World-class athletes are unsuspected consumers of nicotine, reveals a study by an Ontario researcher.
Professor Toby Mündel, from Brock University in Ontario, and his Spanish and Italian colleagues thus discovered nicotine in about 20% of the approximately 61,000 urine samples that had been taken during national and international competitions organized in Italy between 2012 and 2020.
The study cannot determine how nicotine was consumed or identify the countries where it is most popular. However, it was detected in 55% of the samples provided by baseball players, against 43% for hockey players, 42% for football players and 29% for basketball players.
These rates of use are two to four times higher than those found in the general population, according to the researchers.
The rate of nicotine use was also twice as high in samples provided by athletes who practice team sports than in those from athletes who practice individual sports.
“It’s probably a cultural phenomenon,” commented Professor Mündel. We know that in team sports […] we can be forced to do certain things just to be part of the group, to avoid standing out from others. »
The use of nicotine would therefore essentially aim to strengthen the bonds between teammates. As such, he compares nicotine to alcohol and cannabis that some athletes use to celebrate their exploits or to relieve the pressure they feel.
It is highly unlikely, he continues, that athletes who use nicotine do so to improve their performance. No serious scientific study suggests that nicotine can be useful for this purpose. “There’s not much positive that can be said about nicotine,” Prof. Mündel said.
Nicotine’s only potential contribution to performance may stem from its stimulating effect on the brain. This might explain why she was particularly popular in sports that have a tactical component and require special skills, such as diving, fencing, wrestling and golf.
It was significantly less popular among sports enthusiasts that require great cardiovascular effort, such as marathon runners, swimmers, cyclists and rowers.
“Most people will consume [de la nicotine] in the form of tobacco, Professor Mündel said. We know that it can only harm the health and physiology of the body. So for endurance athletes, it can only hurt performance. But for athletes whose sport requires strength and power and specific skills, nicotine and tobacco will not be as harmful as for endurance. »
Hockey players represent a somewhat special case, and one might be surprised to find that nicotine is so popular with athletes who are called upon to provide such cardiovascular effort.
Unlike marathon runners or swimmers, emphasizes Professor Mündel, the effort of hockey players is only required for the time of their presence on the ice, ie 60 or 90 seconds, before a break of a few minutes.
“I’m not saying that [le hockey] is not physically demanding, but the effort required of the aerobic or endurance system is not the same as for a marathon runner”, he specified.
Nicotine has been included in the World Anti-Doping Agency’s monitoring program since 2012. This simply means that WADA-accredited laboratories must analyze the presence of it in the samples that reach them, and nothing more.
The findings of this study were published by the scientific journal Sports medicine.