Pain or Gain?

By: Garry Holmen

To many powerlifters aspirin or similar drugs can be a best friend come contest or heavy training time. Heavy weights put a large strain on the body and aches, pains and strains arebound to happen. But in using that aspirin are you undermining your gains?

Last year I had a pretty serious hip injury (tensor fasciae) which made it impossible to get squat depth without pain or get a good hip drive during deadlift. So I went to a doctorand in typical Western medicine style I received a 2 month prescription for Naprosyn (1000mg each, big pills, taken twice a day). After about 3 weeks of taking the Naprosyn my hip pain started to lessen but so did my energy levels. I was always tired, weights felt heavy and there was a general lack of energy. Thinking I was coming down with some sort of illness I went back to the clinic and got a battery of blood tests done. And being the curious powerlifter that I was I got him to include free and bound testosterone levels. When the results came back everything was okay except my testosterone levels were lower then the norm.

At that point I dropped using the Naprosyn and started feeling better and after 2 weeks I went back to get my testosterone levels re-tested. Well within the norm this time (over a 200% increase from the previous blood test). So it got me thinking and researching...and I found that there is a correlation between NSAID usage and lowered testosterone levels.

Most NSAIDs are oxygenase inhibitors. No I didn't sneeze... 8^). Oxygenase is the enzyme that converts Arachidonic acid (fatty acid found in meats, etc) into the series 2 prostaglandins. Series 2 prostaglandins are offered referred to as the 'bad guys' in most of the 'fad' diets because they are responsible for things like blood clotting, water retention, and higher blood pressure.

But where this 'bad' label fails for us power types is that the series 2 prostalandins are responsible
for gondatropin releasing hormone (gnRH). Gondatropins are the term which the scientific/medical
community uses to describe the various sex hormones (ie. testosterone)

Thus as you take aspirin, ibuprofen, naprosyn, or any of the other cyclo-oxygenase inhibitors you're going to reduce the amount of testosterone you produce in a day. This in itself is no big deal because the average male produces plenty of testosterone daily. But if you take large doses of these drugs, over a long range of time you're going to reduce your testosterone levels substantially (by over a factor of 2 in my case), reduce your workout energy and quite likely inhibit your ability to put on or retain lean muscle mass.

So the next time you reach for that pill bottle for that post workout soreness maybe you should
think twice about whether you really need it and is it going to help your long term power goals.

Garry

Garry Holmen is an amateur powerlifter with too much free time on his hands who likes to research nutrition and exercise physiology. Garry likes to learn through trial and error and pass on his lessons in life to others.

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