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You are here: Home / Sports / I’m your doctor when in need

I’m your doctor when in need

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Don’t know if you’re following the weird Ray Lewis doping story story, but it’s amusing:

Like the star of an infomercial flush with catchphrases — “Guys, this stuff is beyond real!” — Key also showed the players gallon jugs of “negatively charged” water, which he claimed would afford them better hydration because it adheres like a magnet to the body’s cells. Then he held up a canister containing a powder additive, to be mixed in water or juice, that he said had put muscle mass on a woman who was in a coma, and an oscillating “beam ray” lightbulb that could “knock out” the swine flu virus in 90 minutes. Finally, he pulled out a bottle of deer-antler spray (which also comes in pill form). Adrian Hubbard, a linebacker sitting on one of the queen beds, said he already had some, but Key explained its benefits for the others.

“You’re familiar with HGH, correct?” asked Key, referring to human growth hormone. “It’s converted in the liver to IGF-1.” IGF-1, or -insulin-like growth factor, is a natural, anabolic hormone that stimulates muscle growth. “We have deer that we harvest out of New Zealand,” Key said. “Their antlers are the fastest-growing substance on planet Earth . . . because of the high concentration of IGF-1. We’ve been able to freeze dry that out, extract it, put it in a sublingual spray that you shake for 20 seconds and then spray three [times] under your tongue. . . . This stuff has been around for almost 1,000 years, this is stuff from the Chinese.”

If you outlaw deer antler spray….

Reader Interactions

80Comments

  1. 1.

    NotMax

    <blockquote.This stuff has been around for almost 1,000 years, this is stuff from the Chinese.”

    Ah, so that explains all those hordes of tall, super-buffed Chinese.

  2. 2.

    trollhattan

    “…this is stuff from the Chinese.”

    Finally, an explanation of how Chinese players managed to take over the NFL.
    [edit: does not explain NotMax’s quicker trigger finger.]

  3. 3.

    Jon

    Cheating is cheating. Rule breaking is rule breaking. But why is “doping” either of those things in the first place? Who cares?

  4. 4.

    Cassidy

    @Jon: It depends on the sport. If you’re taking PED’s in a sport that requires you to perform brutal physical acts on another human being, such as combat sports or football, then there is a very legitimate concern about the safety and health of the participants.

  8. 8.

    Crusty Dem

    Is it cheating if you’re trying to cheat but aren’t actually breaking any rules because your doctor is an antler-pushing* quack?

    Asking for a friend..

    * yes, I know antler spray probably breaks PED rules. Stop being so PEDantic.

  9. 9.

    Persia

    @scav: What, you think they actually believed it was deer antler spray? They believed if they kept their mouth shut they’d get their performance, er, enhanced.

    And by the time you get to the NFL you have years of concussion and repetitive brain injury under your belt thanks to high school, college, and probably Pop Warner. Ha, ha.

  12. 12.

    Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)

    @Doug Galt:

    Speaking as a Packers fan: Beyond Moss being an asshole, Moss was an asshole for the Vikings.

  14. 14.

    ranchandsyrup

    I think the baseball one is more interesting (although I just saw that Univ. of Alabama is getting caught up in the deer antler stuff too). Ray Ray (whom I detest) already has a gigantic ESPN contact and had to use the PED’s to come back in time for his swan song and it worked.

  15. 15.

    Jon

    @Cassidy: Yeah, but this is much more than a player safety thing. This is an intergenerational intercontinental jihad against anyone that used any “substance” ever to do slightly better at a sport. Meanwhile, all of the space age materials they make shit out of nowadays is fine. No one is making them ride bikes made out of the same materials from 1950, yet faster bikes = less safety too, right?

    I suspect we have a naturalistic fallacy-luddite-Puritanical-impulse thing at the heart of all of this. Fuck that.

