A recent study showing that green and white tea extract lowers testosterone concentrations has Olympics drug testers considering adjusting their tests.
The study, conducted in Britain, showed that testosterone concentration was reduced by up to 30 percent when researchers added green and white tea extracts. According to the research, the tea appeared to work best when testosterone was only slightly higher than normal.
The study was done in a lab dish and not with humans, so scientists are unsure if it will have the same effect on people, though similar results have been found with rodents. Their results are convincing enough to have Olympics drug testers considering changes to their tests.
“It’s interesting that something as common as tea could have a significant influence on the steroid profile,” said Olivier Rabin, scientific director of the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA.
“We may need to adjust our steroid (test) to allow us to exclude whether a test is modified by food or training or disease, before we can say that it’s doping,” he said.
Declan Naughton of Kingston University, who published the study, says the green tea contains catechins (also found in white tea), which seem to stop an enzyme involved in detecting testosterone. The lack of the enzyme seems to prevent the testosterone from appearing in urine, which is used to conduct the tests. Testers could use blood samples as an alternative.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m an athlete who’s taking testosterone, first thing I’m doing is heading to the grocery store to pick up some green tea. Actually, forget that. I’d be down at Costco grabbing a couple of cases of it to guzzle for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Hey, every bit helps, right? Testers better get on top of this.
Note: This post also appeared at Medal Detector
