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Mind Doping

Was an interesting tweet from Fred Grappe, FdeJ Coach the other day re. Power meters. He said forget the power meter debate the real concern in cycling is teams using mind controlling substances. My French isn't great, but he seemed to suggest there are drugs available that fool the mind (brain) to increasing the bodies own performance.
Anyone know what drugs he's suspecting?
 
samhocking said:
Was an interesting tweet from Fred Grappe, FdeJ Coach the other day re. Power meters. He said forget the power meter debate the real concern in cycling is teams using mind controlling substances. My French isn't great, but he seemed to suggest there are drugs available that fool the mind (brain) to increasing the bodies own performance.
Anyone know what drugs he's suspecting?

Placebo.
It s all the rage.
 
samhocking said:
Was an interesting tweet from Fred Grappe, FdeJ Coach the other day re. Power meters. He said forget the power meter debate the real concern in cycling is teams using mind controlling substances. My French isn't great, but he seemed to suggest there are drugs available that fool the mind (brain) to increasing the bodies own performance.
Anyone know what drugs he's suspecting?

I haven't read it, but caffeine works that way.
 
Translated I get:
Ergogenic aids are allowed today via products that allow to "deceive/trick" the brain.

He might mean things like caffeine, creatine, amino acids etc as obviously anything that increases performance is an ergonenic aid. Deceiving the brain to increase performance wouldn't be how many would describe caffeine, certainly not creatine or amino acids etc. Taking it to ergonenic extreme, Anabolic steroids wouldn't even be classed as tricking the brain.
 
tobydawq said:
samhocking said:
Was an interesting tweet from Fred Grappe, FdeJ Coach the other day re. Power meters. He said forget the power meter debate the real concern in cycling is teams using mind controlling substances. My French isn't great, but he seemed to suggest there are drugs available that fool the mind (brain) to increasing the bodies own performance.
Anyone know what drugs he's suspecting?

I haven't read it, but caffeine works that way.

Were the studies, back in the eighties, linking well measured/well-timed consumption of caffeine to longer, sustained burning of fat (preferentially) in endurance events ... all rubbish, then?
 
Could be. I remember the functional dehydration a couple of years ago, where legal substances like paracetamol were required to offset the feeling of thirst and to make the body feel cooler than it is to achieve it etc. Might have been that kind of thing. Shame he doesn't expand on it much after his tweet.
 
He is talking about transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS), or something similar. It's been found to be ineffective in almost all reviews of the research across a large range of applications. Where it has been found to be effective the research has been of low quality.
 
Oct 25, 2016
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samhocking said:
Was an interesting tweet from Fred Grappe, FdeJ Coach the other day re. Power meters. He said forget the power meter debate the real concern in cycling is teams using mind controlling substances. My French isn't great, but he seemed to suggest there are drugs available that fool the mind (brain) to increasing the bodies own performance.
Anyone know what drugs he's suspecting?
Yes, ketone bodies are "mind controlling substances". There is no mental fatigue, so you can push harder on long climbs/rides. It is not a "drug" though...
 
Oct 25, 2016
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Beyond simply providing a stable source of fuel for the brain, the major circulating ketone body, beta-hydroxybutyrate, has recently been shown to act as a signalling molecule capable of altering gene expression, eliciting complementary effects of keto adaptation that could extend human physical and mental performance beyond current expectation
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25275931

Whereas prolonged intense exercise when one is dependent upon glucose/glycogen progressively depletes fuel reserves available to sustain the brain, the keto-adapted athlete may benefit from the opposite effect. As endurance exercise progresses, unlike the blood glucose concentration, the blood ketone concentration does not decline but tends to rise somewhat, ensuring a stable supply of fuels to the brain. Consistent with this improved cerebral fuel delivery, ultra-endurance athletes frequently report that mental clarity is maintained better during prolonged exercise in the keto-adapted state. This is in stark contrast to the problems of central fatigue and “hitting the wall” that commonly occur in athletes who follow a high-carbohydrate fuelling strategy and to which a progressive hypoglycemia that develops during prolonged exercise may contribute to fatigue. While ingesting carbohydrate during exercise may delay these fuel flow problems in athletes consuming high-carbohydrate diets, it does not always prevent them.
 
Re:

samhocking said:
I think you're right. He was just having fun at Prudhomme's power meter comments probably. Cycling Podcast made it out to me more juicy than that.
This is what i thought. By the way... what would happen if the powermeters "cheated" 2% downward? Would it also not make the brain (rider) think the body was capable of more? As a placebo effect, lol.
 
Re: Re:

Logic-is-your-friend said:
samhocking said:
I think you're right. He was just having fun at Prudhomme's power meter comments probably. Cycling Podcast made it out to me more juicy than that.
This is what i thought. By the way... what would happen if the powermeters "cheated" 2% downward? Would it also not make the brain (rider) think the body was capable of more? As a placebo effect, lol.

Lots of data out there from Stages PMs when errors were much higher than that...
 
the delgados said:
samhocking said:
Was an interesting tweet from Fred Grappe, FdeJ Coach the other day re. Power meters. He said forget the power meter debate the real concern in cycling is teams using mind controlling substances. My French isn't great, but he seemed to suggest there are drugs available that fool the mind (brain) to increasing the bodies own performance.
Anyone know what drugs he's suspecting?

Placebo.
It s all the rage.
Tramadol. Drgs yhat help you push past your body telling you to stop. Classical doping.
 
Tramadol is an interesting one from a purely ergogenic, brain-altering effect Grappe is discussing. The most recent study by University of Granada and the University of Kent, WADA commissioned last year on it, seemed to conclude performance was only increased with Tramadol if you removed cognitive function during the test. When cognitive functioning was required, performance was not increased with Tramadol. Even more interestingly, cognitive functioning was not impaired with the Tramadol, suggesting it might not contribute to crashes.

https://osf.io/preprints/sportrxiv/8hpxz
 
samhocking said:
Could be. I remember the functional dehydration a couple of years ago, where legal substances like paracetamol were required to offset the feeling of thirst and to make the body feel cooler than it is to achieve it etc. Might have been that kind of thing. Shame he doesn't expand on it much after his tweet.

I was wondering if anyone bought that ridiculous claptrap. Amazing.
 
Feb 4, 2016
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They are most likely talking about this. Many dismiss it as rubbish but I'm not so sure. Here is an article in Outside Online from a former skeptic. I would be very surprised if some riders are not benefiting from this and technologies like this. I know Adam Talansky uses it.
The hype around the technology has raced ahead of the evidence. Now the evidence may be catching up.
From a purely scientific point of view, the idea that you can alter your physical limits by trickling a bit of electric current through your brain is pretty amazing. Without changing anything about how your muscles are contracting, how hard you’re breathing, or how fast your heart is beating, you can (in theory) go farther or faster—because electric stimulation applied to precisely the right part of the brain makes everything feel easier. It’s a pretty stunning illustration of the brain’s role in setting physical limits.
https://www.outsideonline.com/2392485/brain-stimulating-headphones-halo
 

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