  16. 16.

    scav

    @Persia: well, it was the light-activated hologram stickers that
    really caught me on the funnybone. it’s not as though abject belief in placebos and rabbit feet are limited to those that ever played football at any point in their lives. This one is just an unusually amusing cell-phone based combination.

  18. 18.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    that he said had put muscle mass on a woman who was in a coma

    Ooh, oh, I heard about this woman. She plays the free safety position for the Denver Broncos.

  22. 22.

    Amir Khalid

    “Negatively charged” water? Deer antlers from New Zealand? This sounds just like the pseudo-scientific malarkey peddled by people in the dubious nutritional supplements business.

    @Jon:
    You want sports to be a contest of talent, smarts and training. Not of pharmaceutical or other medical enhancement, especially if it involves the risk of long-term health consequences aside from the physical toll exacted by the sport itself.

  23. 23.

    trollhattan

    @Jon:
    I suppose because the pressure to do so drifts downward to where you get kids and even sports parents participating to “get that edge.” And a good deal of it has quite unhealthy contraindications. “PED” is a verrrrry broad realm, however.

  25. 25.

    Raven

    Rooooolllllllll Tide. I hope they strip their sorry asses of the last three National Championships!

  26. 26.

    jibeaux

    I can’t even make it remotely through that ocean of gullibility. The Scientologists and the Nigerians are really missing out on an audience here.

  29. 29.

    trollhattan

    @Roger Moore:
    There have been whispers around the ol’ BJ locker room, aside from the usual discussion of what Tunch has been shootin’. (Twinkie filling is leading the rumors.)

  30. 30.

    James Gary

    Are we playing “name the quoted tune” again? Curtis Mayfield, “Pusherman.” Great groove.

  31. 31.

    JPL

    Randy Moss might be an ass but even asses can do a couple of things right. Yesterday, I read an article about his spending time during the summer in Rand, WV coaching middle school kids. While a player for Minnesota he met a twelve year old with leukemia, recently he took her out to dinner. I’m sure the folks supportive of Lewis can say the same things but since I live in the Atlanta area, what he did can’t be undone.

  32. 32.

    jibeaux

    I mean, hologram stickers? My seven year old wouldn’t believe that, and she’s conflicted about the Tooth Fairy.

  34. 34.

    Crusty Dem

    @Doug Galt:

    Anyone who can call themselves “the greatest WR of all time” while wearing the same uniform that Jerry Rice did deserves failure. Shit, Randy wasn’t the best WR with the last name “Moss” since 2009.

  36. 36.

    James K. Polk, Esq.

    Placebo is the most effective medication… so it doesn’t really matter if the stuff is medically proven or not, it likely works if the athletes believe it does. Besides, I bet that spray is *filled* with placebo!

    As an aside, oral IGF-1 is almost certainly non-efficacious. Looks like I need a fake performance enhancing non-drugs side business, though.

  37. 37.

    Jon

    @trollhattan: So, parents spending $1000 on Little League equipment for their kids is totally kosher? Come on.

    No, look. I don’t want my kids or anyone else’s kids being compelled actively or passively to take anything harmful.

    We can draw the line between what kids do in sports all the time. Below a certain age, there’s no high speed pitching in baseball, body checking in hockey, or tacking in football.

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    @Crusty Dem:

    Is it cheating if you’re trying to cheat but aren’t actually breaking any rules because your doctor is an antler-pushing* quack?

    It’s the dishonest intent, not your chances of success, that makes it cheating.

  41. 41.

    Jack the Second

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ:

    that he said had put muscle mass on a woman who was in a coma

    Ooh, oh, I heard about this woman. She plays the free safety position for the Denver Broncos.

    If I’m ever in a prolonged coma, I totally want to be in that study.

