Controversial drug ruined my elite ambitions
Runner says treatment ruined her career
AFORMER elite athlete believes her thyroid medication was mishandled by current England football team doctor Rob Chakraverty and caused eating disorders, overtraining and stress fractures which ended her career at the top level.
Emma Jackson, fourth over 800m at the 2010 Commonwealth Games, has chosen to speak out after watching Monday night’s BBC Panorama, which featured a section on how banned coach Alberto Salazar encouraged athletes to use thyroid drug thyroxine seemingly as a legal performanceenhancing drug.
The documentary also featured Dr Chakraverty, who was doctor at UK Athletics from 2009-2016 before joining the FA, focusing on how he infused quadruple Olympic champion Mo Farah with controversial supplement L-Carnitine but failed to record the levels.
Jackson has raised fresh concerns after her elite career came to an end. She was given levels of thyroxine described by an independent endocrinologist as ‘suggestive of over replacement.’
Much of the controversy surrounding Salazar has been over inappropriate use of thyroxine with athletes who have only marginal need of the drug. Jackson is different in that she was born without a thyroid gland, which produces the natural thyroxine to regulate the physiological processes in the body, which allows people to exercise effectively.
Jackson therefore needed thyroxine replacement medicine to bring this level to normal, so there is no suggestion that Chakraverty gave her the drug without good reason.
The questions are over the levels at which he told Jackson to take thyroxine over a sustained period.
Chakraverty took over Jackson’s supervision of thyroxine use in 2011 at a time where her levels were variable, which had led her GP to prescribe 250mcg of thyroxine per day, which was intended to be for a short period.
When Chakraverty took over, he lowered the levels to 225mcg per day and later to 200mcg per day — but for two years. Jackson then continued the dosage for an additional year because no one told her to stop.
However, Dr Nicky Keay, a sports endocrinologist at Durham University, said: ‘This is a high dose for a slim, young person. The accompanying report of significant symptoms is potentially suggestive of over replacement.’
Over the next two years, Jackson’s health, mental state and training deteriorated to such an extent that Barry Fudge, now UKA Head of Endurance but then a sports scientist with the English Institute of Sport, asked her father if she had an eating disorder. Her body fat was 9.5 per cent and skin folds were 35mm in March 2013, causing one nutritionist to comment she was ‘the leanest female 800m runner he has ever encountered.’ She ran her personal best in early 2012 but failed to make the London Olympic team that year, after suffering a rib stress fracture and losing form.
During that period, Jackson says she was experiencing personality changes, becoming obsessive about food and training, constantly eating but always hungry.
‘I was just training all the time and I was always hungry. It wasn’t a nice feeling,’ she said. ‘I was obsessed with what I was eating.
‘Everyone thought the obsessiveness and personality change was down to missing out at the Olympics. But it was because of the high dose. And as soon as the dose was brought back down, my personality was visibly different.’
Despite the warning signs and seeing her fat test results, Chakraverty continued to email her to say that she should ‘stay on the same dose of thyroxine.’
After she ceased to be funded by UKA because of her injuries and poor performance in 2013, Jackson maintained the levels of thyroxine until October 2014, when they were independently assessed by another sports doctor.
‘He told me that my thyroxine levels were through the roof and told me to halve the dosage immediately, which tells you how serious it was,’ she said.
Jackson initially spoke out in 2015 about what she felt had been inappropriate care and, at that stage, UKA organised a meeting with her and Chakraverty to reassure her, at which she accepted that she had not been used as a guinea pig to test how effective thyroxine was.
But Jackson feels that she wasn’t taken seriously at the meeting. She said: ‘I am concerned how quickly I was dismissed in the meeting. They didn’t seem to care that I was not able to eat enough to fuel my training.’ After meeting with UKA, Jackson agreed to make a statement that she accepted their reassurances ‘that there was no attempt to boost my performance.’
Last month, Jackson was contacted by UKA, for the first time in five years, in the run up to the Panorama documentary, to remind her of the statement she had made in 2015. ‘That was the first contact I’ve had in years and, though it appeared friendly, it felt like a threat not to speak out,’ she said. Dr Chakraverty said: ‘I have had the privilege of working with many world-class athletes and I take pride in the care I provide, which is always in their best interests. I refute any suggestion that I have been encouraging medical screening or the use of medication for any reason other than protecting athletes’ health.’
UK Athletics said: ‘At all times, medical practitioners have acted in good faith and prioritised the health of athletes. We refute any suggestion that a UKA medical practitioner sought to gain a performance advantage by overmedicating an athlete on thyroxine.’