Ergogenic Aids Way back in ancient times, before the Home Shopping Channel even, scientific researchers were looking for ways to transform normal human beings into super human athletes. In scientific terms, what they were looking for were ergogenic aids. An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomena that can transcend performance beyond what is normally expected. In other words, they are aids that can take you beyond your genetic parameters. Make you god like. You know, like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Michael Jordan. As mentioned, an ergogenic aid is a substance or event that will enable the individual to perform beyond his normal physiological capacity. Drugs and hormones are the substances most widely used to augment performance. On the other hand, not all the substances being used are true ergogenic aids. Very few drugs or hormones have been found to significantly improve performance. If very few of the drugs and hormones being used are true ergogenic aids, why do people take them? Mainly because of ignorance. Many individuals have been misinformed by unscientific and self-serving publications that suggest that certain foods or chemicals can increase performance. The majority of the claims made by such publications and advertisements are either deceptive or completely erroneous. At present, the only scientifically validated ergogenic aids are anabolic steroids and human growth hormone. It should be noted that there are other aids such as alkaline aspartates, blood doping and vitamins which may prove to be ergogenic aids. However, further research is necessary before these prospective aids can be validated.
Anabolic Steroids _________________________________________________________
There are two things that can be said about weightlifters that are fairly accurate. One thing is that if all of the mirrors in the world would disappear, so would all the weightlifters. The other thing is that if weightlifters thought that eating tree bark would make them stronger, the world would be bark free in a week. It’s this appetite for strength that we would like to address here. We’ll start with anabolic steroids. An anabolic steroid is a synthetic derivative of the male hormone testosterone. Anabolic steroids are structurally altered to enhance anabolic (growth promoting) effects while decreasing the androgenic effects which produce masculine secondary sex characteristics. The drugs were primarily used in geriatrics to combat the aging process. However, in recent years, it seems like everyone is using steroids. In case you’re not convinced, let us give you the latest statistics released by the Food and Drug Administration. Now, get this: on an average day in America, over 2 million people will use steroids; 262,000 are adolescents, with 5 to 11 percent of teenage boys and 1 to 2.5 percent of teenage girls in grades 7 through 12 implicated. More than half of those estimated to have taken steroids began using them by age 16 and nearly one-third of them have been using these drugs for 5 years or more. Approximately 6 out of every 10 world class athletes use drugs to enhance their performance and about 2 out of every 10 amateur athletes do the same. If that doesn’t freak you out, we don’t know what will. Obviously, steroid use has gone way beyond the elite group of world class athletes who had traditionally used them. They have filtered into the heart of society. People in every age group are using these drugs. Everybody wants to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s no longer just a sports problem, it’s a social problem too! People are taking these drugs just to look good on the beach. It’s crazy.