Boss Lowe wrote about doping with xenon gas more than a decade ago: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/another-use-xenon
Also, and quite interestingly, xenon isn't the only element that does this. Cobalt does something very similar: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6157393/
Athletic use is probably more common than people think. And I'd be absolutely shocked if Xe gas weren't already being used in racehorses. (You wouldn't believe the state of chemical warfare in that sport.)
There's also potential military use -- especially in combat divers. They're very limited by the amount of breathing gas they can carry. Anything to meaningfully cut oxygen use could be a game changer.
Military divers who need to be underwater for long periods are almost certainly using rebreathers, both for the longevity and for the lack of visible & audible bubbles.
Isn't that also mainly to avoid nitrogen toxicity?
Rebreathers may feature slightly elevated oxygen levels vis-a-vis standard air (you need a lot of knowledge to use one safely, so presumably anyone diving a rebreather has done the far simpler courses for nitrox or trimix, both of which are used for limiting nitrogen narcosis), but for military divers it's much more about the lack of bubbles and noise.
It’s kinda curious that xenon can be used both for performance enhancement _and_ as a general anaesthetic.
Anesthetics are very weird. One of the leading theories is that they basically get wedged in lipid bilayers and interfere with neural signaling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...
And as a dessert topping!
No, It's a FLOOR WAX!
I always wondered if the allied forces were giving their elite troops EPO or similar when tracking the Taliban up and down mountains in Afghanistan. If they weren't, I think they should have been.
I don't know about EPO, it probably wouldn't have been that useful. But it was an open secret that a lot of the elite ground troops used illegally purchased performance enhancing steroids to build muscle and accelerate recovery. Long patrols through rough terrain while carrying a heavy load are extremely grueling and a little enhancement was tremendously helpful. Use of those drugs was technically a violation of military regulations. But officers often looked the other way because they didn't want to endanger the mission, and regular urine tests didn't check for steroids.
Now that the GWOT is over, the peacetime military has been cracking down on steroid use.
You'd think they'd have a proper programme for it for the elite troops.
Unless you're doing completely stupid doses it can be managed safely, and it's not like the soldiers are not already doing something inherently risky.