Athletes in a wide in all of sports participate in the use of performance enhancing drugs. Unlike most people athletes use these drugs to boost or add more of their abilities such as speed, strength, size, and stamina. According to legalization of drugs, a book by Mark Friedman, “anabolic steroids are synthetic drugs that mimic the effects of testosterone.” Unlike other drugs steroids are not used to get high, although using steroids can still be addicting. Taken without a prescription steroids can be dangerous, even killed people who use it. Although the mention of steroids usually comes with a negative connotation steroids can be beneficial if used correctly. Testosterone is a hormone that is regularly produced in the human body. It is a hormone that is found most in males but also produced in the body of women. Its purpose is growth and building of muscles, bones, and also sexual development. If taken properly steroids can help your body grow. Birth control used to prevent women from pregnancy during intercourse is another common form of steroid; it is considered a steroid because it is an artificial version of hormones. Steroids help your body to build more muscle, helps you recover from exercise more quickly so you can exercise harder and more frequently," said Philip Wenger, an assistant professor at St. Louis College of Pharmacy. (Bernhard, 2010)
When hearing about steroids it is usually about some Olympic gold medalist caught using the drugs however it is a common epidemic in the world of sports every day. Many people all over the world participate in the use of illegal performance enhancing drugs in order to reach personal goals, win competition, some even use these drugs in hopes to change sexual orientation. As ...
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...or leagues sports such as National Hockey League (NHL), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), National College Athletic Association (ncaa), and even the Olympics. These drugs have been banned due to there negative side effects and the unfair advantage they give to players. However there are some people who believe that these drugs should be legal. Many believe if everyone is given the option to take performance enhancing drugs and they are regulated by doctors and physicians this would eliminate the unfair advantage and possibility of hurting your body. However like with many things that are legal such as alcohol people still find ways around laws and this could lead to more of a problem because if there are no laws against them what is to stop someone from going overboard, because after all rules are meant to be broken; laws are not.
Professional athletes, throughout history, have been exalted for their outstanding abilities and achievements in sports. Unfortunately, many athletes have turned to anabolic steroids in order to give them an edge, a boost their athletic performance. Starting with the 1954 World Weightlifting Championships, where the Soviets unexpectedly dominated their lifting classes with the use of steroids, it has become increasingly popular among athletes to cheat with the help of this drug. Although the appeal to steroid use is evident when observing how it increases someone’s athletic abilities, many users fail to consider the detrimental side effects of the drug. Also, in my opinion, athletes should be expected to perform based upon their natural abilities, opposed to abilities enhanced by anabolic steroids. Ultimately, anabolic steroids should continue to be illegal in professional sports due to their major health risks and the unfair advantage they serve players.
Steroids are ruining sports in the United States, and they are also going to ruin future athletes if the United States does not put a stop to it. Many young athletes in the United States are taking performance enhancing drugs because they see that professional athletes are doing it and getting results. These teenagers are using steroids because they want to look muscular and fit, but they are not aware of the negative effects steroids have on their bodies. Young athletes do not know that they are not only risking their careers but also their bodies. Steroids may make a person look muscular and fit, but at the same time, it is ruining their heart. Steroids also cause people to act differently and do foolish things like using other drugs. Parents can prevent steroid use by teaching their children about it at a young age and staying involved in their children’s sport lives. Steroids have ruined professional careers. They ruined Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds’ careers and almost ruined Alex Rodriguez’s career. Professional athletes use steroids to improve their performance which is cheating. The game is not fair if someone is performing better by using drugs, and everybody should be performing with what they got. There are many different ways to achieve what they want in fair and healthier way. Many high school athletes are using steroids in the United States. They are not doing it under a doctor’s supervision; therefore, they are ruining their bodies without them knowing. Many of these athletes are looking at the outcome only and not what there are doing to their bodies in addition to getting stronger, muscular, and fit. All governing sport bodies in the United States need to take steroid testing seriously and give at...
