Tom Zirbel, joins Tyler Hamilton and Kenny Williams as the third American rider on a year confirmed positive for DHEA. Dehydroepiandrosterone is a steroid hormone, a chemical cousin of testosterone and estrogen. It is made (naturally) from cholesterol by the adrenal glands, which sit atop each kidney. Zirbel took a quantity of non-natural DHEA and lost a fine future with the Pro Tour outfit Slipstream over his life-changing mistake.
DHEA is available over the counter for as little (from ‘Amazon’) as $14.99. Its low cost and easy availability has made people perceive it as ‘less cheating’ and therefore Zirbel is been given… nearly sympathy.
The “I don’t know how it got into my system” is actually difficult to understand and believe. If it was a mistake or accident- it is terrible- but EVERY single top-level athlete knows (or should) exactly what supplements he or she takes and the desired effect from said.
” I don’t know“- I think, I do Tom- SADLY.
DHEA was called by industry leader P.J. Skerret as the “superhormone.” when it appeared on the nutrition scene. By definition, hormones are chemical messengers made in a gland or tissue that start, stop, or otherwise orchestrate activity in some other issue. The web is split in opinion but all researchers agree is that DHEA is easily converted with the body into other hormones, especially estrogen and testosterone. Although the direct advantages of DHEA are questionable, increasing the production of testosterone has been identified as an athletic gain.
The New York Academy of Sciences carried out the most in-depth study into effects of regular doses of Dehydroepiandrosterone:
Lean body mass increased slightly in both sexes, as did muscle strength, which also improved with the placebo. Fat body mass decreased in men. There was also a rise in some chemical markers that suggested improvement in immune function, though the number of colds and other illnesses was not measured.
In contrast to the non-beneficial effects of DHEA on memory in the elderly found in this study, a different randomized UK study found that a 7-day course of DHEA (150 mg twice daily) offered no athletic advantage but improved episodic memory in healthy young men………..So Tom you should have remembered taking it.
Stronger+lighter-+less sick than your clean competitors= cheating.
The positive result does raise the question again, should there be different levels of ban? Punishment to suit the crime. Tom didn’t take EPO, the gains from the drug are unproven but the jail time is the same.We have asked Tom to give BikePure the full reality, when he comes to terms with the magnitude of his situation and the effect on his future.
Comments
Myles 05.02.2010 at 11:40am
Really appreciate the passion everyone has within our sport for a fair and just system. As bikepure as just a collection of this, we are undertaking more research to provide an exact and enlightened, organization opinion on DHEA. If anyone wants involved, please email us.
CB 04.02.2010 at 02:36am
@Ross MacKenzie - I'd be very interested to see which companies are willing to warrant their supplement products (beyond free replacement if contaminated...) These companies would need to carry significant liability insurance as a single contamination can destroy an entire cycling career - a good European professional career is worth what...10 million Euros?
Ross MacKenzie 04.02.2010 at 01:34am
I don’t think DHEA should be lumped with EPO, but if the supplement industry is so unregulated, (and take it that all athletes take supplements-) why have only three been caught in the USA in 2009? Not so common! My team is restricted to Vitamin brands that warrant their contents. The responsibility lies with the cyclist. It is their job- preparation and training are one and the same. Any pro cyclist knows the testing system: this knowledge is underlined and enforced at every dope test. Tom being a successful tester had many reminders to be professionally cautious and aware. So guilty sadly… Yes. I agree with BikePure. Something needs to help our broken sport, a forceful hand is required to clean it up. To the punishment.... Any reprimand, MUST be a deterrent to future temptation. Any cyclist who reads these opinions will triple check the plastic bottles in the kit bag in future.
