Brain Doping
Struggling to better your 5K time? If using electricity to stimulate your brain sounds like an easier solution than another set of hill intervals, it could be time to try transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). This is done in what you might call the old- fashioned way – by attaching electrodes to your temples.
‘We wanted to understand if it was the brain or the body that limited physical performance, or a combination of both,’ says Dr Holden McRae, professor of sports medicine at Pepperdine University in California, who recently led a team of scientists for a Red Bull study called Project Endurance. ‘We found that it’s the brain that’s the limiter.’
According to McRae this isn’t surprising. ‘We are homeostatic organisms, which means we seek a condition of balance or calm in our internal environment. Our brains are not going to allow us to get to a stage where we can cause damage to our systems by doing too much exercise.’
Of course, any athlete’s first question about their brain limiter is, ‘How do I turn it off?’ That’s where tDCS comes in. ‘The next step was to see if we could stimulate or increase the activity in the brain regions responsible for activating the leg muscles while cycling,’ says McRae. ‘We’re resetting your brain’s “software” to allow for a better output. It’s like having a 5MB/s download speed but being able to increase it to 15MB/s.’
Results vary. ‘The responses are individual – some people respond well, others not at all,’ says McRae. ‘We had athletes ride a 4km time trial after a series of fatiguing exercises. If we stimulated them before the fatiguing exercises, the average times were improved.’The effects only last around 90 minutes and there aren’t yet any studies on the long-term effects that this kind of electrical stimulation might have. Verdict: risky.
Is it allowed?
The good news is that if you do have the cojones to zap yourself for more speed, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) isn’t going to tell you off for it. Not yet, anyway. ‘The debate about whether or not it’s a form of cheating hasn’t really happened yet,’ says Nick Wojek, head of science and medicine at UK Anti-Doping, the British arm of Wada. ‘It may not even end up being an anti-doping decision because no chemicals are involved, but it could be banned by the governing bodies of individual sports where the benefits are considered unfair.’
Do it yourself
Run faster… via boredom
Mental fatigue impedes physical performance, according to a study by exercise physiology specialist Samuele Marcora, published in 2009 – but the good news is, you can use this exact effect to compete better. Here’s McRae’s three-step plan.
Train bored
First, train after doing a boring mental task. ‘The perception of what you’re doing is “Wow, this is really difficult”,’ says McRae. Do this a few times.
Rest your brain
‘Make sure you’re mentally rested before a big competition or PB attempt,’ says McRae. Use the Breathe2Relax app to calm yourself down.
Smash your PB
With less mental fatigue, you should go significantly faster. ‘That’s more practical for an athlete than electrocuting themselves,’ says McRae.
Ketones
Got £2,000 to spend on an energy drink? The pro peloton does and, according to researcher David Holdsworth, part of the Oxford University team working on ketone drink Delta-G, some cyclists are already using it to win ‘significant international events’. The drink, created by a team led by Oxford biochemistry professor Kieran Clarke, contains ketones that are also naturally produced in the body, which uses them as a fuel source. ‘They’re just like glucose or fat and they have calories,’ says Clarke. ‘You make them when you either go on a high-fat, low-carb diet or don’t eat at all for a while.’
What Delta-G isn’t is one of the ‘raspberry ketone’ drinks you see in health food shops. ‘They’re a different form of ketone that’s not normally produced or metabolised in the body,’ says Clarke. ‘It just goes straight though you without having any effect.’
Clarke’s drink isn’t yet available to the public – it can only be produced in a lab and as a result costs around £2,000 a litre to make. However, that price will come down dramatically when Delta-G goes into full production, which Clarke estimates will be within a year. Even with the cheaper price, Clarke still sees it as something for elite athletes, saying that weekend competitors probably wouldn’t notice a difference in performance.
If ketones are present in the body anyway, why does this drink exist? In fact, while your body does produce ketones naturally, it does so fairly slowly. ‘If you’re producing ketones naturally it would take several days to build up levels,’ says Clarke. ‘It depends on what you’re eating.’ Delta-G gives you an immediate ketone kick that provides you with an alternative fuel source to burn while training.
The drink has been tested on endurance athletes and while the results haven’t been published yet, Clarke says that they’re promising and the drink has been clearly shown to improve endurance. ‘It’s only endurance athletes who would ever see any improvements – sprinters wouldn’t,’ says Clarke.
Is it allowed?
