alive but busy

I am here, alive and well.

I have been working out hard since my whole new obsession began, but I have still been seating a lot LOL. I have stopped in the last month the entire junk food, biscuits, or any type of sugary / fried food. But the more I try to actually eat less the more I think about it and the more I want to eat!

I feel sorry for women who seriously cannot eat more than a tiny meal , because at least I am going to the gym, doing heaps of cardio and weights!

I didnt weigh myself last week, I was going to but I pretty much was in a rush heheheeh, I am going to do the weighing tonight, and I am going to take some pics of the before (for me only) that I can track my shape over each week, cause it's the shape and size that I am interested in and not really the actual weight!

Viagra may boost athletic performance of cyclists
BY MIRIAH MEYER
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - Researchers reported Thursday that cyclists may be able to increase their performance by taking Viagra - their athletic performance, that is.

Certain cyclists have more trouble than others in sustaining high levels of exertion at mountainous elevations. The new study found that Viagra, a drug most commonly used to treat male impotence, helped overcome that problem.

For these cyclists, taking Viagra improved their performance up to 45 percent, which would allow a cyclist racing in the high Rocky Mountains to cover a stretch of road in 39 minutes that would otherwise take him an hour.

The findings, to be published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, come at a time when competitive cycling has been struggling to prevent athletes from using banned drugs and other methods of bolstering performance. Viagra is not currently among the blacklisted drugs.

The study's senior researcher, California physiologist Anne Friedlander, emphasized that Viagra did not improve the performance of all cyclists. Instead, it helped "level the playing field" for those most affected by altitude, she said.

Hoping to learn more about why high altitudes affect people differently, Friedlander and other researchers with Stanford University and the Palo Alto Health Care System studied 10 male competitive cyclists.

The cyclists were tested on an exercise bike both under normal conditions and while breathing air low in oxygen. Some were given a sugar pill, and the others took Viagra.
"The participants told us that while they were riding the bike they didn't know whether they were on the drug or not," Friedlander said. "However, what they did say was that in the showers afterwards they pretty much knew which pill they had been given."

Friedlander got the idea for the study when Viagra hit the market last year under a different name, Revatio, as a medication for pulmonary hypertension.

Pulmonary hypertension occurs when the blood vessels in the lungs constrict, decreasing the amount of blood flowing through the oxygen-rich lung tissue. The result is lowered levels of oxygen in the blood, which causes patients to feel tired, dizzy and short of breath.

People who have similar symptoms in the mountains are often experiencing temporary pulmonary hypertension, said Friedlander. Viagra counteracts these effects because it is a blood vessel dilator. It relieves constrictions in the vessels and allows blood to flow more freely through some organs in the body.

The findings of the study could benefit people working at high altitude, such as military personnel operating in the mountains of Afghanistan or mountaineers climbing Himalayan peaks.

But in the world of competitive sports, boosting performance with a drug can be considered unfair.

"Physiological gifts are what separate (athletes) from one another and what separate them greatly from the general public," said Sean Petty, chief of staff for USA Cycling, the organization that oversees competitive bike racing in the U.S.

It is illegal for an athlete to take any drug to unnaturally increase performance, Petty said. As for Viagra, "if it's determined at some point to be a performance-enhancing drug, I'm sure it will be on the banned list," he added.

Friedlander, however, has a hunch that some athletes are already taking Viagra for competition.

"Cyclists are always looking for that competitive edge. They are scanning for anything, and it's conceivable that they might be taking it already," said Friedlander.

That concerns Dr. Rajive Tandon, a pulmonary hypertension specialist at Rush Medical Center. Tandon said very few studies, and none of them long-term, have looked at the use of Revatio, or Viagra, to treat pulmonary hypertension in the general population.

"These drugs can't be used indiscriminately. You have to study them in a certain population to see if there are side effects," said Tandon.

More studies are on the way, according to Friedlander. Next summer she plans to test subjects for longer periods of time and in real-world mountain conditions. She also wants to find out if women will similarly benefit from the drug.
Source

7:29:00 AM