EPO & Sports: Not the Only Controversy
The news if rife with stories about athletes using EPO to enhance performance.
This is not the only controversy surrounding this cloned version of the human hormone erythropoietin.
A number of doctors are using this drug off label or outside of the pharmaceutical guidelines. Many are doing this to respect the healthcare wishes of their patients wanting alternatives to blood transfusions.
Some are doing this because not only is it good medicine, it is good business.
St Joseph’s Hospital of Cleveland Ohio advertises that it can shorten your hospital stay from 1/2 to three days.
The reason for the growth in the use of this drug is a growing number of patients in the US and the world wanting to eliminate the risk of blood borne diseases. This means if faced with the need for a blood transfusion, they want options or alternative treatments.
The controversy is in the effectiveness of the treatment. A second problem is the black box warning.
Seems some doc’s are giving it too much and too often. The result is too much blood and that causes other problems. Even so, it is advancing the field of alternatives to transfusions.
As a result of advances, two hospitals in the US have virtually eliminated blood transfusions all together.
On the other side of the is the use of blood transfusions when blood counts drop to unsafe levels. The challenge facing health care, what exactly are unsafe levels.
Dr Richard Spence of St Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, MD USA made this comment regarding the practice of blood transfusions.
“…there are no high level studies that show the effecy of blood transfusions.
The studies show the exact opposite.”
But what about when doctors say blood saves lives?
Dr Spence has said in conferences that there is anecdotal evidence but that evidence is not hard science. If an alternative that can have the same or better effect, reduce risk of both infection, complication and even death, why wouldn’t we want to use it.
All of the evidence says it works.
This controversy will not end soon.
The Mindless Middle
There is a mindless middle. A place between the sports controversy and the medical controversy.
In order to prevent the problems some clinicians have found that just giving iron results in the body making enough red blood cells. Many are giving an IV form of iron with remarkable success.
That is not what’s interesting. What is interesting is those who cannot tolerate the IV iron are given black strap molasses and peanut-butter. It works to boost the blood count.
No EPO, just iron, protein, and the building blocks of red blood cells.
There is more…
There is a body of research that says boosting the bodies glutathione levels increases the bodies red cell count.
In my families experience, just a few weeks on one of the glutathione boosting products resulted in a post operation day one blood count higher than the count prior to surgery.
Not only that, there was no infection at the surgery site. As to the healing, well the clinicians said they had never seen anything like it, regarding the heeling being so fast.
So we have gone backwards to advance science.
Wow…
What is Glutathione