I never thought I would something in common with Manny Ramirez. I am a life long Yankees fan, and he hasn’t exactly been good to us. He is one of 

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 best pure hitters I have ever seen, but this isn’t about baseball.

It isn’t news anymore that Manny has been suspended for 50 games for violation of Major League Baseball’s doping rules. The policy in question does not share what drugs people are being suspended for, but it always comes out. The story right now is that he was busted for using testosterone and human chorionic gonadatropid (HCG).

A statement issued by Manny claimed that he was being treated by a doctor for a ’personal medical condition’ and the doctor gave him something that turned out to be banned.

Reports say that MLB decided to suspend him for the HCG, reportedly because he was going to challenge the testosterone finding, and the penalty is the same for one or two drugs.

The minute I heard HCG, I stopped thinking about this in baseball terms, and started thinking drugs. I have taken both drugs. A guy with HIV taking testosterone isn’t exactly unusual, but HCG I imagine isn’t that common.

I took HCG experimentally years ago when I had KS. My immune system was shot and nothing was really working. I had read somewhere that some people thought HCG might be a useful as a KS treatment, based on a couple of cases where women with KS went into remission when they got pregnant.

My doctor was willing to give it a try, with little to no guidance. We injected the stuff right in to my lesions. It didn’t really seem to work. Luckily Doxil and HAART did the trick.

Only Manny and his doc know for sure why he was using it- as is should be. Ockham’s Razor says Manny was using it to restart his body’s own production of testosterone, which can shut down when you take exogenous (not produced by the body) testosterone. HCG can kick start your body’s own production of testosterone.

It makes me wonder what MLB’s drug testing exception policy looks like. I know that exceptions are made for prescription amphetamines for treatment of ADHD.

In any case, I just never thought I would have something in common with Manny .