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No supplement is 100% safe, says UKA anti-doping educator
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“The supplements question is the one question that I hate within my role,” admits UKA’s anti-doping education officer David Walsh. “It’s the only question that I can’t give a definite answer to. And I hate not being able to give a definite answer.”
AW’s conversation with Walsh came just a few weeks before the Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay news broke, with both athletes having admitted that they returned positive drugs tests.
Those revelations shocked the athletics community and on Monday further doping news hit the headlines with the Turkish Athletics Federation reported as having handed two-year bans to 31 of the country’s track and field athletes for doping offences.
Individual details of the doping violations of those 31 athletes have not been confirmed, however on his positive drugs test being revealed, Powell insisted that he had not knowingly or wilfully cheated and the case highlights how with supplements you can never be 100% sure of what you are consuming.
“With supplements you can’t give 100% guarantees,” says Walsh. “This is simply because if you look at the WADA list it says ‘this substance, this substance and similar substances’, so that leaves it open for anything else that has been developed. And if you’re testing for a range of banned substances within a supplement, if there’s something out there that you don’t know about – and that you’re not testing for – then you can’t say that the supplement is 100% clean. You can say that it’s tested for this list and nothing’s been found, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% clean, which is a tricky place to be.”
In the late 1990s, a number of drugs positives for the steroid Nandrolone were linked to food supplements. Since then, the supplements industry has become more regulated and tests its products more thoroughly, but as former world record-holder Powell appears to have discovered this summer, taking supplements remains a risky business.
Most of the British athletics team supplement their diet with drinks, powders, gels, energy and protein bars and suchlike, for example. What does Walsh tell these athletes? “It’s about making them aware there is no 100% guarantee,” he explains.
“It’s about reducing the risk as much as possible. So you’ve got to use the reputable manufacturers and find the people who are testing the products – and not just testing but how are they testing it. Some might be testing more rigorously than others.”
In the UK, a company called HFL Sport Science has the job of testing supplements for banned substances. Their laboratories analyse a huge range of supplements and the ones that are clean – and contain what they say on the label – are given a kitemark and are listed on the Informed Sport website.
Walsh explains: “HFL used to be a WADA (World Anti- Doping Association) accredited lab but you can’t be a WADA-accredited lab and test supplements for supplements companies. So they rescinded their WADA accreditation and now do supplements testing.
“If they test something and nothing is found, the companies are allowed to put a label on their product saying it’s been tested. But HFL is now pushing for a protocol across the whole consortium so a single logo can be produced (there are currently similar companies that do this job across Europe) so athletes will know the supplement has been tested.”
Walsh continues: “So with Maximuscle, who are tested by HFL, every batch of every ingredient of every product has been tested by HFL. A batch is about 1.5 tonnes and a sample will be one small part of that batch. So if contaminant is over the opposite side of the room, you won’t find it. But they do A and B samples and they store the B sample. So if athletes test positive then they can go back to the batch and test it.
“Within HFL, since they’ve been running the Informed Sport programme in 2008 they’ve tested 2678 products and of those there have been two incidents of positive findings. So that’s 0.07%. Those two incidents were also both found prior to the supplement being released.
“That’s great, but they have just done another survey where they purchased 24 supplements from 12 major brands across Europe and over the internet (from 12 EU nations, including UK) with 114 samples from the 24 products – and out of the 114, none of which had anything banned on the label, 11 of them were positive for at least one steroid or stimulant that would result in a ban. So that’s 10%.”
Substances found included anabolic agents like Testosterone and Nandrolone, plus stimulants like Methylhexanamine and Sibutramine.
These alarming results, which included energy and protein products, powders, tablets, capsules and bars, were released by HFL in June. Some products claimed they had been tested and were “doping free” but none of the products on the Informed Sport programme were included.
This is a mild improvement from tests by HFL done in the past, though. A similar study in 2007 involving analysis of 58 supplements purchased via stores and the internet in the United States showed that 25% of supplements were contaminated by steroids and 11% with banned stimulants.
In 2008, 152 supplements bought via stores and the internet in the UK showed 10.5% were contaminated with steroids or stimulants. It’s important to add, however, that these surveys focused on products that did not undergo regular banned substance testing.
So the overwhelming message to British athletes is that if you feel you have to use supplements then only buy ones that have been passed as clean by HFL on the Informed Sport website. Otherwise, you’re taking a big risk of ingesting a banned substance.
» This is an extract from a spotlight feature entitled ‘Don’t be a dope’ published in the July 25 issue of Athletics Weekly. You can read the full feature digitally here or buy a back copy here.
