Omni - where are they now? (November 1989)

Two drug related Continuum articles:

• Baking Soda For Stamina:

  Baking soda can clean your teeth, make dough rise and vanquish heartburn. Now comes word that it may also give athletes a stamina boost.

  Using drinks containing sodium bicarbonate, intermixed with drinks with none added and days when no drinks at all were administered, exercise physiologist Craig Horwill ran an experiment on ten intercollegiate swimmers. His results showed that when the swimmers took the placebos or no drink at all, their speeds remained the same throughout the test. After downing the baking-soda laced drink, they clocked their usual times for the first three races, but for races four and five, speeds increased an average or three seconds per 100 metres.

  Googling around looking for current research on this, I found a report from 1989 entitled "A Personal Trainer's Guide to Supplements". In the For Athletic Performance, Increased Endurance section, it mentioned baking soda, which included these precautions:

  Can cause explosive diarrhoea. Use only for big events.

  Personally I'd consider those two sentence a tautology.

• Superwoman Hormone:

  Woman leaders such as Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto and Great Britain's Margaret Thatcher (don't forget this is an article from 1989), may have a biological advantage over other females who are trying to reach the top of the political heap.

  Successful women secrete larger-than-normal amounts of a hormone that makes stress a pleasurable experience.

  The hormone in question is norepinephrine, and these statements come from Malcolm Carruthers, medical director of the Positive Health Center at Harley Street in London. Carruthers research has included several members of Parliament, but he admits that he had not tested Prime Minister Thatcher's hormone levels, "but I'd certainly love to look at what's going on in her" he added.

  My first reaction, as I''m all for reducing stress (or at least handling it better), was where do I get me some of this hormone and do I need a sex-change operation? It doesn't look like I can go into my local health shop and pick up a bottle of pills, but these adrenergetic drugs are available for men and women in life-threatening conditions.

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( Mar 15 2005, 07:00:30 AM PST ) [Listen] Permalink Comments [0]