Although the drink isn’t yet available, Wada already has a view on it. ‘It’s not considered prohibited. We know it’s used as fuel, as a different way of generating energy rather than using glucose and fatty acids,’ says Wojek. ‘It’s definitely OK at the moment; we class ketones as an ingredient in special dietary foods. I’d say that an athlete who’s considering this drink should take the same caution associated with any supplement use.’ Since they’re a naturally occurring substance, testing for it might also be tricky.
Do it yourself
The ketogenic diet will help you boost your energy reserves
While you wait for Delta-G to become available in Sainsbury’s, you can get a similar effect with a ketogenic diet. This is high in fat and low enough in carbohydrates (around 20-50g a day) to cause a metabolic state called ketosis, where most of the body’s energy comes from ketone bodies in the blood, rather than glycolysis, which is where blood glucose provides the energy. Here’s a day’s menu to start you off.
Breakfast
Poached egg with spinach Poach an egg in gently simmering water, adding a splash of vinegar to the pan to keep the egg intact, and wilt spinach in a pan for two minutes. Serve the egg on a bed of spinach, topped with melted cheese.
Lunch
Spicy chicken wings Make a spice rub with ground ginger, ground coriander, black pepper, allspice, garlic powder and cayenne or your preferred spices. Rub on chicken wings and leave for 30 minutes. Then grill until cooked through and serve with lettuce.
Dinner
Tuna with steamed veg Fry a tuna steak – it only needs a couple of minutes on each side in a hot pan. Boil a saucepan of water and steam some green veg – broccoli, asparagus and mange tout are good options – to serve with the tuna.
Gene Doping
If the idea of meddling with genes conjures up images of mad scientists creating perfect athletes in secret underground labs, rein your imagination in – a little. Of the three methods here, gene doping is the most experimental and controversial. In fact there are disputes about whether or not it’s even feasible.
Gene doping stems from legitimate gene therapy trials, where scientists introduce a corrected version of a gene to replace a defective one. It can potentially be used to treat conditions such as haemophilia. When this type of treatment is appropriated (or misappropriated) to boost athletic performance, for example altering the growth-influencing insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), it becomes doping.
A study published in Clinical Biochemistry found that while gene therapy trials have overall had disappointing results the potential presents a strong lure for athletes. The study also pointed out that a number of gene doping studies on animals have seen positive results, which suggest gene doping may be just around the corner.
However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t big issues that need to be overcome before it becomes a reality. As well as the negative trial results, there’s also a serious risk of your body reacting badly to gene therapy and identifying modified genes as dangerous foreign substances that need to be destroyed. Because gene therapy is designed to merge the new genes into your body, it can trigger a fatal auto-immune reaction. This happened in 1999 to 19-year-old Jesse Gilsinger, who was undergoing gene therapy to combat a rare genetic liver condition.
In spite of the dangers, one of the biggest elements of gene doping’s allure is that there currently isn’t a specific test that will flag it up. Why risk using a traditional EPO blood doping method that can show a spike in your system when you can reprogramme your body to produce it naturally?
Is it allowed?
It might be firmly in the realms of sci-fi for now, but Wada is clear: gene doping is illegal. ‘It’s classed as a prohibited method and it’s banned at all times,’ says Wojek. While there’s no direct test for gene doping, it is possible to test for the indirect effects. ‘We monitor blood variables, but testing directly is one of the big challenges for the scientific community to resolve,’ explains Wojek. ‘We’re not aware of any cases related to gene doping but we wouldn’t be surprised if someone was already trying to use these techniques, especially with the developments going on in the medical field.’
Do it yourself
Er, well, don’t, but you can take various legitimate stepsto maximise your body’s performance EPO stimulates red blood cell production and this, in turn, increases your capacity for oxygen transport, which has been shown to improve your ability to perform endurance exercises. But it’s not the only way to get the effect.
BUY ECH
Evidence that echinacea can prevent colds is shaky, but a 2012 study published in the Journal Of Strength And Conditioning Research found that consuming echinacea increased EPO levels and exercise endurance.
GO FISH
High in omega 3 fatty acids, fish oil has been claimed to help with all manner of conditions, one of which is promoting optimum kidney health, which is vital in the production of EPO. Dose yourself with 1,200mg a day.
GET HIGH
Sprint training at high altitude tricks the EPO naturally present in your body into producing more red blood cells. Don’t have a mountain nearby? Gyms such as the Altitude Centre will let you mimic the effects
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