Steroids And Their Affects On The Human Body Essay, Research Paper

Steroids and Their Affects On The Human Body

Drugs have been used in sports almost as long as sports themselves have

been around. The ancient Incas discovered that the ashes from burned leaves of

the Coca tree gave the people great stores of energy, and made sleep unnecessary

for hours or even days, it was later discovered to be the stimulant cocaine.

They would take it before long hunts, battles, and even found it useful in

ancient sport competitions. It wasn’t until 1886 that the first drug-related

death in sports occurred. A bicyclist took a mixture of cocaine and heroine,

called the “speedball,” and died from it. Little were the doctors aware the

epidemic that would follow in the next century.

Anabolic steroids, developed in the 1930’s in Europe, are drugs that

help to build new body tissue quickly, but with drastic side effects. Anabolic

means the ability to promote body growth and repair body tissue. It comes from

the Greek word anabolikos meaning “constructive.” Steroids are basically made

up of hormones.

Picture: One woman training to make the 1984 US women’s basketball team

used them, her muscles started to bulge, her voice grew deeper, and she even had

the beginnings of a mustache. These are all the usual symptoms of anabolic

steroids.

Steroids were not always used for sports, they started out the same way

most drugs did, medicinal purposes. Victims of starvation and severe injury

profited from it’s ability to build new tissue quickly. They also helped

prevent muscle tissue from withering in patients who had just had surgery.

Steroids are used to treat Addison’s disease.

Anabolic steroids are drugs that come from hormones or from combinations

of chemicals that achieve the same result as hormones. Hormones may be given to

an individual in their natural state, or in a synthetic one. The synthetic

state is sometimes more potent than the natural one. Testosterone and

progesterone are hormones used in steroids, another kind comes from the adrenal

glands, which secrete various necessary bodily chemicals. The steroids

themselves can be taken orally, as tablets or powders, and can also be liquids

that are injected into the muscles.

The steroids taken by athletes contain testosterone or chemicals that

act in similar way to testosterone. Testosterone is found in men and women, but

in women it is present in much smaller amounts, mainly because it is produced in

the testicles in men. More than one hundred and twenty steroids are based on

the hormone testosterone. There are many brand names, such as Durabolin,

Winstrol, Pregnyl, and Anavar.

Basically anabolic steroids control the bodily functions that are

normally under control of the bodies natural testosterone. As well as turning

women into men and men into manly men it has a stimulative effect on skeletal

muscle mass, some visceral organs, the hemoglobin concentration, and the red

blood cell number and mass.

Of course, most people take anabolic steroids illegally to stimulate

growth in muscle cells. Once a person is born, he/she will not grow anymore

muscle cells throughout their life. So when muscle mass increases it is the

individual cells growing in girth to compensate for either an increase in work,

or the release of androgen hormones(found in all anabolic steroids.) Exercise

alone can stimulate the girth of muscle cells to increase by anywhere from

thirty to sixty percent. The presence of androgen hormones allows for even

greater growth. Anabolic steroids act like our natural androgen hormones in

that they stimulate anabolic metabolism in the muscles. Anabolic metabolism

involves the buildup of larger molecules from smaller ones and includes all the

constructive processes used to manufacture the substances needed for cellular

growth and repair. As a result of steroids stimulating anabolic metabolism,

muscles increase in size to a substantially greater size than they would have

been if the individual only exercised.

Doctors take different views on prescribing steroids. Most dislike the

use of them in sports, and some will not prescribe them at all for use in sports.

They see them as dangerous for healthy individuals, and the taking of drugs to

get a winning edge they see as cheating. Others don’t like steroids, but will

prescribe them, knowing their patient, if not given them by their doctor, will

get them from somewhere else. This way they can regulate them, tell the patient

the correct way to use them, and keep an eye on them. Still others doctors

consider steroids safe when administered under medical supervision, which

includes carefully regulating dosages and watching for the first signs of

trouble.

A fourth view doctors take is recognizing the possibility that although

sometimes steroids do serious harm, the same can be said of minor drugs, such as

aspirin. Millions of people take aspirin daily, because the benefits greatly

outweigh the risks, and suffer no harm as a consequence, and the doctors feel

the same is true about steroids. When under medical supervision, doctors feel

their patients are safe because of their good physical condition and the drugs

can be stopped if trouble begins to show. They feel that with steroids, much

like with aspirin, the benefits greatly outweigh the risks.

None *of these views can be proven correct or incorrect, but one thing

is certain. Steroids used without medical supervision do the greatest harm.

The athletes generally do not know how much to take and take doses too large

right from the start.

Many doctors believe that steroids can lead to heart attacks and even

strokes. Steroids cause extreme bloating because they create an imbalance of

chemicals in the body and to regain that balance the body holds water. This

extra fluid raises the blood pressure and could cause strokes and heart-attacks.

Steroids are also suspected of bringing on liver and kidney failure. The

steroids seem just as capable of destroying tissues as creating it.

Women are seen as being especially endangered by steroids because of the

increased amounts of testosterone. Testosterone steroids are androgenic drugs,

which means they promote masculinity, as seen in the young basketball player

mentioned above. Although women produce small amounts naturally, it is a male

hormone. The testosterone present is kept in balance with estrogen, the female

hormone. Like testosterone for males, estrogen gives females their feminine

characteristics. The woman may bald, grow excess bodily hair, including a

moustache, they lose the gentle curves of their body, their skin roughens,

weight is gained, and the voice deepens. An unborn child is also endangered,

female’s unborn babies will develop such male traits as extra hair, and all

unborn children, according to a few doctors, are subject to be handicapped and

deformed.

Men also are endangered. They may experience a shrinking of the

testicles, called atrophy, accompanied by a lowered sperm count, a lessening of

sexual desire, infertility, and an enlargement of the prostate gland that men

under fifty usually do not suffer from. Men will often develop breasts like

those of a woman.

Steroids are dangerous when used incorrectly, and should be used only

under medical supervision. It has undesired side effects for men, women, and

even the unborn. When abused steroids are no longer anabolic, they stop

building the bodies tissue and start tearing it down as anything will when used

in excess.

35f