Steroids

Anabolic Steroids

Lets say there is a young man that goes by the name of John. John goes to the gym and works out daily. He does this for about six months. John is eating correctly, taking the right amount of carbohydrates, and even taking protein and other legal supplements like creatine. John is just not satisfied with his results. John has some body builders that he knows that work out at the same gym as he does. He approaches one of them and asks them how can he improve his physical appearance and be more muscular. The body builder gives John the idea of taking steroids. Should John even consider taking steroids or should he not? If you would trace steroids way back in history, you would find that that there was prevalence of its use among professional athletes in ancient Greece. Even The German government under Hitler developed and used them, allegedly in an attempt to create an army of supermen. But as history unfolds, a German scientist by the name of Dr. Ziegler discovered the drug accidently in a modern pharmaceutical form. However there was no interest to research the drug. Two decades later, the first scientific attention to anabolic steroids came upon in 1950 when Methandrostenolone or Dianabol was approved by the Federal Drug Association for the use in 1958 after trials in other countries like Europe. Through the periodic trails and use of anabolic steroids throughout the sixties and eighties, there were doubts to if steroids had any positive or negative effects. In 1972 a study was done where there was no difference between people who received anabolic steroid injections and those who were given placebo. In 1996, the National Institute of Heal (NIH) decided to examine the effects of injecting testosterone enanthate in high doses at the rate of 600 milligrams per week for ten weeks. The results gave a clear indication that muscle mass increased and fat decreased among those who took placebo injections. The U.S. Congress approved the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990, which put anabolic steroids on the schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act, making them an illegal substance without a prescription (Anabolic Steroid Guide, 2000). Because anabolic steroids are illegal, a person should not take steroids to improve athletic ability or physical appearance.

For someone who never knew was steroids are and considered taking them, “Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are man-made substances related to male sex hormones. “Anabolic” refers to muscle-building, and “androgenic” refers to increased masculine characteristics. “Steroids” refers to the class of drugs” (Pope, 2007). In today’s world, athletes and other abusers use AAS use to enhance performance and improve physical appearance. They can be taken orally through the form of pills, or can be injected using a syringe. When using steroids, people typically take steroids in cycles of weeks or months called cycling. Instead of taking steroids continuously, people us a method called cycling, which means taking multiple doses over a specific period of time, usually four to six weeks, then stopping for a period of four to twelve weeks the starting again. This method is the preferred method because it maximizes the effectiveness while minimizing negative effect (Pope, 2007). When AAS was added to Schedule III, the Drug Enforcement administration controls the manufacture, importation, exportation, distribution, and dispending of the drug. In spite of the strict control there are many people in this world that use steroids today. Nearly three percent of young Americans adults have taken AAS at least once in their lives. Also, Surveys indicate that fifteen to thirty percent of weight trainers attending community gyms and health clubs use AAS, and two thirds of AAS users are non competitive recreational bodybuilders or non-athletes who use these drugs for cosmetics purposes rather then athletic ability, and an Estimated four million American men take physician-prescribed testosterone replacement therapy, or legal steroids (Evans, 2004). So out of all these people in the world that take steroids, they believe that steroids are actually making them look better and getting stronger. When a person takes a drug, whether it is for a headache or steroids, there are two effects on the body. The Therapeutic effects are those that solve the problem at hand. For example, a person takes Advil for a headache and the headache goes away. The second effect is the non-therapeutic effect, also called side effects. Our body is ready to accepts drugs is because of what we have called receptors. Cell receptors are like outlets that turn on or off an action of the body. When you take a drug, it fills the relevant drug receptor and tells the cells which activity to turn on or off. The drugs to make the change to our body itself, it tells the cells what to do to change biological functions. When steroids enter the body, they are absorbed through the blood system. If orally, they pass through the liver where it is absorbed into the blood stream, and if intravenously, they are injected straight to the blood stream. The steroids are then spread throughout the body and filling the cell receptors that tell the cells to make new proteins. The body normally creates new proteins itself, but the steroids just tell the cells to make proteins at a faster rate (Melfa, 2004).

Even though there are many different websites and information on steroids that say that steroids are appalling, many still will argue that taking steroids have positive effects on a person. The first reason one might say would be that you can get stronger. The problem with that is that a person on steroids is only stronger when there on AAS. For example, a teen athlete is 6’1вЂ™Ð²Ð‚™ and 190 pounds with a bench press max of 250 pounds. This teen decides that he wants to take AAS orally. In about four weeks, he has gained 25 pounds and his bench increased to 290. This guy clearly knows that steroids work. Knowing and hearing about the dangers of taking steroids, he only takes one cycle. By the six week of his workout, the same teen lost 10 of those 25 pounds and his bench now dropped to 275. His work out is all screwed up because he cannot lift the amount of weight listed by his workout plan. Another argument on might bring up is that there are steroids not only to make you stronger, but to make a person faster. In September at the Olympics games in Seoul, Ben Johnson, a 100 meter runner who raced a record-breaking 9.79 seconds. “He shot past his competitors like an explosion and took the victory with ease. But 72 hours later, Olympic officials announced that the performance was drug-fueled.

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