influence of smokeless chewing tobacco (Snus) on athletic performance

Seminar paper from the year 2021 in the subject Sport - Sport Medicine, Therapy, Nutrition, grade: 1,0, University of Innsbruck (Institut fur Sportwissenschaften), course: Sportmedizinische Messmethoden, language: English, abstract: Brief summary of how oral tobacco (Snus) affects athletic performance. Doping has always played a major role in the world of sport. The question of how to make an athlete stronger, faster, more efficient, better in general, is probably as old as the first sports competition. However, human performance is naturally limited, although athletes all over the world, work hard every day to push the limit of what is possible. Just about every known training method for improving performance has been tested. That is why more and more attempts are being made to turn other screws. One of these is the optimisation of nutrition, another is the supplementation of banned substances. On the World Doping Agency's (WADA) list of banned substances, there are many substances that have been shown to increase performance. This list can be divided into substances that are completely banned and those that are only under observation. The alkaloid nicotine is since 2012 one of these substances under observation (National Anti Doping Agency Austria, 2020; World Anti Doping Agency, 2016). This alkaloid is said to have an arousing and/or paralysing effect on the ganglia of the autonomic nervous system. Both the excitatory and paralysing effects can be of positive importance for an athlete (Marclay & Saugy, 2010). Excitation to make the muscles fibers twitch more quickly or to be able to transmit the signals sent from the brain to the periphery, to the muscles more efficiently, to be able to cope better with athletic tasks or to increase cognitive speed by processing information more quickly. In sport, it is often fractions of a second that decide victory or defeat. The paralysing effect, in turn, could have a positive impact on an athlete's ability to regenerate. However, it should not be forgotten that, according to Marclay et al. (2011), nicotine has an extremely strong addictive effect.