(no subject)
I have decided to split this beast into multiple entries to enhance readability, something I have been whined at about in the past, in case any of my many, many non-commenting readers were wondering.
Drugs (2 of 3)
God be merciful to the track vets who daily inject horses with remedies that make them worse instead of better. Bute. Lasix. Cortisol.
First of all, in a country as advanced as the United States, with all our technological and social superiority, a country that would like to consider itself the cutting edge of moral standards regarding everything including the humane treatment of animals, a simple citizen must ask the question why it is legal to race horses on painkillers while the rest of the civilized world has long been able to conduct quality racing without.
This is not just a matter of potentially masking injuries that a horse would otherwise be incapable of running through by lessening pain that would otherwise be telling him to stop, but of allowing infirmites to develop unseen in otherwise uninjured structures. Allow me to explain. When an acute injury occurs, the site is immediately flooded with prostoglandins, which both jumpstart and continue to facilitate the healing process, also known as the imflammatory response. NSAIDs, such as bute/aspirin, work to relieve your discomfort by blocking prostoglandins, essentially also blocking the healing process for the sake of making you/the horse comfortable. So if you can possibly stand it, don't be a big wuss! It's bad for you!
But the kicker is this: the inflammatory response is a part of everyday maintenance in your body. (By "you" understand that I mean you as a member of the animal kingdom, equine, primate, or amphibian) Your body is in a state of constant repair and even improvement, healing and reinforcing microscopic tears in your muscles, microscopic fractures in your bones, injuries so subtle and widespread you never even feel the slightest soreness to alert you to their presence. By popping NSAIDs on a regular basis for the barest headache, a slightly sore pinky toenail, or an acute injury, you not only prevent the initial ailment from being resolved, but also prevent every other tissue in your body from receiving it's daily maintenance, resulting in a gradual weakening process that will likely go unnoticed until a major (bowed tendon) or possibly catastrophic (compound fracture to the cannon bone) failure occurs.
Please note that I am not suggesting this is how every bad injury occurs. On the contrary, I think it is more often due to dumbasses continuing to train and race horses that they already KNOW have somethig wrong (which bute allows them to do); I'm just making a case for when something gives way besides what you were expecting, which is often attributed to the additional stress placed on other structures in order to compensate for the acute injury, a legitimate claim, but what you don't know is that those other structures may have been able to take the additional load were they not also compromised in a less obvious way by the drugs you were using to get him through the visible injury.
When you see weight falling off your horse, you'll likely blame ulcers, another common side-effect of NSAIDs, epecially bute and aspirin, when given orally, (which is typically NOT how they're given at the racetrack unless the horse is training on them rather than just getting a dose for raceday) never considering that maybe he simply can't rebuild those muscles from their daily wear and tear because you are chemically blocking his natural process. Now think what's happening to his bones that's not so readily seen.
The fact that bute, like it's cousin aspirin, is a blood-thinner compounds the problem. The blood is thinned by filtering a substantial percentage of the platelets (<--why does this word look like it's spelled wrong to me?) out of it. Platelets are basically pieces of old red blood cells that float around in the bloodstream, getting recycled by the living blood cells for their nutrients (cannibals!) and are also essential to the clotting process. This blood-thinning aspirin treatment is often reccomended for people at risk of forming blood clots in the legs which can cause strokes if they break loose and get lodged somewhere else.
But there are several problems when this occurs as a side-effect in racehorses. First of all, you have blood cells that are a little bit anemic because the nutrients they need from the platelets they prefer to feed on aren't readily avaliable. This hinders the ability of the red pigment in the blood cells, hemoglobin, to bind with oxygen and thus carry it to muscles which need it to function. This means the heart and lungs have to work a little harder from the get-go to supply adequate oxygen to the motor-muscles of the machine. Second, there is more space between red blood cells that would normally be occupied by the platelets, which means that everything has to get pushed harder to get those blood cells where they need to be. More work for the heart, resulting in higher than normal blood pressure during exertion, not lower. Is not the goal of improving cardiovascular fitness to make the heart able to do more work with less effort?
