Performance Enhancers: The Safe and the Deadly

But some social media users may have forgotten these high-profile downfalls, as they boast of the fitness and muscle gains from taking the same illegal drugs. In general, it’s like, people have kind of come and told their truth or not told the truth and kind of moved on. I credit them for that, but I also feel like, we have an opportunity to make sure a situation like this doesn’t happen again. I try to talk about it as much as possible, it’s obviously still hard, you know, I wish I was talking about something else. My girlfriend’s got two kids we live with, seven and five, I told them last night what this interview was about. In 2004, I was in the middle of the Tour de France, I did a transfusion, I’d given blood weeks before and it was getting reinfused back into me, and I think the red blood cells had gone bad.

Great Care Starts Here

Performance-enhancing drugs come with various risks, consequences, and side effects depending on the substance. In sports, the use of performance-enhancing drugs is illegal and has led to a fall from grace for some big athletes. A safer alternative is a well-balanced diet rich in proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals for optimal athletic performance. When they use PEDs, it sends a message to young athletes that drug use is acceptable or necessary for success, potentially leading to increased PED use among youth. The prevalence of doping can erode trust among athletes, spectators, and sponsors.

Mental Side Effects

The estimates of the prevalence of AASs, cocaine, heroin, and amphetamine use among 12th-grade students from the Monitoring the Future study. The Monitoring the Future survey question states, “Steroids, or anabolic steroids, are sometimes prescribed by doctors to treat certain conditions. Some athletes, and others, have used them to try to increase muscle development. On how many occasions (if any) have you taken steroids on your own—that is, without a doctor telling you to take them? Competitive athletes tend to use several other categories of PEDs in addition to AASs.

• You should see a GP if you think you’re addicted to anabolic steroids.
• The conceptual and technological framework of gene therapy in humans has largely been developed in hereditary diseases and some types of cancer (409, 410).
• In light of these risks, it’s essential to address the addiction to performance-enhancing drugs promptly and effectively.
• A safer alternative is a well-balanced diet rich in proteins, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins, and minerals for optimal athletic performance.
• This type of monitoring is referred to as the Athlete Biological Passport.
• In 5 other studies, collectively evaluating 801 AAS users, only 12 (1.5%) started before age 16, and 199 (24.8%) started before age 20.

Medical Professionals

One of the most commonly abused performance-enhancing drugs, testosterone, comes with a wide range of immediate and long-term side effects. These often start with visible changes, including acne, shrinking testicles, and breast tissue development in men, and the development of an Adam’s apple and additional body hair in women. Continued use can cause the body to stop producing hormones naturally and lead to organ enlargement, stunted growth, liver damage, and fertility issues. Moreover, natural testosterone levels may never recover, making the consequences of doping irreversible.

Basic science has also largely overlooked the potential interaction of AASs and traumatic brain injury. For many neurologic conditions, estrogen is neuroprotective in females (402). This is risks of performance enhancing drugs particularly true for response to hypoxic-ischemic brain damage, as occurs with stroke. Whether testosterone at physiologic levels reduces or exacerbates neuronal injury in males remains unresolved (403). One emerging hypothesis is that endogenous androgens may be harmful during the acute phase of ischemic brain injury but can have beneficial effects during recovery. Even so, it is unclear how this may translate to the elevated levels of androgens characteristic of AAS use.

The Addictive Nature and Risks of Performance Enhancing Drugs

Colligan understood the problem and realized it was time to stop taking the compounded version of semaglutide she’d been using. What’s more, because GLP-1s are not banned, there’s no need to name the others specifically while the advisory group collects data on how the market leader is being used, Rabin says. While several similar medications are now on the market, only semaglutide has been added to the monitoring program so far because it’s the most prescribed medication in this category. Indeed, the name Ozempic has become shorthand for all of https://ecosoberhouse.com/ the GLP-1 medications.

Despite these differences, AAS dependence may nevertheless become a chronic and potentially dangerous disorder. One group has suggested that AAS dependence may develop via any or all of 3 different pathways, namely a body image pathway, a neuroendocrine pathway, and a hedonic pathway (241). Although our discussion has involved primarily field studies of illicit AAS users, some controlled laboratory studies have also examined the psychiatric effects of marijuana addiction AAS. Thus, it is inappropriate to use these low-dose laboratory studies to gauge the experience of illicit users. However, there have now been 4 additional laboratory studies that have assessed psychiatric symptoms in individuals receiving the equivalent of at least 500 mg of testosterone per week (95, 195, 218–220).

It’s not doping, it’s for your health.” Yeah, it had testosterone in it. And that was the moment, he handed me this capsule, that was the moment. A health care provider can prescribe human growth hormone for some health reasons. Ephedrine has actions similar to adrenaline, but it is also harmful.

In professional sport, most organisations ban anabolic steroid use and test competitors for banned steroids. If you do test positive, you may be banned from competing professionally. Depression has also been linked to steroid use, and athletes who use performance-enhancing steroids are more likely to attempt suicide than athletes who do not use them.

III. The Process of Data Gathering and Synthesis

However, it’s important to note that the use of these drugs isn’t without risks and ethical concerns, which will be discussed in subsequent sections. Misuse of certain drugs, supplements, and practices can give athletes an unfair advantage. Using synthetic versions to increase steroid production is potentially dangerous. Taking an excessive amount can put a strain on these important organs, which could potentially damage them.