Smelling salts use popular among hockey players

Well, who knew? Apparently a lot of professional hockey players regularly take a hit of good old-fashioned smelling salts before a game, to get them well and truly woken up and ready to go.

Smelling salts are basically ammonia, with a few other minor added ingredients, and are traditionally most often applied to someone who has fainted or been knocked out, in order to bring them round. I remember having some in our medicine cabinet when I was a kid. The sharp head-snapping feeling has, however, been used as a quick "adrenaline hit" among the already-awake as far back as Roman times. Nowadays, you can buy handy single-dose snap-to-open capsules from Amazon for $5.99.

The practice is apparently particularly popular among some of the younger NHL players, and some may take a dose before the start of each period. Even some hoary old team coaches take it before a game. And, according to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), it is both safe and non-performance-enhancing, and it does not appear on the List of Prohibired Substances and Methods for the purposes of international sports competitions.

But there's the rub: it does not enhance performance in any way, so all those hockey players are just kidding themselves that it is helping their game in some way. Still, given that it is medically harmless (or at least not yet proven medically harmful - personally, I would be very surprised if repeated use did not have some kind of deleterious effect on the body, or at least on the nose), I say: knock yourself out!