Now, when that heart reaches workload capacity, it's at capacity. There is no exceeding it and best-case scenario, your performance only flattens out at that level. What sense does it make to lower that capacity by making the heart work harder to do it's normal job by making poor the life-waters of the entire system with a drug that the horse either doesn't need, if there is assumably nothing wrong with him, or shouldn't have if there is something wrong with him because it allows and encourages him to run on injuries that aren't ready to be stressed yet and will likely worsen because of such ignorance. So not only is it weakening your horses structurally and allowing you, the trainer, to break them down inhumanely before their time and say "It's just part of the game" like you couldn't help it and had nothing to do with it, but is also inhibitting them from performing to their highest potential at that very game in which the only goal is money. Not only is it cruel, but financially stupid.
It is also not much of a stretch for me to think that hungry blood cells, being as essential to the life of the entire organism as they are, might start "borrowing" nutrients from other tissues, like muscles, which the horse can get by with a little less of, in order to keep doing their duty for organs with more important roles to a horse's health and survival, such as those in the digestive system. Another reason you'll see him losing weight besides the fact that he's ulcerated and therefore not eating. At the very least, they certainly cannot maintain these structures to the best of their ability.
The third side-effect I'm sure you've already guessed at with all this talk of blood pressures and cardiovascular loads is bleeding. In a racing horse, when he's really sucking air at the peak of his exertions, it goes without saying that there are tremendous and rapid pressure changes taking place in the lungs between max inhale and max exhale, and all of that force is pumping on the extremely finely tapered capillaries where the oxygen exchange takes place. If the pressure inside the bloodvessel is elevated with exertion already, and the (air)pressure outside the bloodvessel is suddenly and drastically released creating something of an external vacuum, it is not difficult to imagine the tissue-paper epithelium of the blood vessel bursting, resulting in what is called (drumroll please) bleeding. Exercise Induced Pulmonary Hemorrhage. Extremely detrimental to race performance, you might guess, because having your lungs coated with fluid makes the oxygen exchange impossible, but also because, I would imagine, that shit stings! Ow! Like a bad rasping cough or sprinting down the block on an icy wind-whipped morning and then hurrying home as you drag the freezing air like sandpaper into your lungs. Fancy that? Didn't think so! I'd quit running, too! Now why on earth would you contribute to that with a drug that's going to make the pressure inside the blood vessel a little higher to begin with, making him more likely to bleed, and more likely to do it worse than he would without it?
And the real trouble is here: with the reduced platelet count, clotting is inhibitted. He can't stop bleeding easily once he starts.
Enter Lasix.
Please note that I am less opposed to Lasix than to other drugs, but I think there should be much stricter criteria to meet before a horse is allowed to run on it, (which I will not go into now because I am lazy) simply because I am not convinced that it doesn't have performance enhancing qualities outside of it's anti-bleeding (via-blood-pressure-reduction-via-diuretic) property and diuretic effect which allows a horse to carry as much as twenty fewer pounds of his own body weight around the track, a suspicion evidenced by the commonly held and statistically justifiable notion that a horse running organically is at a disadvantage to one running on Lasix. And also because of it's potential as a masking agent for other (illegal) drugs, also due to it's diuretic effect. Even more incentive to use it whether the horse actually needs it for it's intended purpose or not!
This is why there need to be rigid criteria in place, and maybe I will go into it right now after all, if only because it needs to be out of my head, which has plenty of other glittery shimmery sparkly things swirling and flashing circles 'round the bright center of it's insides. Too many chaoses. Need out. Need out.
What? I bet you've never seen the inside of your own head; how do you know what your own brains look like? Let alone mine...
It occurs to me that I have been staring at this screen for quite a few of the last twenty-four hours. Anyway.
The point I was headed toward was that a lot, likely a majority and possibly even a vast majority of horses who run on Lasix don't have enough of a bleeding problem to warrant it's use, and of the ones that do, probably half wouldn't need it if they would get them off the fucking bute. There are painkillers out there, if they insist upon using them, that are more effective and have fewer and safer side-effects. Why do they use bute instead? Because it's cheap.
Sounds like the moral high road to me. The fact is that none of them have any place being at the track at all. In fact it all got started in the hope that allowing this one drug would encourage horsemen to stop using all manner of other illegal drugs and trying to hide it. Fail. Instead what we got was an ever-increasing spike in breakdowns, a pandemic of EIPH, and resultant overuse of Lasix, which just so happens to be a handy-dandy masking agent for all those other drugs people are still trying to hide. Experiment was total flop. Scrap it already!!!
