[stephen999]

Pantani was in an age where drug testing was not very good so they pushed the limit of hematocrit level to improve performance. Now the tests are much better and so the level of drugs and thus side affects seems to be lower.

You don’t hear of cyclists dying in their sleep really of coagulated blood from EPO.

There are some legal pain killers like tramadol and excessive caffeine that you might not do if you are optimizing for health but not sure how detrimental that is long term.