Performance Enhancing Drugs In Sports

Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports
Performance Enhancing Drugs or PED’s have been around in sports for a few millenniums. PED’s are substances that help you perform to the best of your abilities in sports. These substances are always under scrutiny because of how they affect the human body and how they affect sports. PED’s have also been linked to deaths in some sports. In the past twenty years leagues and organizations have begun testing athletes for the use of PED’s. Considering that professional sports in America play a major part in society, it is important to know about PED’s and how they have impacted society today.
There are several types of PED’s and sometimes it is mistaken about what an actual PED is. PED’s are substances or

drugs such as HGH (Human Growth Hormone), testosterone injections, and anabolic steroids there, are many other types of PED’s (Exploring Topics In). Anabolic Steroids are synthetic hormones (Drug Use In). Steroids or PED’s are chemically manufactured and they can be taken orally or injected. Steroids and related hormones (such as testosterone) are used to increase muscle mass and strength by promoting testosterone. PED’s help the body’s muscle cells produce more protein, leading to increased muscle size and strength gains. Blood doping, another type of PED, is the practice of misusing certain techniques and substances to increase cell mass in the body. Since red blood cells carry oxygen to the muscles, this allows the body to transport more oxygen to working muscles and therefore increase their aerobic capacity and endurance.
There is an extensive history of PED’s in sports. The use of drugs to exchange performance has certainly occurred since the original Olympic games from 776 to 393 BC (Drug Use In). The origin of the word doping is attributed to the Dutch word doop, which is a vicious opium juice, the drug choice of Ancient Greeks. From 1940 to 1945 the Nazi party tested steroids on prisoners and Party Leader, Adolf Hitler. Hitler showed side effects of heavy steroid use. In 1954 a Soviet Union weightlifting team doctor reveals to Dr. John Ziegler that he used testosterone injection on his weightlifters (PED Use In). Dr. Ziegler begins research on a substance that will provide injections without the negative side effects. In 1958 Ciba Pharmaceuticals releases John Ziegler’s anabolic steroid under the name Dianabol. The International Olympic Committee banned anabolic steroids in 1975. The International Olympic Committee forms the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
PED’S have been shown to help your performance, but they can be very harmful to your health.

The first athlete to die in Olympic Competition due to doping was a s Danish cyclist, Knut Jersen, who died on Aug 26, 1960 at the Summer Olympics in Rome during the 100km team final race (Drug Use In). For males the use of anabolic agents (Steroids) causes impotence, shrinking in the testicles, and reduction in sperm production (Effects of PED’s). Steroids also cause these side effects in males, increased aggressiveness and sexual appetite, sometimes resulting in abnormal sexual and criminal behavior, often referred to as “Roid Rage”. In females steroids can deepen the voice, cause the growth of facial hair, and can also cause menstrual cycles. Withdrawal from anabolic steroids can be associated with depression, and in some cases, suicide. Growth factors such as HGH can cause strokes, heart attacks, and pulmonary embolism (EPO). HGH can cause severe headaches, loss of vision, and heart failures. Blood doping can cause stress on heart, blood clotting, and stroke. Premature closure of the growth centers of long bones (In adolescents), which may result in, stunted growth. Steroids can also aid in recovery from workouts by reducing and help heal the damage to muscles that occur during workout sessions (Exploring Topics in). This enables athletes to workout harder and more often while minimizing the risk of overtraining. In 1992 at the age of 43 Lyle Alzado died of brain cancer his

death was suspected to be caused by the use of PED’s over a 20-year period including HGH (PED Use In). In 2004 documents that were revealed from lawsuits and the East German police indicated between five hundred and two thousand athletes who participated in a blood doping program heart disease, tumors, cancers and other serious medical conditions.
PED’s have not only affected athletes but they have also affected sports for many centuries. More than forty Chinese swimmers failed drug test between 1990 and 2000, that is triple the amount of any other nation’s swim team in that time span (Drug Use In). The MLB (Major League Baseball) has suspended forty-seven players for using banned substances since 2005 (Exploring Topics In). On May 28, 2002 Ken Caminitti told Sports Illustrated that he used steroids during his 1996 NL MVP season with the San Diego Padres. In his interview with Sports Illustrated he estimated that half of the players in the MLB used some form of a PED. His statements pressured the MLB to include PED testing in the collective bargaining agreement in the summer of 2002. Ken Caminitti later passed away from a heat attack at the age of forty-one on October 10, 2004. The New York medical examiner ruled that drugs had a factor in Caminitti’s death. The number of NFL players that weigh more than three hundred pounds has increased from ten players in 1986 to more than three hundred in 2004. A WWE professional wrestler committed a murder/suicide after injecting steroids and taking other drugs orally. WWE Wrestler Chris Benoit killed his wife and his seven year-old son before committing suicide in their family residence in Fayetteville, Georgia June 25, 2007. Chris Benoit had ten times the normal level of testosterone and an anabolic steroid, in his system at the time, as well as prescription drugs, Xanax and hydrocodone. Mark McGwire admitted to taking PED’s in 2010, he said he took them back in the 1998 season in which he broke the record for the most home runs in a season which was held by Roger Marris.
Major sports leagues have started to crack down on the use of PED’S by testing athletes vigorously (PED Use In).

Testing for PED’s was first conducted at the summer Olympics’ in Montreal in 1976. The NBA (National Basketball Association) began testing for the use of PED’s in 1983. In 2005 the NHL (National Hockey League) first implemented a drug-testing policy for PED’s (Exploring Topics in). In the NFL every player in the league is tested at least once a year. There are ten players per team that get tested every week, this continues into the postseason. Players are randomly selected and some players may have to take more tests than other players. Every player in the National Basketball Association is forced to take four random tests throughout the season and the league conducts reasonable-cause testing. Since the MLB is arguably the sport with the most accused PED users, the players are only subject to one test within five days of reporting to spring training and one other random test. The players have to take one random test and that test can occur in the season or in the off-season. The MLB tests players in the off-season that way athletes can’t use PED’s in the off-season and then have it washed out of their system by the time the season comes around. In 2014 the NFL started blood-testing athletes for HGH in 2014. The NBA followed that notion by starting to blood test athletes for HGH beginning in the 2015-2016

season.
The use of PED’s can be very detrimental towards an athlete’s career. The first horse was disqualified from the Kentucky Derby on May 4,1968 for a banned substance (Drug Use In). In 1988 Canadian Olympic Sprinter was stripped of his gold medal when he tested positive for using PED’s. On October 22, 2004 President Bush signed the Anabolic Steroid Control Act. The bill added hundreds of steroid-based drugs to the list of anabolic steroids that are classified as a schedule III controlled substance. MLB strengthened it’s drug penalties in 2005 a player’s first violation is a 50 game suspension without pay. The second violation is a one hundred game suspension without pay and the third violation is a lifetime ban from the game of baseball. In 2012 shot putter Naszeya Ostapchuk was stripped of her gold medal after testing positive for anabolic steroids. If an one athlete on an Olympic team is found guilty of taking PED’s, the entire team can be disqualified or stripped of they’re medals. Caffeine exceeding the amount found in about eight cups of coffee was banned by the (WADA) in the 1980’s but in 2004 WAPA removed it. In the National Football League, the first violation of their substance abuse results in a four game suspension. In 1998 an Irish swimmer suspended for pouring whiskey into a urine sample to mask doping.
PED’s have changed sports and the way athlete’s have performed for a very long time. There are many different substances and drugs that are considered PED’s. PED’s affect athlete’s bodies positively and negatively. Sports play a huge role in entertainment in America and it is important to know what role that PED’s have played in that.