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Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1998 09:33:23 -0700
To: Techdiver <techdiver@aquanaut.com>
From: pH <heseltine@ea*.ne*>
Subject: Diving Under the Influence
At 10:00 PM 9/26/98 +1000, someone wrote:
> What dosages would you recommend or
>do you think that all these supplements are useless?

Bringing down the tone a bit;-), my opinion is that the RDA or recommended
daily allowances are quite safe - because they have been tested. There are
some quite good data about a few "supplements" like calcium and vitamin c.
But you still have to realize that you are using them as "legal" drugs.

There is also some quite significant negative data about vitamin A.  Many
amino acids, when not complexed with others as food and taking in mg to G
doses operate on test animals, including man, as mind altering drugs. It's
exactly because they *do* have a physiologic effect that I think they are
so dangerous. The problem is that no-one knows what their long-term effects
are on the mind and body.

There is no doubt among most knowledgeable people on this topic, that
taking vitamins/drugs to enhance sports performance is playing with fire.
We see some rare but telling disasters - like the groups of sudden deaths
associated with taking trace contaminated vitamins and others where
"natural pill" sources turned out to have toxic levels of the substance,
because there is no accounting for standards from year to year of these
unregulated products.

The most damaging evidence in support of what I am saying, comes from the
athletes themselves. They say "these drugs work",  but "I feel sick if I
don't take them and/or I get cramps"  These complaints sound remarkably
like withdrawal symptoms or physiologic addiction.

My strong stance on this is based in facts and the great and growing
concern shared by the NIH (National Institute on Drug Abuse - NIDA) that we
will discover that the health of many young people has been damaged by this
unregulated selling of drugs, mistakenly labelled "food additives". George
and his merry band are certainly not alone in their use. The US spent
nearly $50 billion on OTC/food additives last year. Much of this is our
culture - we eat too much fat, exercise far too little, work under too much
self-created stress and so seek solutions in pill-popping.

But, mixing diving and drugs is just Diving Under the Influence.

My 0.02 ;-)

Peter

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