I know that ‘doping’ is a very loose term, which might answer this, but either way, clearly it goes on, implying that athletes believe they can beat the system. Why can’t it be simpler to just catch them and make it way too risky to try it?
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The thing about the human body is it’s very good at absorbing and breaking down the things that are placed within in. When steroids or other performance enhancing drugs enter the system they are rapidly metabolized or broken down. So when we test for steroids we’re not looking for the steroid chemical per se, we’re looking for the products of their metabolism called “metabolites”. These metabolites may be exactly the same as normal things we find in a human body and all we’re looking for is a slightly elevated level of them. Or the metabolite is such a unique molecule that we don’t know we’re looking for it yet.
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