Blood Doping & Cellular Respiration
By Sabrina Pappas, Morgan Henry, & Maya Heywood
Relationship:
Blood Doping: Many different athletes in many different proffesions choose to do blood doping. It is illegal but these athletes think that their performance will increase because the blood transfusion makes red blood cells increase 20%. It gives the muscles more energy and therefore, the performance of athletes increases.
Cellular respiration: Process that takes place inside the cells of organisms and converts energy from the nutrients into ATP (adenosine triphosphate).Relationship (continued):
Blood doping helps increase the RBC count in the body. The RBC carries oxygen to cells in the body and the cell levels from oxygen releases RBC and is taken up by cells. That is how blood doping and cell respiration are connected.
RBC: red blood cells
OUR TEAM: CYCLING
Our teams policy:
When we find out that one of our athletes has gotten into blood doping, we try and gather evidence to prove this to be true. We start by taking statements from teammates and we drug test the accused victim. If the athlete does not confess, we have no choice but to strip our athlete of all titles he/she has earned throughout his/her career.
Problems we’ve had:
Lance Armstrong: Accused to have been involved with blood doping. Was stripped of all his earned titles going back to 1998.
How we will handle it:
Since we have had multiple incidents with cycling and blood doping, we hope future athletes realize the consequences and chose not to do this illegal activity because the consequences will be harsh.