Steroids
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. 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 stimulate 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.
