Brian Cushing Suspended 4 Games

[redskins121684]

I am not defending Brian Cushing here, that should be said first.

His claim that the HCG test result showing elevated levels are coming from a pituitary gland defect are, sadly, plausible and well documented. Cushing has a medical history showing irregular and spurratic growth patterns. In high school he had the unfortunate experience of growing over 6 inches in a period of one year. The pain that this type of growth would put an individual in would be absolutely agonizing especially if he is trying to play sports while he is growing like this. His father has actually spoken at some length regarding this condition and at one point Cushing had to be taken to the hospital because he could not walk as a result of the pain. Now I am not an expert on this but I do have a strong background in neurophysiology and one interesting thing with this is Cushing employed the increasingly popular hyperbaric chamber therapy during his knee injury toward the end of august. Now, hyperbaric exposure does have an effect on pitutitary glandular function and this has been documented well in many clinical trials. Typically it is employed with adolescents who have poor blood flow to the thyroid or pituitary resulting in low organ weight but in Cushings case the exposure would have been during sleep cycles where endocrine function would normally spike. In research settings most doctors have taken adolescents who are functionally deficient in terms of pituitary performance and they have observed a normalization of pituitary function following hyperbaric exposure. In Cushing's case you have an already overactive pituitary in a hyperbaric environment. Is it plausible for the gland to secrete a slightly higher than normal amount of HCG during his time in a hyperbaric environment particularly if that time coincided with his sleep cycles.....yes it is. What's more interesting is that he stopped using the hyperbaric chamber sometime in September or early October, he never tested positive for HCG during any subsequent tests. I think it would be really interesting to have him get back in the chamber for a month and test him again, or even take a guy like Lavernius Coles who uses a similar chamber and test his HCG levels. Another important part of this is the amount of HCG in his blood or urine. If it was really high then disregard everything I just said. I think he's big juicer but I thought it bore some mentioning that this defense is not unheard of in the science community although a case with these specific circumstances would be really hard to duplicate.