Greg Norman, winner of 91 tournaments worldwide, remembers a time when panic attacks on the elite golf circuit were often alleviated with the illicit use of a common heart and blood pressure medicine, the beta blocker.
“In my day, lots of guys were on beta blockers,” Norman, 57, said in an interview at the P.G.A. Championship in August. “It wasn’t openly acknowledged, but it was obvious to the rest of us. A guy’s personality would change. In practice rounds or friendly matches, we’d see the real guy under stress. Then in competition, he was like a different, calmer person. Those guys were trying to take the nerves out of the game. But nerves are very much a part of the game.”
Norman was far from the only one with the tacit understanding that beta blockers, also prescribed for stage fright, were part of big-time golf. So in 2008, when the PGA and L.P.G.A. Tours were establishing their antidoping programs, beta blockers were included on the banned substance lists.
The little pill that inadvertently, or not so inadvertently, soothes the jitters and helps settle the bets in a recreational weekend match — nearly one in three Americans have high blood pressure, so it might be resolving a lot of $5 wagers — is strictly policed when the PGA Tour paydays top $1 million.
The permissibility of beta blockers in golf’s top level has come into focus anew this week. Charlie Beljan won a PGA Tour event Sunday, two days after being hospitalized with a panic attack. Beljan, who said that this week he was going to consult doctors near his home in Arizona, might be treated with medication to prevent future panic attacks. But in competition, he will not be allowed to take certain medications, like beta blockers, without applying for a therapeutic use exemption, which requires a review by an independent panel of doctors.
Dr. Nicole Danforth, a psychiatrist, the medical director of Massachusetts General Hospital’s sports psychology program and a former professional golfer, said, “I think beta blockers could treat the yips, and I think the tours think so, too, or they wouldn’t ban them.”
Beta blockers are prohibited in many sports other than golf, including Olympic sports. The PGA Tour took its lead from the United States Anti-Doping Agency and the World Anti-Doping Agency in adding beta blockers to its list.
“One of the many pharmacological uses of beta blockers is the steadying of hand tremors,” said Andy Levinson, the executive director of the PGA Tour’s antidoping program. “Anything requiring fine motor skills could be affected, something necessary in sports like archery or golf.”
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Kim Jong-su of North Korea had to return the silver medal he won in the 50-meter pistol event and the bronze he won in the 10-meter air pistol event after testing positive for propranolol, a beta blocker.
For millions of Americans who take beta blockers, enhancing athletic performance is far from the purpose. Beta blockers are heart medicines meant to control blood pressure, slow the heartbeat and treat a variety of other heart conditions. That they might help calm nerves in a pressure situation is almost an accidental side effect.
“It so happens that the response to an anxiety-producing situation is also driven by the sympathetic nervous system that the beta blocker is trying to control for the good of the patient’s heart,” said Dr. Binoy K. Singh, the associate chief of cardiology at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.
But Singh said he knew of no long-term, randomized clinical trials measuring beta blockers’ effectiveness in resolving anxiety or improving performance in pressure situations, even if he has had patients tell him they have noticed a calmness in those settings.
There is, in fact, no universal agreement on whether beta blockers help or hurt in some athletic situations.
“Some level of anxiety is good for performance,” said Richard Ginsburg, a sports psychologist at the Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. “It keeps you on your game. A beta blocker can take away some edge, mellow you too much.”
Danforth, who twice played in the United States Women’s Open, agreed, though she added that beta blockers, purely from a golf perspective, had been likened to the stabilizing advantage some find using a long putter.
There are medical concerns for those who acquire beta blockers without a prescription, perhaps through the plethora of Web sites selling the drugs. Singh said there was a serious risk for people using beta blockers without a genuine, long-term medical need for them.
“They are a very powerful class of drugs that have enormous impact on essential bodily functions,” he said. “They are not without adverse effects.”
Beta blockers are far from the primary treatment for panic attacks. There are a variety of medications, doctors said, and there are multiple treatments that do not involve drugs. Among the most effective treatments has been cognitive behavioral therapy. Some anti-anxiety drugs, like Xanax or Valium, are not on most prohibited substance lists, including the one used by the PGA Tour.
But if a golfer on the PGA or L.P.G.A. Tours can prove a documented medical condition that requires the use of a prohibited substance, an exemption is granted. Levinson said a beta blocker exemption had been granted.
When it comes to the recreational golfing community, no doctors said they had a patient who requested a beta blocker prescription to help with the frustrations and strain of playing golf. Singh, who said he was a golfer who had played in stressful weekend matches, was asked if he had ever been tempted to take a beta blocker for the benefits it might bring to his scorecard.
“No, but I would have benefited from a better golf game,” he said.
Beta Blockers May Calm Nerves, Keeping Them Banned by PGA and L.P.G.A.
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Beta Blockers May Calm Nerves, Keeping Them Banned by PGA and L.P.G.A.
