StemEnhance and Athletic Training

By Christian Drapeau

The closest runner was more than 2 miles behind Nina Kraft
when she crossed the finish line of the Ironman Triatholon
in Hawaii, on October 16, 2004.

But instead of feeling triumphant, she kept her head down
and barely looked up at the cheering crowd. A few weeks
later, results showed she had tested positive for
recombinant erythropoietin, a drug that boosts endurance.
"I screwed up," she told the press. "I never really
rejoiced over the victory in Hawaii. I was ashamed the
entire time, especially in front of my family. I cheated."
Since then, doping has become an increasing problem in
competitive and Olympic sports.

So just about anytime an athlete is introduced to
StemEnhance, the first question is, "Does it contain a
stimulant? Will it show on testing for doping?" A number of
years ago AFA had been tested for doping in horses, after a
few trainers saw how large amounts of AFA helped horses on
the race track. But because of the attention given to the
problem of doping over the last few years, passing the
doping test in horses was not enough for top athletes. So
we recently contacted international agencies involved in
testing for doping and tested StemEnhance.

Results: StemEnhance is safe for athletes.

But why would a healthy athlete be interested in
StemEnhance? We are so used to thinking of health as the
absence of disease, and athletes are the picture of health.
To understand why athletes welcome StemEnhance, we need to
think of health as the very optimal state of the body in
order to achieve highest performance. From this point of
view, supporting stem cells constitutes a unique training
and performance strategy.

A little over a year ago, I received a letter from two high
school students in Florida, Hanna and Ilisa Lee, asking if
I would be interested in helping them in a project for the
local Science fair. In their letter, they made the case
that if stem cells could travel to muscles and help muscles
recover faster after exercise, then the ability to exercise
the day after an intense workout would be greater.
Therefore, everday athletes could go further in their
training, turning in greater performances. Consequently,
athletes taking StemEnhance should imporve much faster. I
was impressed. These two teenages understood it all! I
asked them for a detailed protocol and we signed an
agreement. (My main motivation for a signed agreement was
that I wanted them to take the project really seriously. A
serious approach was the best I could do to foster the
development of these two young scientists. Their project
was a great opportunity for them to experience the
excitment of scientific investigation.)

They went to work on their project and did a fabulous job.
They documented how rowers at the University of Florida
achieved greater performance over time when taking
StemEnhance, compared to teammates not taking StemEnhance.
Hanna and Ilisa's science project ended up serving as the
preliminary work for a more in-depth controlled study
currently being carried out by an expert in exercise
physiology.

Now, let us look at the use of StemEnhance by athletes in
more detail. In theory, how may StemEnhance contribute to
giving athletes an "extra edge?" To understand this
relationship, we need to look at the physiology of athletic
training. When an athlete goes through saily training with
maximum effort, numerous microscopic lesions take place in
muscles, tendons and ligaments. These microscopic lesions
rapidly become the sites of discomfort. The body's reaction
to this discomfort produces molecules that create slight
local edema in an attempt to increase blood flow, nutrient
delivery and cellular circulation, as well as lymphatic
drainage to eliminate cellular debris. But this process
also creates molecules that mediate discomfort, and the
goal of discomfort is to limit the person's movements to
maximise the recovery process. The process of discomfort is
very interesting, as it is designed to limit the exposure
of further stress. A muscle that has micro-lesions will not
contract to the fullest, because the body will
neurologically inhibit muscle contraction to prevent
further discomfort. But if a person is an athlete in
training, he or she take some pain killer and goes through
more training the following day, creating more lesions. As
the process continues day after day, the athlete gradually
develops a chronic situation that limits the ability to
train to the fullest.

As part of the body's reaction to training stress, the
micro-lesions also release compounds that attract stem
cells, as stem cells carry out their role of daily renewal.
The greater the number of circulating stem cells, the
greater the number of stem cells that are available to
migrate to the recovering muscles. As stem cells migrate
into the muslce and become muscle cells, they may
accelerate the process of recovery after intense workouts.
As a conmsequence, the day after training by an athlete
using StemEnhance, the muslces may be better prepared for
an extra workout and the person may be able to exercise to
a greater extent. The difference may be small when viewed
day to day, but the difference can accumulate. As a result,
the ability to train a little bit more everyday may lead to
significant differences over time. StemEnhance does not
promote greater muscle mass or greater strength and it des
not support some hormonal process; it simply assists the
muscles, ligaments, tendons and connective tissue in their
process of recovery after intensive workouts, perhaps
allowing athletes to train everyday to the fullest, so they
may tap more effectively into their own potential.

I remember that years ago -- before any knowledge of the
effect AFA has on stem cells -- Dan O'Brien, 1996
Decathalon Gold Medallist was sharing in an interview that
the only supplement he was consuming was large quantities
of AFA. He claimed, "all it does is give me an edge every
day." He may not have known exactly how AFA worked in his
body, but he knew that AFA probably helped him become world
champion.

These days an increasing number of athletes are including
StemEnhance as part of their winning strategies. With the
intense scrutiny athletes undergo to remain fierce
competitors without the use of prohibited performance
enhancing drugs, StemEnhance -- a 5:1 concentration of AFA
will prove a unique tool to support optimum training for
top performance. As a result, the number of athletes using
it will certainly increase, as StemEnhance makes its
official appearance on lists of safe supplements for
athletes. We await with great anticipation the results of
the study investigating the effect of StemEnhance on
performance by athletes. Significantly positive results
from this study -- which is being conducted by an expert in
the field of exercise physiology -- will help to confirm
the evidence gathered by Hanna and Ilisa, as well as the
experience of the many athletes who use StemEnhance each
day as part of their training regimen.