The era in sports from the late 90s and into the 2000s has often been nicknamed “The Steroid Age” due to the raging use of anabolic steroids and other PEDs (performance enhancing drugs) by professional athletes. The usage of drugs in sports has never been more prevalent during this time, and many people are making it their goal to put an end to the abuse. Influential athletes such as Lance Armstrong, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens, who were once held as the highest role models to the American people, now watch as their legacies are tarnished by accusations of drug use. The American population, and lovers of sports everywhere, have followed in astonishment through recent years as many beloved athletes reveal their dark secrets. As organizations such as the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency) and BALCO (Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative) attempt to halt the use of PEDs, both the drug users and their high-end suppliers work diligently to avoid detection. The use of performance enhancing drugs in recent years has proven to be cancerous to the honesty and competition of modern sports. Although some strides have been made over the past few decades, the use of steroids is in full swing in Major League Baseball, The dangerous side effects of the drugs are often overlooked and many do not realize the message this sends to the youth. The support for halting the usage of PEDs is in need of attention or professional sports will face the loss of all progress made through the past two decades in its war on steroids.
In our days, most people have set the goal and dream to have the perfect body. They believe by having this image, they will be popular and/or attractive. People want to achieve the body that they desire, like a super star, a hero in a Hollywood movie, a strong soldier, and an Olympic athlete. However, what are the extent people will go to get the perfect body? The biggest problem for those who dream to have a beautiful body today, as many people know, is the consumption of steroids. It is amazing what people and athletes will do to enhance their performance, strength and muscle size by taking steroids. Whether right or wrong people who use steroids to become the fastest and strongest will prevail, so who would turn down a substance that could turn them into a super athlete and a muscle man? The purpose of this essay is to inform the reader on the popular anabolic steroids that most people use and the positive and negative side effects of steroid use on its users and finally my personal point of view.
Anabolic steroids are a group of muscle building chemicals, which are synthetic versions of the male hormone, testosterone. Developed in the 1930’s, they were prescribed to aid in muscle tissue repair by those who had undergone surgery or had degenerative diseases. Now the patients do not only use them but also athletes. Starting in the 1940’s steroids were introduced into sports. Steroids were one of the main reasons that Russia’s 1952 Olympic weightlifting team came out with pile of medals. With these results other nations thought their competitors should have the same advantage, and the use of steroids spread like wildfire.(NIDA pg 2) But now steroids are illegal to use if not prescribed by a physician, and have been banned by nearly all-athletic organizations, both professional and amateur.
Abstract: Since the beginning of sports competition, athletes have always looked for some kind of edge over their competitors. They will do whatever it takes to be one of the elite, and that includes injecting supplements into their bodies to make them bigger, stronger, and faster. Steroid use is probably one of the most common drug misuses in sports competition. Athletes found that with anabolic steroids, one could become a better athlete twice as fast. Not until 1975 was the drug first banned from Olympic competition because of the health risks it produced.
Steroid is a name given to drugs that are manufactured from testosterone, a reproductive hormone found in men. Some athletes normally use anabolic steroids because these drugs improve one’s capacity to compete and train, yielding high results. Steroids work by reducing exhaustion during training, and also reduce the length of time an athlete needs to recover from exhaustion. In addition, steroids enable the growth of tissues and muscles in an athlete’s body by instructing the body to produce extra proteins. During the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, the first rumors of athletes using steroids emerged. The problem of athletes using steroids was again reported in 1954 during weight lifting championships. The Soviet athletes recorded a very impressive performance at all levels of weight lifting. Later on, the team’s physician admitted that the Soviet athletes were being injected with testosterone in order to increase their muscle mass and strength after being questioned about how they achieved their success. WHO (World Health Organization) in 1968 was the first party to complain about incidents of athletes using steroids, these sentiments were later backed by IOC (International Olympic Committee). This paper is going to give reasons why professional athletes should not be allowed to use steroids (Yesalis 25).
Anabolic Steroids or simply put, “Steroids”, is a medicine which has become increasingly popular in the last few decades, specifically in the world of professional sports and body building. In a literal term, the word anabolic means building of the body muscle and by using anabolic steroids, the potential user becomes stronger, sharper, larger and tougher than he would normally be. The consequences of these steroids could be much bigger to a human body and the usage of such illegal products could put an individual’s body at great risk (Haupt & Rovere, 1983).