Jeff 03.02.2010 at 11:12pm
Myles - I agree with your cause and the need for cycling to be clean and for the culture to change. However, I truly believe the presumption of intended cheating, especially in the case of DHEA positives, is ignoring the rampant problem and statistics showing the issues in the supplement industry of contamination. Up to 20% of the supplements sold in the US are contaminated for a variety of reasons, with DHEA being the most common culprit. Please take the opportunity to read my post at ciclirati.wordpress.com. Yes, I go after you a bit because if you peel away your words, you don't believe Tom and think he's lying about his knowledge and/or intent. I think there is an equally large elephant in the room when it comes to the unregulated supplement industry that can cause these DHEA positives. Tyler wanted to get caught, I don't know about the other, but feel strongly knowing the facts and probabilities out there that Tom didn't know. He's truly been forthcoming with information on his situation and I hope he could possibly discover how this non-performance enhancing banned substance sidetracked his career.
uberVU - social comments 01.02.2010 at 03:51pm
Social comments and analytics for this post... This post was mentioned on Twitter by jamesstout: good article on DHEA from @BikePure http://bit.ly/aAGrpX...
mikroos 01.02.2010 at 11:37am
@John Scott Please don't get me wrong but would you blindly follow WADA's rules if it forbade, for example, carbohydrates? They also enhance performance, don't they? In my point of view, a substance should be banned ONLY when it is potentially harmful. Caffeine is also a performance enhancer (and I guess you don't question this) but it is allowed because it is generally not dangerous. I think the real question here is not whether we want to allow doping (because we all here know that we shouldn't) but whether taking DHEA should really be considered a cheat bigger than taking caffeine.
mikroos 01.02.2010 at 11:33am
Apart form the fact that DHEA is clearly forbidden (which means that athletes who do use it should receive a ban), we should really think whether it actually is a performance enhancer. There is no clear data on this, as well as there is no actual data on its high toxicity, so WADA should rethink their position on DHEA. Again: I do not try to defend Zirbel because it seems like he cheated (assuming that he did it knowingly). The real question is whether DHEA should really be forbidden. It seems like it is no more "enhancing" or dangerous than, say, caffeine.
John Scott 01.02.2010 at 08:49am
I knew nothing about DHEA so googled athletic gain and the world has split opinion. I'm with Victor, in such a case just avoid it. Love CB's passion (you should represent Tom at his hearing) but as a bike-pure member it is up to the organization to vilify the cheats and promote the non doping majority, in order to move our sport away from scandal. We require separation from cheats, not understanding.
CB 01.02.2010 at 06:42am
Sorry about the wall of text below...
CB 01.02.2010 at 06:03am
I found the article on DHEA on BikePure and I was quite disappointed in the claims it made and I commented as such. Somewhat surprisingly I received a reply from the author and encouragement to provide some better science on the subject. I'm happy to do so. While I share the feelings that the sport needs to be cleaned up, I also feel that we need to do it without resorting to a witch hunt and without resorting to ruining the careers and possibly lives of athletes. In order to do this we need to make sure that the science behind any conviction is rigorous and we also need to make sure that the punishments for violations fit the crimes. A two-year suspension for first time use of EPO-Cera may be quite reasonable, while the same suspension for a chemical that shows no benefit to performance and that is a common unlabeled contaminant in food supplements sold at your local discount store is clearly an excessive punishment. To begin, try doing a Google search for P.J. Skerret who is cited in the BikePure article. The top hit will be Quackwatch.com with an article from a newsletter produced by The New England Journal of Medicine explaining how "…there's no convincing evidence for any benefit of DHEA…" Furthermore, the study from the New York Academy of Sciences sounds like an excellent peer-reviewed source. And it surely is, but it is not on the subject we are discussing. The study was about DHEA use as an anti-aging supplement rather than an ergogenic aid. The study commonly gets misused by retailers trying to increase sales of DHEA as it is possibly the only one that implies you will get a benefit from using DHEA. The rest of the scientific literature is much more likely to point out that using DHEA will actually harm your athletic performance. The most cited study on DHEA as a sports supplement is by Mark Juhn in Sports Medicine. He says "The androgenic precursors androstenedione and dehydroepiandrosterone [DHEA] have not been shown to increase any parameters of strength and have potentially significant adverse effects." In the November 1, 2008 edition of The American Family Physician: A peer reviewed journal of the American Academy of Family Physicians it says, "[A]ndrostenedione and DHEA are marketed as being able to build muscle and increase strength by increasing serum testosterone. However, supplementation