# Blood Doping Explained



## MMsRepBike (Apr 1, 2014)

Lance explained crash course style.


----------



## BacDoc (Aug 1, 2011)

Very entertaining with some great basic physiology, thanks for that!


----------



## davidka (Dec 12, 2001)

Interesting that he skipped the real reason that blood doping is employed, which is to greatly enhance recovery from extended work efforts (which consume red blood cells fast enough to change the production/life cycle equation). It would have been easy to tag onto the "life of a blood cell" component.


----------



## atpjunkie (Mar 23, 2002)

davidka said:


> Interesting that he skipped the real reason that blood doping is employed, which is to greatly enhance recovery from extended work efforts (which consume red blood cells fast enough to change the production/life cycle equation). It would have been easy to tag onto the "life of a blood cell" component.


that more RBCs mean more removal of lactic acid from the muscles, = greater/faster recovery.


----------



## davidka (Dec 12, 2001)

atpjunkie said:


> that more RBCs mean more removal of lactic acid from the muscles, = greater/faster recovery.


More that over the duration of an extended race load (consecutive races or a GT), blood values drop in a "natural" athlete. These methods change that and it's also a big benefit in the training loads these guys can absorb.


----------



## AJL (Jul 9, 2009)

atpjunkie said:


> that more RBCs mean more removal of lactic acid from the muscles, = greater/faster recovery.


I thought this just raised ones LT, but didn't actually transport lactic acid any faster.


----------



## KarpM (Sep 8, 2015)

davidka said:


> Interesting that he skipped the real reason that blood doping is employed, which is to greatly enhance recovery from extended work efforts (which consume red blood cells fast enough to change the production/life cycle equation). It would have been easy to tag onto the "life of a blood cell" component.


This is very much secondary to the absolute increase in VO2MAX and LT.


----------

