The Facts About Steroid Use and Potential Consequences

By Phil Sims

Many have no doubt heard of steroids and their potential effects on the body (good and bad). Over the last several months I’ve done quite a bit research on the subject of steroids and wanted to bring this information to those who may want to know more about it but didn’t know where to look. To begin with, there are many popular steroid products on the market. Steroids come in two major forms, oral and injectable.

Some of the most popular are:

*Oral steroids*:
*Anadrol (oxymetholone)*
*Oxandrin (oxandrolone)*
*Dianabol (methandrostenolone)*
*Winstrol (stanozold)*

*Injectable steroids are*:
*Deca-Durabolin (nandrolone decanoate)*
*Durabolin (nandrolone phenpropionate)*
*Depo-testosterone (testosterone cypionate)*
*Equipoise (boldenone undecylenate)*

For many, steroids are a shortcut to two main points of interest.

The first is a shortcut to peak performance in major sports, a way of cheating the odds and giving them an advantage over other players who aren’t taking or injecting them. Often it’s about pressure to win and sacrifice.

The other major reason people take steroids is to build muscle. Using steroids does many things. Among them is accelerated muscle growth through added strength and resilience. Someone using steroids can work out longer and can do more reps leading to more muscle tear. Muscles are built when the torn muscle is repaired by the body. The “scaring” tissue is essentially new muscle in its infancy. Steroids speed up the repair process giving the user an advantage of healing faster thus being able to train longer and with more impact/results.

Steroids have many different forms they can be taken in besides the main two. A user can inject them, which is considered the safest method. They can take them orally in many forms, or they can even take them through gels rubbed on the skin. There is even a patch option, much like the nicotine patch. Nasal sprays are often a covert option. The least safe option is orally as this can damage the liver. Anything ingested orally is filtered through the liver, where by injections, patches, gels, or nasal sprays bypass the liver- not that they are not damaging to other parts of the body. Oral steroids can cause liver problems including tumors which lead to serious toxicity in the body.

The liver is responsible for filtering and converting toxins to benign agents in the body. Damaging the liver can lead to a large variety of illnesses leading to death.

ANABOLIC STEROIDS

Taking anabolic steroids can cause severe problems in the body.  Some of these damaging and undesirable effects include (but are not limited to):

Infertility or worse:
Men can actually find themselves growing breasts and/or  losing fertility. To top this horror off, the testicles can shrink substantially. Women can also suffer extraordinary changes that are undesirable such as an enlarging clitoris, and a lot of body hair in all the wrong places. In addition either sex can find themselves developing baldness (like male-pattern baldness) or loss of hair on the head in strange patterns. Both sexes can find their voice deepening, although this is more detrimental to a woman.

With the rise of sex hormones and testosterone, stunted growth can occur. It is not recommended that anyone even try steroids if they are still growing.

The advanced sex hormone levels in the body triggered by steroids tends to cause the bones to stop growing, as the body thinks this is normal. The problem with steroids, especially in growing bodies, is that it tends to throw the body’s systems out of wack, which interrupts the normal growth cycles. The damage is permanent and not worth the potential gains of taking steroids. Taking steroids after you stop growing still poses several risks, but more so if you’re still growing.

The system in your body that is most negatively affected is the cardiovascular system. Risks include heart attacks, enlargement of the left ventricle of the heart which leads to heart disease and a variety of other life threatening illnesses. CVD or cardiovascular disease is a common symptom in people under 30 years old who take steroids. Serious blood clots can develop causing a blocking of blood flow which can starve the heart, damaging it to the point where it won’t pump blood efficiently through the body. I don’t have to tell you how dangerous that is. It would be a shame to have all those muscles and not being able to leave a wheelchair for fear of a heart attack.

Steroids can also escalate cholesterol levels which leads to clogged arteries. This also leads to a variety of painful and life threatening problems. If you have any type of heart problem to begin with, then using steroids is like taking your life in your hands. It would be a very dangerous move on your part.

Steroids drastically affects liver health which is a very serious condition. Steroids can cause liver tumors which leads to internal bleeding. Liver problems are incredibly painful and uncomfortable. High doses of steroids have been known to cause a liver disease called Jaundice, which has the effect of giving you the worst of flu like symptoms. You can avoid this by not abusing or using high doses of steroids. This means if you must do steroids never dive right into high doses. This is very dangerous to your health and can affect your livelihood for life! One serious life altering problem caused by steroid use is cancer. The body is already always fighting cancer.

Cancer is not something you get it is something that happens when cancer cells, that are in every body out there, even healthy bodies, controlled by the immune system, start to multiply out of control. Steroids can drastically affect the immune system either directly or indirectly (i.e. by damaging the liver which allows toxins to overwhelm the immune system since they aren’t being converted). If the immune system cannot protect the body against cancer cell replication, you will “get cancer”.

People using steroids often suffer from oily skin and hair, acne, and cysts. People using shared needles can generate infections in the injection site as well as the potential of contracting HIV, a disease that there is no cure for.

Physiological changes are not the only changes that occur. Some serious behavior changes also happen. People using anabolic steroids often suffer from irritability, aggression, and overwhelming sex drives. In high doses these things are almost guaranteed to happen. Irrational behaviors can ensue causing someone to rob someone, take things by force, fighting, and there have even been cases of aggravated rape. People have lost control of their temper and struck police officers over a simple traffic ticket and ended up in jail.

Other effects that are caused by abusing (or for some small doses of) steroids are violent mood swings (moving from calm to agitated instantly), euphoria, more energy, memory loss, and confusion.

Many athletes stack steroids which is known to increase the strength of the drug. Stacking is taking an oral as well as injection of the drug at the same time. The problem with stacking is you increase your chances of experiencing negative effects, and you can bring on intense levels of these effects compounding the problems. Often for many the potential benefits are worth the risk, but those who the risk doesn’t pay off for experience deep regret.

The more popular, and also safest way to take steroids is using a technique called cycling. Cycling is where you start taking a small dose over several weeks slowly increasing it. After about 6-12 weeks the person stops taking the drug and goes through his normal training routine for about 4 weeks before starting over. This gives the body time to build a tolerance for the drug and to work it out of the system during the off time. Some people, even after cycling become impatient and start taking large doses. For some it works out, it’s a gamble, but for many the side effects become unbearable.

I hope this article has given you ample information to decide if using steroids is for you or not. I am 100% against steroids, I’ve seen what it can do to people and would never touch the stuff, but I leave the decision up to you. My hope is that this article gives you food for thought. If you do decide to take steroids, and you suffer side effects, at least you knew what you were getting into.

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