NCAA Report Cause to Worry

Almost 60% of student-athletes surveyed by the NCAA have used nutritional supplements, according to a report released Monday. The NCAA also found that use of ephedrine, a stimulant with potentially dangerous side effects, is rising.

Ephedrine, an ingredient in several supplements popular with high school and college athletes, was allegedly used by three football players who died recently--Rashidi Wheeler of Northwestern, Devaughn Darling of Florida State and Curtis Jones, a defensive lineman for a Utah-based indoor football team. The stimulant has not been tied to their deaths.

The report, the largest and most comprehensive NCAA survey of student-athletes’ substance-abuse habits, was based on responses from 21,000 men and women at NCAA member schools.

Of those surveyed, 58.4% said they had used a nutritional supplement other than a multivitamin in the last year. Of those, almost 60% said they acquired them from a retail store, a cause for concern because supplements are not regulated and often contain substances banned by the NCAA, such as ephedrine.

“In speaking with student-athletes, very often they are unaware ephedrine is a banned substance and an element in these products,” said Mary Wilfert, NCAA program coordinator for health and safety. “They are not savvy enough, for the most part, to recognize that this is a risk for them, because they can go into a retail store and purchase [supplements].”

Only 15.1% of those surveyed said they acquired supplements from an athletic trainer, nutritionist or physician.

To address this problem, Wilfert said the NCAA has established a hotline enabling student-athletes, coaches and trainers to provide a product’s name and have it checked for any possible banned substances.

However, Wilfert stressed, “Student-athletes should get any product checked out by their athletic staffs before using it.”

Another alarming trend, according to the survey, is that supplement use is starting at a younger age. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they began consuming supplements in high school.

“This is very important for colleges to know because most NCAA positive drug tests result from substances found in nutritional supplements,” Dr. Gary Green, a physician of family medicine at UCLA, said in the report.

Green, a member of the NCAA competitive safeguards committee and chair of the drug testing and education subcommittee, said student-athletes need to be educated about supplements from “the time you start recruiting them.”

Ephedrine is commonly found in over-the-counter diet pills, decongestants and asthma medicines. Nutritional supplements containing the stimulant are promoted as a way to lose weight or to build strength or energy.

Wheeler, who suffered from asthma and used an inhaler, died Aug. 3 after collapsing while performing a rigorous conditioning drill at Northwestern. A teammate has told Northwestern strength coach Larry Lilja that he “had reason to believe” Wheeler used a dietary supplement hours before he collapsed on the field.

“I know people on a lot of teams, I talk to them, and I’d have to estimate that 20 to 30% of the players [take supplements containing ephedrine] at any given school,” a Northwestern football player, requesting anonymity, told The Times last week. “That’s the nature of the beast. Everyone is looking for an edge. Unfortunately, you don’t think that it can kill you.”

Ephedrine use extends beyond the NCAA and football. Since Aug. 1, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has reported four Americans--two karate athletes, a javelin thrower and a cyclist--have tested positive for ephedrine or pseudoephedrine. All were suspended.

Green said in the NCAA report that he is especially concerned about the significant jump in ephedrine use among women gymnasts--from 1.1% in 1997, the last time an NCAA drug survey was conducted, to 8.3% in 2001.

“This is of special concern in a sport in which there is a desire for thinness and a risk of pathologic weight-loss behavior,” he said.

On an encouraging note, ephedrine use among college wrestlers decreased from 10.4% in 1997 to 4.3% in 2001, perhaps reflecting the effect of weight-certification changes implemented after the deaths of three wrestlers in 1997.

Encouraging trends also were reported in the use of spit tobacco and anabolic steroids.

Although the rate of use of spit tobacco remains high in several men’s sports, it has declined in every NCAA survey since 1989, when 27.6% of those surveyed acknowledged use. That figure dropped to 17.4% this year, with baseball players making up the bulk of that group at 41.0%.

The study showed that anabolic steroid use remained low at 1.4%, compared to 4.9% in 1989. Football (3%) and baseball players (2.3%) had the highest use.

Alcohol was the most-used drug cited in the survey, consumed at least once in the preceding year by 79.5% of student-athletes. Although that figure is high, it still falls below the rate for the overall student body (84.2%), according to a national study conducted by the CORE Institute at Southern Illinois University.

Other findings in the survey included:

* Almost 94% of the respondents said they had not used amphetamines in the last year, but 1.6% said they were current users.

* Marijuana, at 27.3%, ranked second among drugs used by respondents.

* White student-athletes generally had higher substance use than African Americans.