Steroids And Their Affects On The Human Body

Steroids and Their Affects On The Human Body

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.

Picture: 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 ath...

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...t is kept in balance with estrogen, the female hormone. Like testosterone for males, estrogen gives females their feminine characteristics. The woman may bald, grow excess bodily hair, including a moustache, they lose the gentle curves of their body, their skin roughens, weight is gained, and the voice deepens. An unborn child is also endangered, female's unborn babies will develop such male traits as extra hair, and all unborn children, according to a few doctors, are subject to be handicapped and deformed. Men also are endangered. They may experience a shrinking of the testicles, called atrophy, accompanied by a lowered sperm count, a lessening of sexual desire, infertility, and an enlargement of the prostate gland that men under fifty usually do not suffer from. Men will often develop breasts like those of a woman.

Steroids are dangerous when used incorrectly, and should be used only under medical supervision. It has undesired side effects for men, women, and even the unborn. When abused steroids are no longer anabolic, they stop building the bodies tissue and start tearing it down as anything will when used in excess.