  42. 42.

    jibeaux

    Another piece of S.W.A.T.S.’s post-Vobora marketing strategy confronts football’s grand bugbear: brain trauma. Ross is so sure that he can reduce brain damage in the sport that he plans to start a local nine-to-12-year-old tackle football league, which would include his son, and give the players “concussion caps” — beanies that they wear under their helmets and that are doused in a menthol smelling, skin-tingling liquid that he says has been “programmed” with anti brain-inflammation frequencies

    aaaaaauuuuuugggghhhhh
    Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nfl/news/20130129/the-strange-lab-that-lured-numerous-athletes/#ixzz2JUbfD1WF

  43. 43.

    ruviana

    I think this just demonstrates the value of a good liberal arts education, which includes if I’m not mistaken, science and some critical thinking skills.

  44. 44.

    scav

    @jibeaux: Ancient Chinese Hologram Stickers, mind. No doubt with GPS so they could go bother those deer in New Zealand Lo! those many centuries ago.

  46. 46.

    Jon

    @trollhattan: There is not a scandal every time Lance Armstrong buys a $100,000 bicycle. This also “enhances performance” and causes aspiring kids to part with their cash. It is also not “natural” and also the product of human artifice, and the higher speeds can also mean more danger.

    So, again, I fail to follow why we can’t keep harmful substances away from kids, keep players safe all while not giving a shit what these people inject themselves with in general.

  47. 47.

    Cassidy

    @Jon: That’s false equivalence. Better equipment is not the same thing as taking PED’s.

    I don’t think it’s so much a “jihad” as more of a janitorial cleanup as sports have been exposed for how dirty they are. It was going on for year and no one cared until the hallowed baseball records got broken, which at this point I could give a shit about myself. But, this issue dovetails nicely into the current debate around head trauma and life threatening/ altering injuries that are becoming more common with sports today.

  48. 48.

    Eric U.

    I’d certainly rather see players getting their peds from a legitimate source, but I suppose that doesn’t happen, by definition. If there is money in a sport, and there is lax drug enforcement like there was in MLB and is in the NBA and NFL, there will be rampant drug abuse. These leagues don’t want to catch cheaters and don’t unless forced.

    Cycling is widely considered the worst sport for doping, but given the money differential, I’m sure that the NFL leads in that category. In fact, it’s an open secret that U.S. football at every level is rampant with doping.

  49. 49.

    J.W. Hamner

    I agree with those saying that it’s the allegations of his using performance enhancing holograms that is the real scandal here.

    On a more serious note, while it’s banned, PED experts are saying it’s not actually a PED.

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    @Jon:
    You do, in fact, fail to follow.

    If cash expenditure=success in sports, then we’d only have wealthy children in sports.

    The wealthy are much more focused on getting their kids into Ivy League schools and at that, they’re quite successful, indeed.

  52. 52.

    catclub

    @Amir Khalid: I would guess that if the doctor tells you he is giving you antler powder, but actually just HGH, you can honestly say you had no idea that you were taking HGH.

    Ignorance on both sides might be necessary.

  54. 54.

    Quicksand

    Girlfriend in a coma, I know, I know, she’s muscular.

    Do you really think she can lift you?

  57. 57.

    Amir Khalid

    @catclub:
    I knew a guy who was the best competitive swimmer Malaysia has ever had. He told me once that during his competing days, he had to be careful with even his drinking water. If you left a water bottle on a table and came back later, he said, you’d be unwise to drink from the bottle again. Because if someone’s doped the water, you’ll still be the first one that catches the grief. If you want to accuse a doctor of doping you, you’d damn well better have proof.

  58. 58.

    Phoenician in a time of Romans

    We have deer that we harvest out of New Zealand

    Er, no. You’d have deer velvet that farmers harvest in NZ and sell overseas because we don’t mind making a quick export buck (or million) from gullible Asian medicine believers or people who think it helps their joints.

    Sorry about that. In defense, those dollars helped pay for my smartphone.

  59. 59.

    MattR

    @NotMax: Just had some nasty shit roll through Atlanta. Looks like it’s gonna reach Athens in the next 15-30 min. Get inside Raven.

