Find a
Nutritionist,
Dietician & more

Find an Acupuncturist,
Chiropractor,
and more...

Advertisement

Fitness Current Topics in Fitness

The Shortcut You Shouldn't Take: Steroids and Growth Hormones

While the steroid crisis in professional sports blares from the media, the impact of these doping role models is hitting close to home. There is evidence that kids are using these chemical substances to get a performance edge—even for Little League—and that adults are using them just to shave some seconds off their treadmill time. What do you need to know? Dr. Jeffrey I. Mechanick, associate clinical professor at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, outlines the different types of performance-enhancing drugs that exist today and the impact of these drugs on the body.

What are performance-enhancing drugs?
Performance-enhancing drugs are substances that are used to increase certain physiologic functions. They affect things like muscle strength, endurance, the ability to pump blood, the ability to breathe, liver function and kidney function. These substances have an impact on athletic performance and physical performance as they may help somebody do better in competition.

What types of performance-enhancing drugs are there?
There are no true conventional categories of performance-enhancing drugs, but if you had to think about what they are, there would be dietary supplements and drugs that require a prescription, which include steroids. Then there would be peptides, or protein-like chemicals, like growth hormone.

There are other substances that don't really fit into a category that may or may not require a prescription. They are designer compounds because they have been manipulated so that they're not easily detected.

Who uses performance-enhancing drugs?
Performance-enhancing drugs are used by athletes: competitive athletes, recreational athletes, casual athletes and people who just exercise and want to do well, even if it's just running on the treadmill in the gym. There are also those who want to lose weight or burn off fat and increase their muscle mass for cosmetic reasons. They might be children, teenagers or young adults. It could also be the elderly.

How many people use these drugs?
The statistics for usage are derived from surveys, casual questionnaires and retrospective studies of data. There hasn't been a properly designed scientific study yet, so the answer is that experts have no idea what the magnitude of this problem is.

What are anabolic steroids and how do they work?
Steroids are a class of compounds made by the adrenal gland, as well as reproductive organs in the body. Examples of steroids include testosterone, a male hormone, and estrogen, a female hormone.

Page 1 of 3 Next Page >>