Friday, April 2, 2004
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Friday, April 2, 2004 |
| Coaches push dihydrogen monoxide By Rick Ryckeley Popeye once said, “I can stands so much, but I can’t stands no more!” I felt the same way when I heard what coaches all over this county are doing to our kids. Believe it or not, they are making our kids ingest a chemical compound called dihydrogen monoxide! Dihydrogen monoxide is a chemical that THEY say will enhance athletic performance! Shocking as it seems, it’s true. Someone needs to alert the public so they can put a stop to this insidious practice of giving our children performance-enhancing compounds! Someone needs to expose what’s really going on in the coaches’ offices around this town! That’s why I’m here. I’m somebody and consider yourselves alerted. Dihydrogen monoxide (DHMO) is a colorless, tasteless, odorless compound sometimes referred to on the street as dihydrogen oxide or hydrogen hydroxide. DHMO is responsible for thousands of deaths a year, and accidental inhalation of DHMO even in small amounts can cause death! So why are our coaches telling even the youngest players to ingest it? Read on, dear reader; the answer is below. Just last month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution dedicated an entire page citing the dangers and health concerns of using performance enhancing compounds such as protein powders, creatine, amino acids and the like. Now coaches in our beloved county are touting the benefits of DHMO without looking at the side effects. If that’s not bad enough, they’re even giving it youngest among us, our elementary school children! This practice has to stop. Here are just a few of the health concerns of DHMO. Prolonged skin exposure to DHMO in its sold form can cause severe and irreversible tissue damage. The chemical compound has been use as an additive in food products that range from canned dog food to baby food. Traces of DMHO have been found in cough medicines, spray-on oven cleaners, shampoos and coffee, which is a drug itself, but that’s a whole different story. DHMO has been used as a sprayed-on preservative to keep fruit and produce fresh at the grocery store. If you have an overabundance of DHMO in the body, it can cause pulmonary edema, and even death. Then why are coaches giving it to our children? DHMO is even available in large quantities to every high school student in our county! It’s just appalling! But read on; it’s worse than you think. Does the use of DHMO help enhance athletic performance of athletes? Physicians of sports medicine agree that it does. Even professional athletes ingest large quantities of DHMO every day in an attempt to gain a competitive edge. Long distance runners were involved in blood doping scandals a few days before the ‘76 Olympics, now something similar is happening with DHMO. By injecting additional blood into their bodies, the athlete’s blood was able to carry more oxygen to the cells, thus enhancing performance. This highly dangerous practice has been outlawed for years. Now runners and cyclists ingest large quantities of DHMO just prior to racing, all in an effort to win with no regards for their health! After any athletic performance, taking DHMO has been proven to help in recovery time, but misuse comes with a heavy price. Even though all sports physicians acknowledge the benefits of taking DHMO before, during, and even after athletic performance, there are serious health concerns and unwanted side effects if too much is ingested. DHMO can cause excessive sweating, increased urination, nausea, electrolyte imbalance, and if withheld from an athlete for a long period of time, even death! With all of these health concerns, why are coaches still encouraging our children to take this performance-enhancing compound? You will be surprised as to the answer below, but not as surprised as I was to find out that my son, The Boy is also taking dihydrogen monoxide every day! All the information in this article is true, and the coaches we contacted in the county did not deny they encourage and provide DHMO to all of their athletes. Why are parents powerless to stop this practice? One last fact about dihydrogen monoxide that should make the reason clear - DHMO is the main ingredient in acid rain. Not clear yet? I wrote this article yesterday, April 1. A more common name for dihydrogen monoxide is water - H2O. (Some information contained in this article was provided by Tim Way, director of dhmo.org.) [Rick Ryckeley is employed by the Fayette County Department of Fire and Emergency Services. He can be reached at saferick@bellsouth.net.] |