The Four Ring Circus

Dr Bill Nielsen has been practising in Duncan for thirty years

Alot of people equate steroids only with bodybuilding. Those would be your anabolic steroids, but anabolics are just the tip of the steroid iceberg. Steroids are like a big circus family of specialized performers, all based on a stable chemical structure fashioned from four molecular rings. And trust me, they perform like a four ring circus inside you!

Here is how to think about them: There are three kinds of steroids - sexy, salty, and cool. The sexy steroids are male and female. The salty steroids do sodium, water and blood pressure balance. The cooling steroids prevent your immune response from going crazy, swollen and hot. Steroids, like sexy, salty and cool people, interact with each other in complex and interesting ways. These health essentials are constructed in the adrenals, ovaries and testes.

Female sex steroids are based on estrogen or progesterone. Millions of women take them daily for birth control or hormone replacement therapy after menopause. Male sex steroids are based on testosterone, which is only one hydrogen atom different from estrogen (which I find amazing). We prescribe them for testosterone deficiency, aka Manopause. Bodybuilders covet anabolics to bulk up, risking the anabolic side effects of infertility, acne, liver disease and steroid rage. To lower hormone levels, doctors prescribe antihormone therapy for breast cancer and prostate cancer because those malignancies depend on the natural sex steroids to survive and grow.

Mineralocorticoids, the salty performers, like aldosterone, protect and regulate your blood pressure by retaining salt. We try to reduce their effect in people with hypertension.

Glucocorticoids like prednisone or hydrocortisone and dexamethasone are cool because they are powerful anti-inflammatories. They affect several sites in the inflammation cascade, reducing redness, pain, swelling, heat and itch. These steroids treat asthma, COPD, autoimmune diseases like Lupus, cancer, and arthritis. But be careful! They have an impressive array of serious side effects too: high blood pressure, weight gain, diabetes, bone weakness and infection.

There you have steroids in a nutshell: sexy, salty and cool.