Anabolic Steroids - What Are They?
When talking supplements there are two types. The good and the not so good. Although my usual posts talk about good nutrition and and a healthy lifestyle for the sports enthusiast and the idea of supplements is dedicated to better health and improving your game, there is another type of supplement available that can improve your game, but can also kill you.
The type of supplements that I am referring to are called steroids and more specially anabolic - androgenic steroids. “Anabolic” refers to muscle-building, and “androgenic” refers to increasing masculine characteristics, but they are simply called anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids are a synthetic reproduction of steroids produced naturally in the human body including testosterone and estrogen which are good for you and promote normal growth and body characteristics.
Performance enhancing substances have been used for thousands of years, but steroids were originally developed in the 1930’s to treat a condition where where the body does not achieve normal growth. They are now used therapeutically in medicine to stimulate bone growth and appetite, induce male puberty, and treat conditions, such as cancer and AIDS. Through a combination of factors, anabolic steroids stimulate the formation of muscles thus causing an increase in the size of muscle fibers which leads to increased muscle mass and strength. It’s this muscle mass and strength that makes anabolic steroids so attractive to athletes.
It is difficult to determine what percent of the population has actually tried anabolic steroids, but the number seems to be fairly insignificant. However, anabolic steroids have come into the news a lot lately because they are being used by professional athletes as well as young kids to promote muscle growth for sports competition. As we all know in today’s society the professional athlete is chasing huge amounts of money. It’s this money that has caused the rise in popularity of anabolic steroids. The problem becomes even greater when you stop to realize that it’s these athletes that serve as role models for today’s kids. One study showed that 40% of twelfth graders surveyed in 2006 reported that steroids were fairly easy to obtain.
In Canada and Europe, steroids are purchased just like any other illegal drug, through dealers who are able to obtain the drugs from illegal sources. In addition to smuggling, counterfeit drugs have emerged rapidly in recent years. Anabolic steroids can cause many adverse effects. One example is that acne is fairly common among anabolic steroid users, due to stimulation of the sebaceous glands by increased testosterone levels. Cancer, heart attacks and high cholesterol have all been linked to steroid use. Many of the effects of steroids can be reversible if the user stops taking the drug, but some are permanent.
The future of steroids is unclear, but the important thing is that we continue to understand their effects. With all the negative exposure that anabolic steroids have received, the message is beginning to get out, that anabolic steroids are illegal, cheating and most of all deadly.
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Exercise, Nutrition, Sports Nutrition, Vitamins |
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February 6th, 2008 at 3:42 am
Very good article. Alot of informative information. Good to know.