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Effects of steroid use and abuse on the body
Effects of steroid use and abuse on the body
Effects of steroid use and abuse on the body
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It is amazing what athletes will do to achieve higher levels of performance and to sometimes get the extra edge on the competition. Most of the time people do not realize the long-term effects that result from the decisions they make early in life. This resembles the use of steroids in a person’s life. Steroids became an option to athletes in the Olympics and other major sporting events during the 1950’s. But this use of steroids among athletes only became widely apparent when Canadian sprint runner Ben Johnson tested positive for steroid use after winning the gold medal for the one hundred-meter dash during the 1988 Olympics (Francis, 45). Now a skinny fifteen-year-old can just walk down to the local gym and find people who either sell or know how to get in contact with those who sell the drug that will make him envious of his friends. Steroids are an attractive drug. While steroids seem harmless to the unaware user, they can have a risky effect. Most of the time whether the users are new or experienced, they do not know the dangerous consequences steroids can have on their bodies and their minds. Though steroids cause a relatively insignificant number of deaths in our society, the banning of steroids is justified because steroids have a lot of side effects not known to the uninformed user. Even though steroids are known as a somewhat dangerous substance, they are legal to have and to consume. There has not been a study that proves such possible side effects are linked to medical problems of steroid users (Rogak, 89). There are those who have pointed out several cases where someone has died and an autopsy has shown that the person was using steroids, but they claim this does not mean that it is a deadly drug as some medical professionals have stated (97). Some advocates of steroids believe that because steroids are legal, and because it is the decision of the user to take the drug, steroids are not causing a problem in society. Alcohol and cigarettes are consumed by millions of people, causing a lot of deteriorating effects on their bodies, but there has never been a ban on these items because of the dangers that they can cause. Why should steroids be different? Some people say that the wide spread use of steroids among athletes is forcing the young athletes to use steroids, even though it is against their standards.
Anabolic steroids have become an epidemic amongst athletes since the 1950's when a Swiss company by the name of Ciba Pharmaceuticals introduced what was to become the most popular anabolic drug for athletes called methandrostenolone. “By this time, the era of the steroid athlete was well underway and world records were being shattered and re-shattered with remarkable regularity.” (Oklobdzija & Weyrauch, 1989, para 3) From then on, there have been many cases throughout professional sports where athletes are reported or caught using anabolic steroids.
Professional athletes, throughout history, have been exalted for their outstanding abilities and achievements in sports. Unfortunately, many athletes have turned to anabolic steroids in order to give them an edge, a boost their athletic performance. Starting with the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships, where the Soviets unexpectedly dominated their lifting classes with the use of steroids, it has become increasingly popular among athletes to cheat with the help of this drug. Although the appeal to steroid use is evident when observing how it increases someone’s athletic abilities, many users fail to consider the detrimental side effects of the drug. Also, in my opinion, athletes should be expected to perform based upon their natural abilities, opposed to abilities enhanced by anabolic steroids. Ultimately, anabolic steroids should continue to be illegal in professional sports due to their major health risks and the unfair advantage they serve players.
Every year high school, college, and professional athletes try to get just ?a little bigger,??a little stronger,? and to increase the amount of weights they lift by, ?just a few pounds.? To achieve these goals athletes often turn to anabolic steroids to aid them in achieving their goals. Anabolic steroids are a quick, but dangerous way to increase muscle mass, and they can carry many risks including some life threatening side affects. Years after taking steroids athletes can live to have serious heart problems, sterility, or possibly not even live, all because of foolish decisions they made in the past. These potentially fatal drugs are not widely known by young athletes at all, because they don?t know about the risks that can go along with them. In school, every student is taught about marijuana, cocaine,heroin, sex, liquor, and all those other health risks, but they?re never taught about ?roids? or ?juice.? (slang words for steroids) That should be changed, because it is known that student athletes often use steroids, not knowing the risks. Many times they take the risk because they hear about professional athletes taking steroids. But, despite their widespread use in sports, steroids can have more negative than positive effects on athletes of all types. Steroids are chemical substances that can be made naturally by the body or produced synthetically. There are many different types of steroids that are used for different things other than just athletes enhancing muscles. For example, there are types of steroids that can be used by women as birth control pills, and other types that are used for menopause treatment. The abuse of steroids is almost always found to be in the case of athletes, and that is the focus of this paper. ?All anabolic steroids are synthetic compounds whose molecular structure is similar to that of the natural male sex hormone testosterone. Testosterone affects development of the male body in two important ways: it has an anabolic effect - increases growth, especially of muscular and skeletal tissue - And an androgenic effect - increased development of male sexual characteristics. Anabolic steroids are constructed stythetically in such a way that they maximize the anabolic effect of testosterone while minimizing the androgenic effect.? The way that steroids work can easily be interpreted by a foo...
