The 6th of March, 2013 allegations hit the media which rocked the Rugby League world. ASADA which stands for Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, come out with the shocking news, that a couple of teams in the national rugby league also known as NRL have been accused of using a banned substance. One of the teams that got targeted the most was the Cronulla sharks and the drug that they were supposably using is peptides. Peptides are a growth hormone consisting of small chains of amino acids that aren’t quite long enough to be considered a full protein. It is on ASADA’s list of banned substances in sport.
What advantage does an Athlete get from taking Peptides? A player may choose to use these hormones to speed up healing of injuries so that they can return to the game faster. Peptides will help the muscle or soft tissue in this rebuilding healing process. Supplements that provide an anabolic effect like peptides could also be used during pre-season and other periods where building muscle mass is important. For anyone to build Muscle mass they need to make small tears in the muscle. Athletes are under massive amounts of pressure to build Muscle in a very short deadline and to be at the top of their game so what the peptides do is it speeds up the recovery time of the tears in the muscle so they can get bigger faster and meet the deadline easier. Athletes may also have considered this form of drug as until now it has been very difficult to detect especially if only doing urine testing.
The medical experts are claiming that there are potential deadly side effects of these hormones which are not yet cleared for human use. These include increase risk of heart disease and also it is very dangerous in people who have had cancer or have pre cancerous cells. Cancer is a disease where the cell turnover is out of control. Peptides increases cell turnover so by taking this it would increase the risk of recurrence of cancer. There are questions over...