How some athletes use pain to boost their performance

  • 19/09/2016
(File)
(File)

By Max Molyneux

The world of competitive sport is littered with the ruined careers of athletes willing to break the rules to beat the competition.

And doping is not limited to able-bodied competitors.

Some athletes with spinal cord injuries secretly employ a technique called boosting.

Outlawed by the International Paralympic Committee, boosting is the practice of inflicting pain to the part of the athlete's body affected by paralysis.

That induces a phenomenON called autonomic dysreflexia.

Basically the competitor doesn't feel the pain but the body responds as if it has, causing a rise in blood pressure and heart rate.

In turn, that enhances the athlete's performance in the same way a drug might.

To achieve this the competitors might wear overly tightened leg straps, twist their testicles or even break a toe.

However, boosting is dangerous.

It's led to seizures and strokes in athletes using the technique, but some take the risk because the payoff can be huge.

A 1994 study with wheelchair athletes who were boosting saw their performance increase by nearly 10 percent - that would be the equivalent of shaving the able-bodied marathon record by 12 minutes.

It's an alluring boost for a Paralympian willing to do anything for a competitive advantage.

Newshub.