At the beginning of the month, Houston Texans linebacker (former USC Trojan) Brian Cushing was given a four game suspension for testing positive for hCG. hCG is a hormone that is commonly used during or after a steroid cycle in order to maintain and increase testosterone levels that are lowered by performance enhancing drugs.
Manny Ramirez tested positive for hCG last year and received a 50 game suspension during the MLB season. Different than Ramirez who said he tested positive for hCG by taking medicine that was prescribed to him by a doctor, Brian Cushing stated that his positive test was a result of over training:
"Every individual is genetically different. I had a unique situation where something like this occurred and we have the science to back it up. It's taken months. It's really beyond what we ever thought and it's beyond the regular medical doctor".
I'm neither a doctor, nor a trainer, but one thing that I can be sure about is that no matter how hard you train (which I have done in the past), your body can not produce something that already doesn't exist in it. For instance, the body naturally produces creatine yet we add more creatine as a supplement when training. Even if we do not add the creatine to our supplement regiment, the body will continue to produce creatine anyway. The human body does not produce hCG on it own, meaning that training or "over training" will not result in the body producing hCG.
If by some freak of nature, Cushing is an extraordinary human being and does produce hCG just from working out, then reap the benefits and play all 16 games next season. This being highly unlikely, seeing as the use of hCG as a performance enhancing drug is to maintain and increase testosterone levels during steroid cycles, Cushing is just another athlete on the list of performance enhancing drug users that got caught and will pay the extreme price of doing so for the remainder of his career and any shot at the NFL Hall of Fame when his career is over.
As the story continues to develop I will keep you posted and also ask that you do the same here in the comments section below.
Thanks to The Brit_2 for the photo of Brian Cushing
