Procrit and Epo~ used by cyclists

[BoceprevirGal]

  I had forgotten completely about all those bicycle racers, who were caught "doping", with Procrit, back in 2008.
Those cyclists must've rly wanted to win the race, to go to those extremes.
  I just cant imagine Procrit actually affecting performance and recovery.  Has anyone here gotten a good feeling, from Procrit?

[Idyllic]

Cyclists as well as many athletes in general are notorious for using performance enhancing substances. The first time I ever heard of Epogen was due to a triathlete I was dating at the time.

[flcyclist]

If pedaling around at a comfortable pace on flat terrain, you won't likely be pushing your body beyond its aerobic threshold.  However, when climbing hills and going as fast as possible, your body reaches the point where you're starving for oxygen.  With intense exercise more oxygen is required by the muscles and the circulatory system responds by increasing the heart rate.  Since you have a maximum heart rate you can't produce enough oxygen for the muscles and body. By using Epo, they are artificially increasing the number of red blood cells in their bodies, which increases the amount of oxygen they can pass and presumably the energy they can expend.  Kinda the same principle of Bo mentioned about the difficulty in climbing stairs.  It may not be a huge deal, but any competitive advantage helps.  

[frijole]

I have a hard time thinking that taking epo to enhance your cycling is any big deal.  All they are doing is adding blood cells and making more oxygen.  I never could figure out the big deal.

[BoceprevirGal]

   Well, it sometimes takes a few weeks for the positive sx of Procrit to come on, so the atheletes using it must've planned ahead.
   And I imagine it only takes a few days of abstaining from it, to test negative for it, so the whole thing could be planned, to avoid getting a dirty test.
   It makes sense to me, that it would help, with climbing the steep hills,
during a race, because of the elevation issue.  It was climbing steep stairs
that wiped me out when my HGB was in the very low 9's.  
      Procrit helped me hang on, with that low HGB, while I was on my full dose of ribaviran, which for Triple Txers of my size (5'8'', 165 lbs) is a walloping 1,200 mgs.
    My riba-reduction seemed to help me out alot more though, but I stuck with the full dose until my 19th week...and yes, the anemia made me feel all over sick. I had a very hard time functioning on even the lowest level~

[flcyclist]

Using drugs to enhance the competitive advantage of professional athletes has been going on for ages.  The use of steriods to build muscle mass is the most commonly heard example and its not just the pros looking for this advantage.  Even high school athletes look to these drugs to give them the extra edge to compete.

Procrit, or more commonly called Epo, was used in cycling very frequently and other events that would tax the bodies use of available oxygen.  To compete with the best of the best, Epo would allow you to push a bit harder, climbing hills that you might otherwise struggle on.  Lance Amrstrong and several other pro cyclists have been accused of doping with Epo and he is currently fighting to keep his seven Tour-de-France wins and keep from being permanently banned from elite sports.  There's big money in these events.  Even some of the smaller amature races test for the use of Epo to be sure there's no competitive advantage.

Anytime you can raise the Hgb from the low 7's or 8's to near 10 during tx, I'd imagine that must feel wonderful.  Fortunately, I didn't suffer with a low Hgb during tx, but Interferon constantly whacked my ANC level.   Besides the extreme rash and itching, anemia sounds like such a challenging side of tx. I really feel for those going through severe anemia during tx.