffeine gives most people a temporary energy boost and elevates mood. That’s why everyone generally uses it for plenty of reasons mostly dealing with work or school. Some people use caffeinated energy drinks to improve their endurance while playing sports or to dance for long periods. That’s just the beginning, these are the things that caffeine does to the brain, heart, fetus, and body.
Caffeine stimulates the nervous system says medical dictionary. Caffeine's purpose is to help coordination, wake you, make you more aware, and helps drugs work fast and efficiently. (Medical Dictionary) Body temperature, blood flow, production of liver, sugar levels, heart rate, blood pressure, and, stomach acids secretion all rises from caffeine reports University of Michigan. A few of the behavioral consequences of caffeine, closely reflect the type of results that substances like cocaine would procure. Caffeine is just much more of an ordinary universal stimulants, the most standard common place one in fact. (addiction and recovery,
Sylvia Nena (2011) also stated that “Manufactures of these products claim to increase energy, endurance, burn fat and improve athletic performance. According to experts, many of them state that it is untrue that energy drink helps to increase energy. This is due to drugs that can be found in the drinks such as caffeine. Caffeine with high levels of consuming can cause some problems to the human body like palpitations, hypertension, vomiting, convulsions and even worst heart failure which can lead to death. Roland Griffiths (2012) a caffeine specialist said that high caffeine in use by young people can cause a cycle of rushes and crashes that can add “a degree of variance to their moods and psychological well-being that they don’t really need. Joao Breda(2014) from WHO’s Europe wrote that caffeine has a proven negative effect on