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What Is the Role of Diuretics in Sport?

By Steven Symes
Updated: May 23, 2024
Views: 24,877
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The use of diuretics in sport is banned by many competitive sporting associations, since the use of diuretics provides certain individuals with an unfair competitive advantage. Some athletes take diuretics to quickly shed water weight, providing an advantage in sports where the weight of a competitor is used to determine what class he will compete in. Other athletes have been known to take diuretics to mask the presence of performance-enhancing drugs in their urine, in an attempt to beat a urinalysis they must take before a competition. Different classes of diuretics have different strengths and side-effects, such as purging the body of various minerals.

Taking diuretics increases the flow of urine in the body by decreasing how much water the body retains. Because of the increased urination experienced by a person taking diuretics, a person may suffer from dehydration. Medical patients with hypertension, kidney or liver disease may take prescription diuretics under the direction of a doctor to treat their medical conditions. Using diuretics in sport, however, can be used to give an athlete an unfair advantage over the competition.

Because they increase urination, some athletes use diuretics in sports to help them shed weight quickly. The increased urination caused by diuretic use can measure almost 1.6 gallons (about six liters), worth of urine shed by an athlete in a 24 hour period. Using diuretics in sport gives an unfair advantage over competitors, if an athlete is put into a weight category for competition, such as in boxing or wrestling. Urinating at high volumes helps an athlete reduce his water weight quickly, which some athletes use before a weigh-in when qualifying for a sporting competition.

Some athletes may use diuretics in sport as a masking agent, which covers up doping or an athlete’s use of performance-enhancing drugs. Many sporting associations randomly test athletes’ urine for the presence of illegal drugs, such as steroids. Diuretics help to flush out the traces of a performance-enhancing drug in a person’s urine before testing. Because of the known abuse of diuretics in sport, organizations may test athletes’ urine for the presence of diuretics as a way to catch doping.

Not all diuretics work to the same degree, with diuretics being divided into different classes. With most diuretics, taking them without a medical need can result in dehydration and a potassium deficiency, since diuretics often rob the body of potassium and other electrolytes, leading to muscle cramping. Diuretics may also cause athletes to suffer from fatigue, hypotension or low blood pressure and seizures.

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Discussion Comments
By croydon — On Aug 02, 2012

@irontoenail - It would kind of suck I think, since you'd have to watch every single thing that passes through your lips. I mean, lots of drugs have diuretic properties. You wouldn't be able to take any of them and I bet that you couldn't take most of them, in fact because they'd show up on your drug screenings.

It's one of the reasons I'd never play anything professionally. Not that I'm ever going to be that good anyway.

By irontoenail — On Aug 02, 2012

@browncoat - I guess it depends on what they are using them for and when they need to use them. If the weigh-in is a few days before the competition (and I believe the weigh-ins generally are held a few days before the event, depending on what it is) then there will probably be time for the drug to pass through their system before they have to actually compete. As long as they keep up their vitamins and fluid intake, they'll have no problems at all.

If they are using the diuretics to erase evidence that they've been cheating with other kinds of drugs though, then they may have to take them right up to the last minute which could cause the problems you've described. Of course, they might think the enhancing drug that they're trying to hide is worth it.

Personally, I think it's really sad that people will do that. They care more about the money and the prestige than the sport, I guess.

By browncoat — On Aug 02, 2012

I actually think that it's a terrible idea to risk using diuretics for a competition, even if they weren't illegal. I mean, the one thing that you'd want to do before a competition is make sure that you're decently hydrated since any competition where diuretics would be an advantage will involve a lot of movement.

So, you're going to be sweating a lot and being dehydrated from using that kind of medication would make you sick, giving you a distinct disadvantage in the competition. I mean, I just don't think that they would help you to win in the long run and that's the point of using them, isn't it?

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