has not been shown to increase testosterone levels, strength, or performance in clinical studies. Androstenedione supplementation was not able to increase strength as measured by a one-repetition maximal bench press or by total weight lifted per workout. DHEA did not increase mean strength over weeks of supplementation. Adverse effects of androstenedione and DHEA include a sustained increase in serum estrogen…" Michael S. Bahrke and Charles Yesalis site multiple studies dealing with DHEA in their book Performance-enhancing Substances in Sport and Excercise. The studies showed that DHEA didn't enhance skeletal muscle, DHEA didn't effect energy expenditure or protein metabolism, and DHEA doesn't play an important role in energy metabolism. In a 2006 article on ergogenic aids in young athletes from Pediatrics: Official Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics they say, "those who received the drug showed no change in any athletic measure…In the literature to date, there is no convincing evidence that these prohormones have any true benefit for the athletes…" As to the claims that any serious athlete would know if he or she ingested DHEA, the British Journal of Sports Medicine addressed the issue in its November 2007 issue in the article "The continuing story of nutritional supplements and doping infractions". The article begins by saying, "Nutritional supplements can be a source of positive doping cases as some supplements contain prohibited substances without showing this on their label. This problem has existed for some time and has been extensively studied in the past 8 years." They go on to say, "…that paper-based quality systems are still prone to possible contaminations, which leads to the conclusion that the best possible solution for athletes who wish to use nutritional supplements must include laboratory-based analysis for doping substances, preferably repeated for every new batch." WADA knows that supplement contamination is a huge problem but choses to ignore it. As the BJSM reports from WADA's own study, "This study showed that 14.8% of 634 freely available substances contained anabolic agents that were not declared on the label." Yes, that is right, you have almost a 1 in 6 chance of getting a supplement contaminated with something on WADA's banned list that is not on the supplement label. And these contaminants didn't just show up in supplements marketed to boost performance such as muscle-building protein powders and recovery drinks, they showed up even in simple vitamin pills due to cross-contamination from the manufacturer. I think once you actually look at the scientific evidence on DHEA in sport and supplement contamination you really have to wonder about whether Tom deserves any punishment in this case beyond what he has already suffered. At the least, you have to doubt whether the same punishment can be appropriate for this case and an EPO-Cera case. So, let's stop this crucifixion of Tom and put our energies toward cleaning up our sport without ruining lives without scientific basis. -CB
Victor Reshenski 01.02.2010 at 12:12am
If its on WADA banned substance list, it is job of professional cyclist not to take. Even if DHEA makes muscles leaner, by even a fraction:- races can by won by a second or a centimeter. Perhaps bike pure you should seek Life ban for EPO and gene doping, with sliding scale down to 2 years for DHEA steroid .
Eric Jensen 31.01.2010 at 11:45pm
Bravo to CB. My wife works in the nutrition industry in the US, and (as dumb as it sounds) there is negatvie regulation on this stuff. Regulation would be controlling that it contains what it says it does. The gov't doesn't care what you put in it at all so it is entirely possible that the factory that makes a vitamin on a production line could have just run full-blown DHEA pills for a legitimate purpose. Now, the big question is how anyone gets enough this stuff in them as a side-effect to production; possible but not probable.
Francois Culeu 31.01.2010 at 12:04pm
I used to support the life ban idea. Riders need to have fear of the consequences of cheating. Zirbel should be given a second chance (after his suspension). He is not Ricco. Keep up the good work.
Joanna Heart 31.01.2010 at 11:37am
Feel sorry for Tom- but what were you thinking?!!
Carl Dean 31.01.2010 at 11:24am
By the way love the new site BP.
Carl Dean 31.01.2010 at 11:17am
Disagree with above. I get tested at least once a month. Knowing this makes us ultra cautious. Every pill I take, I know its origin- and effect. A seasoned pro like Tom should do the same. Just because he is a nice guy- dont mean he wont cheat.
CB 31.01.2010 at 02:18am
New to the site and really disappointed by it. It is one thing to advocate clean cycling, but another to make baseless statements about the scientific literature on DHEA. You need to actually look at it and see that the literature supports the conclusion that there is *no* athletic benefit to DHEA. And, the claim that "EVERY single top-level athlete knows exactly what supplements he or she takes" is silly. There is no regulation in the supplement industry (not even FDA quality regulation). Many supplements (e.g. protein powders and recovery smoothies) contain ingredients that are not on the label either due to contamination or misguided attempts by the manufacturer to sell more.
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