Steroids are ruining sports in the United States, and they are also going to ruin future athletes if the United States does not put a stop to it. Many young athletes in the United States are taking performance enhancing drugs because they see that professional athletes are doing it and getting results. These teenagers are using steroids because they want to look muscular and fit, but they are not aware of the negative effects steroids have on their bodies. Young athletes do not know that they are not only risking their careers but also their bodies. Steroids may make a person look muscular and fit, but at the same time, it is ruining their heart. Steroids also cause people to act differently and do foolish things like using other drugs. Parents can prevent steroid use by teaching their children about it at a young age and staying involved in their children’s sport lives. Steroids have ruined professional careers. They ruined Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds’ careers and almost ruined Alex Rodriguez’s career. Professional athletes use steroids to improve their performance which is cheating. The game is not fair if someone is performing better by using drugs, and everybody should be performing with what they got. There are many different ways to achieve what they want in fair and healthier way. Many high school athletes are using steroids in the United States. They are not doing it under a doctor’s supervision; therefore, they are ruining their bodies without them knowing. Many of these athletes are looking at the outcome only and not what there are doing to their bodies in addition to getting stronger, muscular, and fit. All governing sport bodies in the United States need to take steroid testing seriously and give at...
...gal, both in society and in sports.”(Monroe100) She argues that the legalization will actually benefit costs and their usage. “Also, making steroids legal would end the law-enforcement costs and efforts associated with steroid use.”(Monroe100) This may seem like the right solution but would it really help? Making it legal would only increase its usage and may encourage more people to abuse them. Those who oppose to this idea believe that it will increase the chances of violence and temper loss. “Do you think that steroids should be legalized? I don’t because you can die from them and you might lose your temper easily and could be dangerous.” This is a reasonable approach. With all the muscle that steroids can produce in the human body, it would be dangerous to have millions of people going around the world beating up each other for any problem that they might have.
In our days, most people have set the goal and dream to have the perfect body. They believe by having this image, they will be popular and/or attractive. People want to achieve the body that they desire, like a super star, a hero in a Hollywood movie, a strong soldier, and an Olympic athlete. However, what are the extent people will go to get the perfect body? The biggest problem for those who dream to have a beautiful body today, as many people know, is the consumption of steroids. It is amazing what people and athletes will do to enhance their performance, strength and muscle size by taking steroids. Whether right or wrong people who use steroids to become the fastest and strongest will prevail, so who would turn down a substance that could turn them into a super athlete and a muscle man? The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader on the popular anabolic steroids that most people use and the positive and negative side effects of steroid use on its users and finally my personal point of view.
The use of steroids in our society today is very common, that is with prescription. But that is not the kind of steroids I am talking about, I am talking about Anabolic Steroids. Anabolic steroids are a very sensitive issue in the world of sports today. Even though the side effects are life threatening, men and woman alike continue to submit their bodies to this illegal drug. Anabolic steroids are taken either through pills or injected directly into the blood stream with a needle. In 1994, 1,084,000 Americans, or 0.5 percent of the adult population, said that they had use anabolic steroids, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Household Survey on Drug Abuse. Under Federal Law it is illegal to possess or distribute anabolic steroids for nonmedical uses. However, heavy demand has generated a black market with estimated sales of up to $400 million a year, according to a NIDA Research Report, Anabolic Steroids: A Threat to Body and Mind (NIDA July/August1997).
You’ve all seen them, the enormously large muscle-heads at the gym, the participates of the World’s Strongest Man Competition, the amazing offensive tackles, and the lightning fast runners. They were all unnaturally strong, and looked like gods. You tend to obsess over how beautiful their bodies are, how strong they are, or how fast they can run. All you can think about is reaching that level of athletic excellence, and nothing will hold you back. At times like these some people tend to take the quick fit to get closer to their idols, in the form of steroids. But what individuals tend not see is the horrible side effects that accompany the use of these anabolic steroids. These powerful drugs have both positive and negative results from their use. Along with increased strength and size, users of steroids suffer from a wide range of sicknesses such as cancer, shrinkage of testicles, bad acne, hair loss, damage organs, intense mood swings, and impotence.
