A brief history of Steroids and performing ehnhancing drugs - Part 4: How the testing works .

So, now the question becomes, OK, if you believe that every athlete is using something - how come no one gets caught?

Well, here is how the testing works.
First, as you may have heard, testing is incredibly expensive. If expense were not an issue, many more would indeed be caught.

In addition, blood testing is obviously more effective than urinalysis. This has to do with the metabolizing of the various substances and the specificity with which the testers can seek the different products.

Specifically, there is no real urine test for Growth Hormone. Worse, since GH has begun to be used again by legitimate physicians their are more companies making it the new recombinant DNA technology is more difficult to discern from natural. However, since their is very rarely blood tests performed, Gh will never be "caught".

The tests that you hear about are urinalysis.

As discussed previously all anabolic steroids are artificial testosterone derivatives. We (humans) have another metabolite of testosterone in our systems known as epitestosterone.

Since it is impossible for the testers to look for the chemical makeup of every know steroid, what they look for is the ratio of epitestosterone to testosterone.

This is the critical part. The "average" human male has a ratio of 1:1 epitestosterone to testosterone. I repeat 1:1. So if your ratio is 2:1 it effectively means you have DOUBLE the amount of muscle building hormone.

So, the "rules" say you can't have a level over 1:1 right? 2:1 right? Oh come on 3:1!!!!

Wrong, current Olympic standards allow for a ratio of 4:1 testosterone to epitestosterone.

Even more ridiculous was that the NFL, until the pressure of the baseball Senate hearings, allowed a ratio of 6 to 1!!!

What this means is that effectively you can have 400% of the testosterone of a normal male before they then, and only then, began to look for what steroid might be responsible.

Now, are there the rare exceptions, "normal" men who might fall into that number. Yes, but statistical it would be somewhere in the ratio of one in a billion. I repeat, one in a billion.

So, you do the math. What this means is that if you get caught using steroids, you, are, quite simply, an idiot.

In addition, since the testing is very infrequent there is a fairly good chance you won't be tested at any particular moment in time, so you can take a chance and be "on" only to cycle down in time for the competition (in the NFL during training camp and randomly during the season).

10 years ago, that is why steroids were still rampant. But as Gh has become more commonly available, it has replaced steroids as the "baseline" product.

What of the other substances being used? Well, as we know, there is no effective test for EPO, the product that distance athletes use. You can't determine if the additional red blood cells are the result of medication or natural. There is a way to determine if the blood cells are yours or not, however. This is how Tyler Hamilton, the US cyclist was caught, blood doping.

Cycling has THE most effective testing protocols and discovered that there were red blood cells in Hamilton's body that were not his.

As to women. Do the math, the ratios they use in the testing protocols are the same. So a woman failing a steroid test has effectively become a high testosterone man.

Now you know why you never saw Flo-Jo without pancake makeup. And why she had a mustache.
Detecting it with women is truly simple. They develop what are known as the secondary \bsexo?\b characteristics of men. Deeper voices, facial hair, and enlarged clitoris' (yes, it's effectively becoming a penis).

So what of all the other crazy things athletes are using now? Insulin, insulin growth factor, pituitary hormones, etc. Well, none of them can be tested for, so it simply becomes more and more dangerous.

These are the reasons why, when you here an athlete claim, "I don't know how it got in my system", "It's from supplement/medicine/birth control pill, etc" you can see how ridiculous this is. Nothing would put you at these levels.