  60. 60.

    Jewish Steel

    What, no johnny the conqueror root? How’s he going to get his mojo workin without that?

  61. 61.

    Gravenstone

    /facepalm

    Fucking pseudoscience bullshit. Ah well, always another way to skin the willing mark.

  62. 62.

    FlipYrWhig

    Then he held up a canister containing a powder additive, to be mixed in water or juice, that he said had put muscle mass on a woman who was in a coma

    I totally heard about that. It was Lennay Kekua.

  64. 64.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    Key also showed the players gallon jugs of “negatively charged” water, which he claimed would afford them better hydration because it adheres like a magnet to the body’s cells.

    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk

    =breathe=

    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk
    headdesk

  66. 66.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us? (formerly MarkJ)

    @Quicksand: That was awesome.

    Anyone who looks at NFL players and thinks, “sure, you can get that much muscle mass naturally with diet and exercise.” is a dupe. They’re all on PED, or at least most of them. They dwarf Arnold Schwarzenneger in his prime, and he admits he was doing steroids.

  67. 67.

    muddy

    @Steve: Nice one.

    I thought most of the Chinese remedies required killing an animal (preferably endangered) for its male enhancement effect. MEE?

  68. 68.

    Phoenician in a time of Romans

    Key also showed the players gallon jugs of “negatively charged” water, which he claimed would afford them better hydration because it adheres like a magnet to the body’s cells.

    Don’t laugh. I know someone who got their wires crossed, and died of dehydration while frantically drinking gallon after gallon of positively charged water. Well, I say “I know”, but I mean I read it somewhere. Maybe a Reader’s Digest, I dunno.

  69. 69.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Jon:
    Doping is cheating because it provides a strong advantage coupled by serious health risks. Both the advantages and the health risks are huge, meaning that if the substances labeled ‘performing enhancement drugs’ were allowed, any athlete who wanted a chance to compete would have no choice but to ruin their long-term brain and body health with drugs. That is the primary reason why ‘performance enhancing drugs’ are cheating and vitamins are not. There is a secondary reason that these drugs can have such a powerful effect that not only would athletes be expected to cripple themselves to compete, the drugs would overshadow every other competitive factor. An expensive metal baseball bat provides an edge, but does not remove skill from the equation. Unchecked, doping potentially does. Yes, people are puritans. In this case that doesn’t matter, there are excellent reasons for doping to be cheating beyond ‘drugs are bad!’ moralization.

  71. 71.

    Bubblegum Tate

    As I mentioned to a friend earlier, “deer antler spray” sounds like something Dwight Schrute would use as an aphrodisiac.

  73. 73.

    KenZ

    @Frankensteinbeck: But if all of your “doping” is done with BS pseudoscience like deer antler extract, is it really cheating? Is Ray Lewis (in this case) the cheater or the victim?

  74. 74.

    prankster

    @muddy:

    Yeah, well it’s kinda weird, but there are some deleterious affects from drinking just distilled water. Particularly this is a problem with intentionally low impurity waters like dWFI, but it’s pretty generally true of low mineral content water.

    A WHO draft doc on this subject is here
    , including such lovely quotes as:

    It has been adequately demonstrated that consuming water of low mineral
    content has a negative effect on homeostasis mechanisms, compromising the
    mineral and water metabolism in the body. An increase in urine output (i.e.,
    increased diuresis) is associated with an increase in excretion of major intra- and
    extracellular ions from the body fluids, their negative balance, and changes in
    body water levels and functional activity of some body water management dependent hormones.

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    If you outlaw deer antler spray…

    Santa will still have a huge stash of the stuff

    And if you are really, really, naughty…

  79. 79.

    Phoenician in a time of Romans

    @Brachiator:

    If you outlaw deer antler spray…

    Santa will still have a huge stash of the stuff

    Yeah, well, he needs it. Remember, he has a list of where all the BAD girls live…

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