UKA’s anti-doping education co-ordinator David Walsh tells AW how with supplements you can never give 100% guarantees
Posted on August 5, 2013 by Athletics Weekly
Tagged with Asafa Powell + David Walsh + doping + supplements + Tyson Gay + UKA
Tagged with Asafa Powell + David Walsh + doping + supplements + Tyson Gay + UKA
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“The supplements question is the one question that I hate within my role,” admits UKA’s anti-doping education officer David Walsh. “It’s the only question that I can’t give a definite answer to. And I hate not being able to give a definite answer.”
AW’s conversation with Walsh came just a few weeks before the Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay news broke, with both athletes having admitted that they returned positive drugs tests.
Those revelations shocked the athletics community and on Monday further doping news hit the headlines with the Turkish Athletics Federation reported as having handed two-year bans to 31 of the country’s track and field athletes for doping offences.
Individual details of the doping violations of those 31 athletes have not been confirmed, however on his positive drugs test being revealed, Powell insisted that he had not knowingly or wilfully cheated and the case highlights how with supplements you can never be 100% sure of what you are consuming.
“With supplements you can’t give 100% guarantees,” says Walsh. “This is simply because if you look at the WADA list it says ‘this substance, this substance and similar substances’, so that leaves it open for anything else that has been developed. And if you’re testing for a range of banned substances within a supplement, if there’s something out there that you don’t know about – and that you’re not testing for – then you can’t say that the supplement is 100% clean. You can say that it’s tested for this list and nothing’s been found, but that doesn’t mean it’s 100% clean, which is a tricky place to be.”
In the late 1990s, a number of drugs positives for the steroid Nandrolone were linked to food supplements. Since then, the supplements industry has become more regulated and tests its products more thoroughly, but as former world record-holder Powell appears to have discovered this summer, taking supplements remains a risky business.
Most of the British athletics team supplement their diet with drinks, powders, gels, energy and protein bars and suchlike, for example. What does Walsh tell these athletes? “It’s about making them aware there is no 100% guarantee,” he explains.
“It’s about reducing the risk as much as possible. So you’ve got to use the reputable manufacturers and find the people who are testing the products – and not just testing but how are they testing it. Some might be testing more rigorously than others.”
In the UK, a company called HFL Sport Science has the job of testing supplements for banned substances. Their laboratories analyse a huge range of supplements and the ones that are clean – and contain what they say on the label – are given a kitemark and are listed on the Informed Sport website.
Walsh explains: “HFL used to be a WADA (World Anti- Doping Association) accredited lab but you can’t be a WADA-accredited lab and test supplements for supplements companies. So they rescinded their WADA accreditation and now do supplements testing.
“If they test something and nothing is found, the companies are allowed to put a label on their product saying it’s been tested. But HFL is now pushing for a protocol across the whole consortium so a single logo can be produced (there are currently similar companies that do this job across Europe) so athletes will know the supplement has been tested.”
Walsh continues: “So with Maximuscle, who are tested by HFL, every batch of every ingredient of every product has been tested by HFL. A batch is about 1.5 tonnes and a sample will be one small part of that batch. So if contaminant is over the opposite side of the room, you won’t find it. But they do A and B samples and they store the B sample. So if athletes test positive then they can go back to the batch and test it.
“Within HFL, since they’ve been running the Informed Sport programme in 2008 they’ve tested 2678 products and of those there have been two incidents of positive findings. So that’s 0.07%. Those two incidents were also both found prior to the supplement being released.
“That’s great, but they have just done another survey where they purchased 24 supplements from 12 major brands across Europe and over the internet (from 12 EU nations, including UK) with 114 samples from the 24 products – and out of the 114, none of which had anything banned on the label, 11 of them were positive for at least one steroid or stimulant that would result in a ban. So that’s 10%.”
Substances found included anabolic agents like Testosterone and Nandrolone, plus stimulants like Methylhexanamine and Sibutramine.
These alarming results, which included energy and protein products, powders, tablets, capsules and bars, were released by HFL in June. Some products claimed they had been tested and were “doping free” but none of the products on the Informed Sport programme were included.
This is a mild improvement from tests by HFL done in the past, though. A similar study in 2007 involving analysis of 58 supplements purchased via stores and the internet in the United States showed that 25% of supplements were contaminated by steroids and 11% with banned stimulants.
In 2008, 152 supplements bought via stores and the internet in the UK showed 10.5% were contaminated with steroids or stimulants. It’s important to add, however, that these surveys focused on products that did not undergo regular banned substance testing.
So the overwhelming message to British athletes is that if you feel you have to use supplements then only buy ones that have been passed as clean by HFL on the Informed Sport website. Otherwise, you’re taking a big risk of ingesting a banned substance.
» This is an extract from a spotlight feature entitled ‘Don’t be a dope’ published in the July 25 issue of Athletics Weekly. You can read the full feature digitally here or buy a back copy here.
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