Performance Enhancing Supplements

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Recommended: Effects and dangers of performance enhancing drugs in sports

Performance Enhancing Supplements

Northeastern junior Colin Magee is like other athletic students around campus. He played sports in high school and now lifts weights at the Marino Center, Northeastern’s multi-million dollar workout center, several times a week. Also like many other weight-lifting students, Magee takes performance-enhancing supplements.

Performance-enhancing supplements are nutrients that, unlike anabolic steroids, are available over the counter at countless supermarkets and nutrition stores nationwide. Supplements such as androstenedione (andro), creatine, tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), and NO2 are the most popular in today’s market, and are used to improve muscle gain. They are taken to coincide with a weight-lifting program. The supplements, though all similar, differ in the way each works once inside the body.

"Creatine is the most moderate of the supplements out there," says Magee, an amateur expert on supplement and steroid use. Magee's sister is a professional bodybuilder. "Creatine creates water retention in muscles, basically bloating the muscles to increase strength...NO2, nitric oxide, is what they call a hemo-dialator, which is a blood widener. NO2 creates more blood flow in the body, makes the blood pump harder, which creates increased strength... Andro tricks the body into thinking it is not producing enough testosterone, so it causes the body to overproduce the testosterone hormone."

While supplements are sold over the counter, anabolic steroids, which are illegal in the United States, are not. Despite this, anabolic steroid use has been rising in recent years. A 1989 study by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) showed that roughly one in every 20 collegiate student-athlet...

... middle of paper ...

...ds, and more and more teenagers are seeing their idols admit to taking supplements and steroids and think it’s okay if they did too.

In today’s world, where skinny girls are prettier and bulky guys are more handsome, teenagers and college students are under more pressure to conform to these social norms, and if someone is under pressure, they are more apt to turn to other unnatural methods to better their results and appearance.

The answer to this problem is an increase of awareness. If people were aware of the real risks of these supplements or the long term effects of taking steroids, then maybe, just maybe, today’s youth will turn away from these supplements and steroids. Maybe, just maybe, today’s youth will realize that maybe taking those supplements isn’t really worth it after all. Maybe, just maybe, they will choose their health over their appearance.

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