Abstract: Since the beginning of sports competition, athletes have always looked for some kind of edge over their competitors. They will do whatever it takes to be one of the elite, and that includes injecting supplements into their bodies to make them bigger, stronger, and faster. Steroid use is probably one of the most common drug misuses in sports competition. Athletes found that with anabolic steroids, one could become a better athlete twice as fast. Not until 1975 was the drug first banned from Olympic competition because of the health risks it produced.
Steroid is a name given to drugs that are manufactured from testosterone, a reproductive hormone found in men. Some athletes normally use anabolic steroids because these drugs improve one’s capacity to compete and train, yielding high results. Steroids work by reducing exhaustion during training, and also reduce the length of time an athlete needs to recover from exhaustion. In addition, steroids enable the growth of tissues and muscles in an athlete’s body by instructing the body to produce extra proteins. During the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, the first rumors of athletes using steroids emerged. The problem of athletes using steroids was again reported in 1954 during weight lifting championships. The Soviet athletes recorded a very impressive performance at all levels of weight lifting. Later on, the team’s physician admitted that the Soviet athletes were being injected with testosterone in order to increase their muscle mass and strength after being questioned about how they achieved their success. WHO (World Health Organization) in 1968 was the first party to complain about incidents of athletes using steroids, these sentiments were later backed by IOC (International Olympic Committee). This paper is going to give reasons why professional athletes should not be allowed to use steroids (Yesalis 25).
The intent of this essay is to show that steroids have many negative effects and that steroids, and other natural supplements, should be closely studied by the FDA. This essay will also support the claim that the professional sports industry needs to eliminate steroid use and set a good example for younger athletes.
My issue over the concern of athletes have been struggling with the usage of steroids has widely spread among athletes and others; not only do steroids give an athlete a hard times but it’s also an unfair advantage to the other athletes and what they’ve accomplish. “Besides making muscles bigger, anabolic steroids may help athletes recover from a hard workout more quickly by reducing the amount of muscle damage during the session” (“Steroids in Sports”,2005). Now a days steroids are everywhere as an athlete. Many males and female young athletes preferably take it because they want to look and feel good when it comes to impressing someone and trying to become someone they look forward too. Young teens and adults try to cheat themselves in the career of their dreams. When it comes to a sport, teen athletes are not aware of what type of consequences may happen to them at the time. It may come to the time where it’s too late to take care of. In other cases, some athletes may like feeling the aggressive they get when they take drugs such as steroids. Athletes shouldn’t take steroids as the harmful health effects of the anabolic steroid in population wise. Many people have had their lives ruined by the use of illegal steroids and yet the desired effects are overwhelming that people tend to forget about the results and consequences that may effect. Athletes on steroids believe taking steroids will enhance their performance, strength, and size without having to put necessary work. These benefits, however, are associated with much short-term and long term risk.
Athletes are always searching for ways to enhance their performance. Recently, beginning in the 1950s, that search has included the use of illegal substances like steroids and growth hormones. Illegal substances have been used widely by athletes in hopes of achieving the desired Olympic gold medal or multi-million dollar contract. Some nations, for example the late East Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, have mandated the use of steroids by their athletes. The downside of using those illegal substances is that because they are illegal, getting caught using them can lead to losing that coveted gold medal, a lifetime ban from sports, and a total loss of honor and dignity.
If one were to turn on the television and watch the news, you would hear a lot of news stories, but you won’t commonly hear about a rising incline in steroids in today’s society. Today, many people, even children, are using steroids to gain a strength advantage over their peers. So why are people using steroids? Steroids are being used more commonly today in normal people's lives. They are also being used so athletes can become stronger, but they have many consequences that follow the advantages.
Many athletes are pressured into using PEDs by coaches or managers and are not thoroughly educated about the harmful health issues that can come along with taking performance-enhancing drugs. A rising issue is whether performance-enhancing drugs should be allowed in professional sports. I believe that in any professional sport, the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes should continue to be banned because this rule will help to keep athletes from abusing these harmful drugs. Steroids can seem harmless to the uninformed user, but they actually have harmful side effects. According to the article “News examines relationship between steroids and heart-related deaths,” published by New York Daily News, “The study (presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions in Chicago on Nov. 12, 2006) shows that deaths jumped from 476 from in 1980-1992 to 987 from in 1993-2005.