Props: MMA Fan Made
The UFC’s unofficial support for Testosterone Replacement Therapy may just have become more or less official. Because the Ontario Athletic Commission doesn’t engage in the pesky business of drug testing, responsibility falls to the UFC to do so. This isn’t the first time this has happened, and certainly the UFC’s own policies have caught fighters doping. But things are a little different now – fighters have a legal means of obtaining synthetic testosterone, the primary component of many anabolic steroids. The flipside of this is that they need to acquire a therapeutic use exemption in order to use TRT, which at least illuminates who is using the stuff to enhance their performance.
Or at least it would be illuminated if the UFC were to release the names of fighters who requested TUEs, which they are obligated to do when dealing with a commission that gives a damn about at the very least appearing to maintain some semblance of professionalism. Since Ontario’s athletic commission doesn’t happen to belong to that exclusive group, the UFC “can not disclose if a fighter on the UFC 152 card has requested a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) for testosterone replacement therapy (TRT).” [Emphasis added.]
Of course, this is bullshit. The UFC is completely capable of disclosing that information. The UFC simply will not disclose if a fighter requests a TUE. Which is strange, given that Dana White seems to be such a fan of the practice. If TRT is “great,” “absolutely fair,” and “legal,” why bother with the secrecy? It appears to be a tacit admission that the process is, at best, ethically dubious. Which it is – it allows a select group of fighters who possess naturally lower levels of testosterone, possibly resulting from prior steroid use, to use synthetic testosterone during their training camps and daily lives so long as they bring their testosterone levels within normal limits by the time of their fights. Functionally, it’s the same thing as a steroid cycle.
The only positive about TRT is that it’s public. But for UFC 152, thanks to the incompetency of the Ontario Athletic Commission and the UFC’s suspect disclosure policies, it won’t be. You would think that if you had an aging fighter who has bulked up almost twenty pounds from his previous bout – while training with, among others, Alistair Overeem – and is fighting in the main event, you’d want to alleviate any suspicions among observers. But this is the UFC we’re talking about. They don’t handle suspicion; they dismiss it and anyone who bothers to express it.
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"Also, you act as if there is some very precise scientific way to determine what someone's baseline testosterone level "should" be."
It's called the normal human range. If there wasn't a range of numbers where testosterone "should be" then how could anyone ever get diagnosed with abnormal testosterone levels? It's the same with blood pressure: There is no "one size fits all" score, but we know that 250/130 is dangerously high, don't we? And we know that most people "should" have BP around 120/80 - if it's different than that, then chances are something is wrong, especially if there are symptoms to go along with it.
We know approximately how much testosterone a typical male needs to function correctly, and for you to say that Chael's genetic code needs to be analyzed to see what his normal output should/would be were he not deficient is a complete non-sequitor. On the night Chael fought Anderson the first time his testosterone levels were within the normal range. To get performance enhancement from testosterone you need to have higher than normal testosterone levels. My point was that the only guy on TRT who made it onto the "Steroid Busts" article had testosterone levels that were within the normal limits.
We know the basic necessary levels of several things going on in our bodies that need a certain amount to function correctly (blood sugar, vitamin and mineral levels, hormones, blood-cell counts, etc. etc. etc.). If we had to know the exact optimum level that each particular person has to have then nobody would ever be able to get treatment for anything. There is a range that 99% of humanity falls within on most tests. With testosterone in particular, if you have below a certain level it is almost certain that you will feel like shit and your body won't be functioning correctly. Lab results, combined with symptoms, are how diagnoses are made.
"[P]erhaps you'd like to point us to some relevant medical literature"
Perhaps you should use google yourself. Why should I do your homework for you? I'll get you started though: Go to bloodyelbow; They did a whole article on TRT - it can be found with the search function - and it was pretty well done. Go to the NIH's website and search "male testosterone" and you will find a plethora of articles by the nation's premiere health and research organization. Or check out pubmed's library of clinical papers written on hypogonadism.