Determining whether a horse needs lasix (in a horse who has been off bute for an as-yet-unspecified-by-me length of time to allow his blood and lungs to recover):
If the horse runs 5 furlongs before "stopping" as though he hit a wall and "backing up" through the field, during the last sixteenth of a 5-1/2 race or the last 11f of a two-mile race, he gets no lasix. He is a 5 furlong horse. So on and so forth for whatever distance over 5 furlongs he may manage to run before stopping. If you feel the horse is too slow for that distance, tough shit; at least one of his parents probably should not be in the gene pool, and don't even get me started on that.
If the horse only runs 2 to 4-1/2 furlongs before stopping, look into his race history. Look for what changed between his last out, when he ran satisfactorily, or at least didn't stop but rather petered out due to normal fatigue, and now. Was the rider different? Was the distance different? Was the surface different? Is he new to this track/altitude/climate? Were the pace-setting fractions or his proximity to them different than his preferred style? Is he hurting? Establish a pattern over the course of, say, three races in addition to scoping before you go diving for the needle.
If it's a first time starter who consequently has no race history, tough shit! Try something different training-wise or conditions-wise; maybe it'll work! Or else give him two more races (for a total of 3) under similar circumstances to establish a pattern that might substantiate your suspicion that severe bleeding is the culprit. First-timers get tired for a lot of other reasons. It's a fact of life. All I'm saying is that you should be looking for any reason NOT to drug your horse, rather than for any reason to do it, which basically amounts to looking for a quick-fix. That kind of laziness does no justice to your horse, who would probably do anything for you so long as you're nice to him otherwise. You are nice to him, right?
Finally the one that really kills me: injecting joints with catabloic steroids. I assumed they had ruled out steroids in general, but it turns out only the growth-enhancing anabolic variety got outlawed. It was a huge step in the right direction, and yet a joke at the same time, because, while using anabolic steroids is fucking asinine for reasons I am tempted to outline, injecting a horse's joints with the opposite, meant to actually break down tissue, I repeat, Break Down Tissue, doesn't even sound good in theory. I am amazed that it still goes on, for, although being initially much more effective than, say, pin-firing, the end result is easily predictable. People have got to be pretty fucking dumb to not realize this and instead choose to believe that it's a good remedy. Why this is not only legal but a widely accepted treatment for very large athletes without a required layoff afterward (we're talking months, due to the rate at which connective tissues heal) is beyond me. Frankly, if you'd just give them the time off that they need in order to heal themselves to start with, this brand of barbaric shit probably wouldn't even exist.
At every diarthrotic joint (basically all the ones you think of when you think of your joints; the free-moving ones under voluntary control via skeletal muscles) and some ambiarthrotic joints (such as where your ribs articulate with your vertebrae) there is a hard, smooth layer of cartilage on each of the articular surfaces. This and synovial fluid (joint lube) together insure that everything glides along smoothly throughout a horse/person/frog's stride. Likewise, connective tissues like ligaments and especially tendons run along inside a sheath that secretes synovial fluid rather than rubbing directly against the surrounding structures. When in injury occurs, be it arthritis in a joint or a strained tendon/sprained ligament, there is some associated inflammation (part of your healing resonse, remember?) which causes a little bit of friction, which causes discomfort to the area additional to that induced by prostoglandins. My opinion has always been that your body knows what to do for itself better than you or your capitalist doctor/vet knows what to do for it, and the reason you have discomfort or pain on an injury is to discourage you from moving it around thus stressing it further. Horses know this; my cat who came home from getting spayed yesterday knows this; why don't people, in all our superior intelligence, know it as well?
We instead, in an effort to make ourselves and our horses comfortable (ourselves because we're a bunch of pussies; our horses because we want them useful again ASAP) center our treatment around getting the swelling and heat (imflammation) out via NSAIDs, ice, sweats..., which completely contraindicates what your body is trying to do for itself. Sometimes, through all this manner of shit, we succeed in easing the symptom (lameness) even though the injury itself is probably band-aided at best. When all a trainer's do-it-yourself treatments fail to make the horse sound, the next step is often cortisol injections.
