HCTZ, a blood pressure, diuretic, is banned? why?
It apparently is used to mask PEDs in your system.
thank you… must be the diuretic action… 
It’s kind of unlikely an Olympic swimmer would need to take blood pressure medication. I don’t know what the doping rules require, but I believe most athletes who take medication get specific approval to ensure that they are not inadvertently taking banned substances. Failure to explain ahead of time makes it presumptively suspect when it shows up in a test.
I’m pretty sure HCTZ is on the banned list for NFL players.
Thanks for explaining. That makes sense.
It wasn’t mentioned that China is trying to claim the Rio pool as territorial waters, and that they are trying to build a naval base in Lanes 4 and 5.
Its used to avoid the detection of PEDs. it is not a PED in its action but it does cause a diuresis that dilutes the urine. The more dilute the urine the less concentrated PED remnants in it will be. The thinking is if you dilute the urine enough the PED metabolites will be lower than their detection threshold. Worked for awhile I guess but now the diuretics are also banned.
It doesn’t “dilute” the urine.
Diuretics make one urinate more frequently thus flushing the body faster of whatever. It’s a timing issue - the team doctor would first run a test on the athlete to determine how quickly he or she eliminates a steroid from his or her blood stream without aid. They then try confirming how much faster this is accomplished with one or another substances that can accelerate this process. Finally, they need to determine how quickly the athlete’s body can rid itself of the “accelerant” prior to testing. Someone’s math was off.
Yes it does. Diuretics are “loop poisons” they stop the kidney from properly concentrating the urine and its sensitivity to ADH resulting in dilute urine. In health sans a diuretic urine is at about SG 1.035 or 3.5 % heavier than pure water. Plasma, what the kidney filters, is about 1.015. Diuretics prevent the kidneys medulary gradient from regulating urine gravity and “open the tap” allowing a dilute urine to pass into the urinary space. This results in excessive urine production. The idea in anti-doping detection was to increase urine output by making the urine very dilute to assist in washing out the PED remnants in the plasma and making their concentration in the urine so low they were below the sensitivity range of the test use to detect them.
Urine is “concentrated” if its UG is appropriate for the hydration status of the person making the urine. Chug a 6 pack and your UG is going to plunge ( you’ll make a water clear urine ) because your kidneys are going to dump the excessive water. Work all day in the yard and take in no fluids and you will hyper concentrate your urine ( make a deep orange urine ) as your kidneys struggle to dump blood waste into as small a volume of water as they can. Take a diuretic and you’ll make that dilute urine no matter what your hydration status is. That’s the point in taking them. In medicine they are used to induce a mild dehydration which results in “fluid scavenging” to restore lost plasma volume. You’ll grab fluid from extra-plasma fluid volumes…like pulmonary edema or anasarca.
The reason doping athletes use diuretics is because they make you pee more thus flushing the body faster. Period. Diluting the urine per say has nothing to do with why athletes using steroids use diuretics. Urine levels in the discharge are meaningless as the PED and diuretics are, ultimately, pass-throughs. If this Chinese swimmer’s urine levels were “off,” as long as their was no trace of the diuretics, nothing would have have happened to her.
In addition to using the diuretics, athletes trying to rid their bodies of steroids over hydrate as well.
Again, the Chinese trainers were off in their calculations as to when to have this swimmer stop taking her diuretics.
I scored very high on my recent drug test…
You have no idea what you re taking about.
I believe you’re both correct with literature directly backing both of you.
Per Mayo Clinic -
“Diuretics may also help athletes pass drug tests by diluting their urine and are sometimes referred to as a “masking” agent.”
Per NSCA (National Strength and Conditioning Association) -
In reference to diuretics -“have the potential to rapidly dilute the urine by increasing renal flow. When utilized as a “masking” agent diuretics dilute the urine, which results in lower levels of the banned substance being excreted from the body. This can therefore make it more difficult for the laboratories conducting doping controls to detect .”
www.nsca.com/performance-enhancing-drugs-education/
Your statement regarding diuretics facilitating removal of PED metabolites makes sense, assuming the athlete increases fluid intake along with the medication thereby “flushing” the body. Also supporting your argument is that HCTZ metabolites can be found in urine up to 120 hours after oral dosing making it less likely that it would be taken for it’s dilutional effect.
Also supporting you per Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, Volume 49, Issue 2, 20 February 2009, Pages 519–524 -
“In sports, diuretics are used for two main reasons: to flush previously taken prohibited substances with forced diuresis and in sports where weight classes are involved to achieve acute weight loss.”
To summarize, I can’t believe the utter silliness of me spending 15 minutes researching the issue for a TPM comment section. You’re welcome.
You’ve made my day. You win the Gold!
Glad I could help . It looks like that will be my sole example of productivity today other than maniacally reading political commentary. November can’t come soon enough.