Anabolic steroids are drugs containing, or hormone-like substances, that are used to increase strength and promote muscle growth. They were first developed in the 1930s in Europe to treat undernourished patients and to promote healing after surgery. Competitive weightlifters began using steroids in the 1950s as a way to increase their athletic performance. Use gradually spread throughout the world among athletes in other has been estimated that at least one in 15 male high school seniors in the United States--more than a half-million boys--has used steroids. Some are athletes attempting to increase their strength and size; others are simply youths attempting to speed up their growth to keep pace with their peers. In some countries, anabolic steroids are available over the counter. In the United States, a doctor's prescription is necessary.
The intent of this essay is to show that steroids have many negative effects and that steroids, and other natural supplements, should be closely studied by the FDA. This essay will also support the claim that the professional sports industry needs to eliminate steroid use and set a good example for younger athletes.
“[Thirty percent] of college and professional athletes have used or currently use steroids, as do 10-20% of high school athletes” (“Anabolic Steroids”). These numbers are alarming, but there are two main reasons why this is occuring: people tend to belief steroids will improve their appearances, and athletes believe their athletic abilities will increase. However, most are not aware of the effects steroid use has on the body. Steroid use has dramatic effects on the user’s body and mind in many different ways.
My issue over the concern of athletes have been struggling with the usage of steroids has widely spread among athletes and others; not only do steroids give an athlete a hard times but it’s also an unfair advantage to the other athletes and what they’ve accomplish. “Besides making muscles bigger, anabolic steroids may help athletes recover from a hard workout more quickly by reducing the amount of muscle damage during the session” (“Steroids in Sports”,2005). Now a days steroids are everywhere as an athlete. Many males and female young athletes preferably take it because they want to look and feel good when it comes to impressing someone and trying to become someone they look forward too. Young teens and adults try to cheat themselves in the career of their dreams. When it comes to a sport, teen athletes are not aware of what type of consequences may happen to them at the time. It may come to the time where it’s too late to take care of. In other cases, some athletes may like feeling the aggressive they get when they take drugs such as steroids. Athletes shouldn’t take steroids as the harmful health effects of the anabolic steroid in population wise. Many people have had their lives ruined by the use of illegal steroids and yet the desired effects are overwhelming that people tend to forget about the results and consequences that may effect. Athletes on steroids believe taking steroids will enhance their performance, strength, and size without having to put necessary work. These benefits, however, are associated with much short-term and long term risk.
Every athlete dreams of becoming the best player in their sport. For most athletes, this dream was created in their childhood watching their favorite player perform at great levels to achieve success. Most athletes will stop at anything to achieve success, even if that means breaking the rules. An athlete whether the biggest, fastest, or strongest, will always look for something that will give them and extra edge over everybody else, even if that means performance enhancing drugs. With new records being broken day by day, I believe performance-enhancing drugs should be legal in all professional sports.
Performance-enhancing drugs should continue to be banned from professional sports because they have side effects that athletes may be unaware of, there is a disadvantage to athletes that do use PED’s and it is unfair to previous athletes who hold records. Individuals may disagree and argue that we should revoke the ban so we will be able to monitor it more safely. If the ban on performance-enhancing drugs was to be lifted who knows what the next illegal drug to become legal will be.
Steroids became an option to athletes in the Olympics and other major sporting events during the 1950’s. But this use of steroids among athletes only became widely apparent when Canadian sprint runner Ben Johnson tested positive for steroid use after winning the gold medal for the one hundred-meter dash during the 1988 Olympics (Francis, 45). Now a skinny fifteen-year-old can just walk down to the local gym and find people who either sell or know how to get in contact with those who sell the drug that will make him envious of his friends. Steroids are an attractive drug. While steroids seem harmless to the unaware user, they can have a risky effect. Most of the time whether the users are new or experienced, they do not know the dangerous consequences steroids can have on their bodies and their minds. Though steroids cause a relatively insignificant number of deaths in our society, the banning of steroids is justified because steroids have a lot of side effects not known to the uninformed user.