Cortisol, or any number of other catabolic steroids they may use, are all things produced by the body naturally for the purpose of breaking down tissues. Your body does this all on it's own when it decides that the amino acids and other nutrients from one part of your body can be put to better use elsewhere. Think of watching your muscle-tone rapidly turn to flab when your dumbass neurosurgeon has sentenced you to three months of sedentariness. I believe this is part of the reason why I experience a period of achiness when transitioning from a fit state to an unfit one, not unlike the soreness experienced by many when they go in the opposite direction when they first begin an exercise regimen, but that's irrelevant.
The idea is that by injecting a joint or tendon with a caustic subtance, you can break down the osselets/ringbone or whatever pressure and friction-causing imflammatory substance inside a consequently constricted tendon-sheath is causing things to not glide along smoothly. The initial result if often nothing short of miraculous.
The problem, however, lies in the fact that you can't simply squirt this stuff in there and tell it to break down one thing but not another. When applied liberally by humans rather than at the body's own discretion, it's effect does not distinguish between bone and tendon, muscle and cartilage, or even healthy and undamaged tissue. It doesn't discriminate against culling undamaged structures along with the injured ones. When the initial effect wears off, you are worse off than you were before.
In the case of an injured tendon or ligament that probably would have cleared up on it's own given time and rest, you are basically insuring that it won't heal, especially by using this method as a means to continue training on it.
In the case of something like arthritis which is degenerative anyway, you are simply accelerating the process and making the horse comfortable enough in between to squeeze a few more races out him before the inevitable break occurs. This, I have an extra-serious problem with, not only because it is cruel to the horses, but because it puts the unsuspecting jockey at risk, too. I think you can understand my position given that I am sitting in front of this screen with a mild compression fracture in my SPINE as a result of having had that very thing happen to me.
Furthermore, this junk you're injecting their joints with doesn't simply stay where it's put. The horse's system, in an effort to restore homeostasis, will eventually distribute the steroid equally throughout the body, where it wreaks it's havoc on, among other things, Muscle Mass!
No wonder everyone used to try to counteract all this muscle-depletion (also due in part to over-training and both under- and over-deworming, my theory for why domestic horses have such a problem with colic outside of stupid diet and lack of exercise, since dewormer is, after all, poisonous) by giving (da-tada-da!) anabolic steroids! Brilliant!
Reasons this is dumb:
1. It is and was always completely unnecessarry given a few minor tweaks to your training program to stop musle-loss in the first place, centered mainly around NOT being a lazy-ass by looking for short-cuts that ultimately only short-change your horse, who is then rendered incapable of performing to the best of his ability and therefor doesn't make YOU any of the money you were hoping for by trying to quick-fix him in the first place.
2. Applied artificially in mass doses instead of at the body's own discretion, anabolic steroids will stimulate an overproduction of new cells anywhere the body is currently repairing itself, not just in the muscles. So if you have a slight injury to a tendon, or some tears to the capillaries in the lungs, and the body is producing a little scar tissue to begin with, steroids will make him over-produce it, which is bothersome because scar tissue is extremely rigid, unlike the formerly elastic structures it is replacing. An over-production will make the structure more likely to tear again in the future.
3. Applied artificially in mass doses instead of at the body's own discretion, anabolic steroids encourage muscles to grow in bulky round bundles instead of flat ribbons. This not only affects an animal's range of motion increasing the liklihood of muscle soreness and strains, but also makes them a lot lot lot less efficient at the oxygen exchange because most of their mass is consequently further from the surface. This adds up to earlier muscle fatigue during exertion, and a higher probability for injury plus an earlier inclination to bleed if the horse chooses to push through it. (Anabolic threshold is reached prior to VO2 max (heart/lung/circulatory threshold for oxygen) being reached (at which point capillaries in the lungs are most likely to burst))
4. Adding mass and theoretically power to a framework that is no bigger or stronger than it was before is just asking to exceed it's structural capacity. Momentum = mass x velocity SQUARED!!!
5. Receiving doses of steroids regularly causes the body to stop producing them on it's own. It will take months for the body to recover and return to it's own natural state of being able to provide for itself after it stops getting them. (Big Brown, Belmont) Watch the muscle fall off of them then!
6. They are often useless in the breeding shed after having received steroids on a regular basis.
Good thing I decidied to split this into three entries. (Third installment yet to come)