I thought Armstrong was adding red blood cells?
Well that’s the same effect. It raises your hematocrit. The red blood cells are what delivers oxygen to the organs. Athletes will cheat by training in high altitudes and gaining more red blood cells and then extract it and freeze it for a performance later. At the Tour de France Lance used EPO the hormone that tells the bone marrow to produce more red blood cells and they couldn’t figure it out because they were testing for testosterone. By injecting synthetic EPO, he was bypassing the testosterone precursor. They would have never figured it out until he confessed. Or at least that’s what I heard.