Here's a non-exhaustive list of potential causes of low T: Tumors (cancerous or not), severe or repeated head trauma, thyroid dysfunction, pituitary dysfunction, hypothalamus dysfunction, trauma to the testicles, testicular cancer, several different nutrient deficiencies, extreme and rapid weight-loss, exposure to other hormones that affect testosterone (e.g. estrogen), hormone imbalances, chronic opiate abuse, various troubles that occurred during the mother's pregnancy, childhood illnesses that affect maturity, having an extra chromosome (Klinefelter's Syndrome), bad genetic luck, and of course steroid abuse (which happens when guys do their post-cycle therapy wrong repeatedly) and MANY more causes. How's that for hand-waving? Only one of those causes is steroid abuse, and yet that seems to be the go-to accusation. I'm not going to go through and post sources for each and every one of those - a little bit of research will find all of that for you. If you spend 10 seconds on pubmed or the NIH's site, or even checking through the sources on the statements made on the Wiki page for hypogonadism, or taking some time to read about guys' experiences on TRT-Support-Group sites (where they post their history and labs), you would have more sources and information than you could ever want or need on the subject.
I don't know why Chael has low testosterone, or even if he needs TRT - I'm not his doctor and I haven't seen his blood-work. My point is that it was implied, in this article and elsewhere, that guys on TRT are MORE LIKELY to cheat in the off-season, and the only guy on the list of steroid busts who is on TRT was found to have normal levels of testosterone in his system. I don't understand why people think that having access to legal, tracked-by-doctors, testosterone makes them any more likely to be breaking the rules than any other fighter.
"The fact that TRT use seems to correlate heavily with a late-career resurgence in many fighters"
For a guy who wants sources so bad you'd figure you'd at the very least give an anecdotal example. The last three guys to get TRT exemptions were Forrest Griffin (barely beat Tito - nowhere near a resurgence), Frank Mir (how did that one turn out?), and Rampage (again, would you call his last fight a "resurgence"?).
"Human bodies weren't meant to be at physical peaks forever."
The human body is also "meant" to die from cancer - that doesn't make it good. Just because something is natural doesn't mean that that's the way it should be. Tell anyone who wears glasses because they've lost eyesight due to aging that their body isn't meant to still be able to have vision.
All TRT does (if done appropriately) is fix a problem with a person's body. They don't have enough testosterone to function normally so they use a medication abused by some to bring their levels up to normal (notice I said normal, not supra-normal). And to get on TRT you don't just have to have "below average" testosterone, you have to have "below range" testosterone. It's not 35-year-old guys with the levels of a 35 year-old, it's 35 year-olds with the levels of an 80 year-old. Being on TRT and keeping your testosterone levels at normal ranges won't keep you at your peak forever. Testosterone is ONE cog in a very complicated machine. All the other pit-falls of aging (slower reflexes, slower recovery time especially in-between rounds, loss of cardio, loss of vision, body not able to utilize nutrients as well) will NOT be fixed buy using synthetic testosterone to bring your levels to normal.
"...reap the benefits of "treatment" for ailments that have no clearly established medical cause"
What are you even talking about? Who has no clearly established medical cause? Site your source please.
"and then make piles of cash from their new-found abilities"
Bringing low levels of testosterone to normal doesn't give you super powers, and it's laughable that you think that allowing someone with a medical condition (low testosterone) to correct that medical condition gives them some "new abilities".
Just an aside: You do know that you could take any average person off the street and give them all the roids they can handle and that person WON'T become the next Anderson Silva, right? Performance ENHANCING drugs can only enhance what is there - no amount of steroids could make me the next Barry Bonds. Also, we are talking small amounts of testosterone with TRT. The average TRT patient injects between 100-200mg a week of testosterone (the same as the average amount produced in the testicles of normally functioning men). Guys who are cycling steroids for performance enhancement inject anywhere from 500mg (for someone brand-new to juicing) to well over 1 GRAM of testosterone a week, in addition to other PEDs.
Your heart is in the right place - I can tell you have genuine questions about this stuff, and that's a great place to start. I just don't think a dialogue between the two of us is going to be very productive because we just have different sets of information from which we pull our arguments. Hopefully you'll do some researching on this stuff, starting from the places I recommended.
But yeah, this discussion is going to be really pointless and take up too much of both our time while getting nowhere. So, I'll bow out. It's been fun. Feel free to get in the last word!