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.
You’re probably asking yourself, “Why in the world would an athlete use drugs?” Well, the obvious reason is that drugs work. The physiological benefits that can be derived from using these drugs are enormous, especially for a strength and muscular endurance athlete. First of all, these drugs will increase blood volume, hemoglobin concentration and vascularization, thereby significantly increasing aerobic capacity and muscular endurance. They can also reduce body fat, enhance lean body mass to protect an individual from stress fractures, produce more efficient healing of tendons, muscles and bones, and significantly reduce the post-training catabolic effect of high-intensity training. Best yet, they can produce significant increment in muscular strength and muscle mass formation…and we do mean significant increments. Does that sound like an advertisement? Well, it’s all true. Research has revealed that when large dosages, 75-100 mg. per day, are taken in conjunction with a high protein diet and appropriate exercise, muscular strength can be increased anywhere from ten to eighteen percent. Certainly, there’s a price to pay for achieving greatness with steroids. There are quite a few side effects associated with using these drugs. One significant consideration is the effect that steroids have on the coronary, renal and cerebral blood vessels. Research has consistently revealed that individuals who are in good cardiovascular shape have high levels of protective lipoprotein in their bodies called high density lipoprotein or HDL’s. High density lipoproteins prevent the deposition of cholesterol as plaque on the vessel walls. It’s been determined that a healthy level of HDL’s is approximately 64 mg/dl. Studies have revealed that the level of HDL’s in athletes who use steroids usually run between 6 to 10 mg/dl. This of course, predisposes these individuals to various cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. In recent years there have been numerous documented cases of cardiovascular diseases that have been linked to steroid use. Another scary thing is liver problems that have been linked to steroids. Hepatitis is extremely common among steroid users and poliosis, a blood cyst condition, is becoming more common. Worse yet, in recent years there have been a number of cases of athletes who have died from liver cancer. If you take these drugs this is something you really have to be concerned about. Give us a few seconds to elaborate here. As you are probably aware, synthetic steroids come in two forms, orals and injectables. Most people are under the assumption that all steroids affect the body in the same way and that they all increase the production of testosterone. That’s not the case. Generally, orals stimulate creatine phosphate synthesis and protein synthesis. On the other hand, injectables only increase protein synthesis. For this reason, you would think that orals would be more popular among steroid users than injectables. In all candor, they probably would be except for the adverse affects that orals have on the liver. When orals are swallowed, they go to the stomach and to the small intestine. From the small intestine they’re absorbed by the portal system and taken directly to the liver. It is in the liver that the drug is broken down, metabolized or hydrolyzed. In small quantities, the liver has no problems handling steroids. However, when large concentrations of steroids are taken orally, the drugs overwhelm the liver cells causing inflammation, dysfunction and eventually, death of the cell. On this point, injectables are different. Injectables are oil based, which means that they are dissolved in oil…generally sesame oil. Because it is in oil, once the drug is injected into the muscle, it takes about three days for it to seep into your vascular system. Since the drug is released slowly into the system, the liver doesn’t have to work as hard or as quickly to metabolize the drug. For this reason, injectables are considered less toxic and safer to take than orals. That’s not to say they are not dangerous, just less dangerous than orals. Steroids in large concentrations whether taken orally or by injection can cause liver impairments because of their toxic effect. For adolescents, steroids present a special problem. In young children there is a growth place in the long bones called the epiphysis plate. You remember, we talked about this earlier…of course you do. In normal children these growth places do not ossify until they reach approximately 18 years of age. As you probably have
already guessed, the growth places enable the long bones to grow in proportion to the child’s growth patterns. Conversely, when steroids are used by adolescents they cause the premature closure and/or ossification of the epiphyseal plates. When this occurs, the child’s growth will be stunted. Consequently, although the child will put on a significant amount of muscle mass, he will never reach his full height. In laymen’s terms, the child will become short and stocky. Unlike many of the side effects of anabolic steroids, this one is not reversible. Where steroids have a real impact though, is in women. Because women produce so little testosterone naturally, when they take the drug, they gain an even greater advantage over their drug free competitors. In fact, it’s a significantly greater advantage than a man on steroids would gain over his drug free competitors. We know this may sound hard to believe, but some women who use steroids are capable of beating a lot of drug free men in weightlifting. Trust us, some of these women have more hormones than you would find at an Italian bachelor party and have more muscle than your average Brahma Bull. Unfortunately, the side effects in women are more significant than in men. For starters, they can cause menstrual irregularities by decreasing luteinizing hormone levels…the hormone which is responsible for ovulation. When this occurs, even the sweetest girl this side of Pluto can turn into your typical PMS poster child. Actually, that’s just a mild side effect. The androgenic effect of steroids can bring about a condition in women called virilization. To be virile is to be manly. Consequently, virilization occurs when a woman takes on manly characteristics. In as little as one cycle of anabolic steroids, women, particularly those under 20 years of age may exhibit hirsutism, which is excessive hair growth on their face and body, a deepening of the voice due to the thickening of the vocal cords and clitoral enlargement. Another thing about steroids is this psychological phenomena called roid rage. It’s been found that athletes who use these drugs will often develop what Dr. Herbert Hampt, a renowned pharmacologist, calls “brittle personalities.” They have far less patience with even minor irritations and they tend to be extremely hostile and aggressive with uncontrollable outbursts of rage and anger. Even more alarming is the fact that severe psychotic disturbances have been identified in some athletes who are using heavy doses of anabolic steroids. Tendencies toward violence, suicide and even murder have been observed in such cases. Heard enough? Well, did we mention that when large dosages are taken, the drug can produce adverse reactions such as inhibition of testicular functions, testicle atrophy, bladder irritability, insomnia and the retention of water, sodium, potassium, phosphate and calcium. Of interest is the fact that while the usual adult dosage is 5 mg/day, many athletes consume well over 100 mg/day. Some athletes take as much as 3000 mg/week. Some of the more commonly used anabolic steroids are dianabol, winstrol, maxibolen, deposit testosterone, deca-durabol and andral-50. Now, you’ve heard enough.
Human Growth Hormone _________________________________________________________________________
It’s not just steroids. A number of athletes are now using Somatatrophin, or human growth hormone (HGH). If you’e not familiar with HGH, it’s a hormone made up of amino acids produced by the pituitary gland. Let us give you a little history on this stuff. Up until 1984, HGH was obtained exclusively from extracts removed from the pituitary glands of human cadavers. At the time, this hormone, which can stimulate skeletal growth, was used medically in the treatment of growth hormone deficient children, more specifically primary pituitary dwarfism. Athletically, the drug was used to develop power and mass that was almost beyond human comprehension. We will get to that in a few minutes. Eventually, HGH was banned for medical purposes because it carried a deadly virus from the cadavers. The virus called JacobCrevtzfeldt Syndrome is a slow acting antigen which progressively destroys muscle and brain tissue. There is no cure, but that didn’t stop some athletes from using the drug. If you see any of this junk floating around the black market, step smartly to the other side of the street…run…don’t walk. As you might expect, most athletes preferred that their HGH come from human cadavers. However, because the supply of the hormone was so scarce, some athletes used what they call monkey juice or gorilla juice, a non-human form of the drug, supposedly extracted from the pituitary glands of rhesus monkeys. In all candor,
using rhesus growth hormone makes as much sense as using a ten dollar bill to light your fireplace. First of all, it wouldn’t work. Monkey growth hormone would have little if any effect on human growth. The biochemistries of human and monkeys don’t match. We’re not monkeys, we look different, we act different…we are different. If monkey hormone is introduced into a human body, the immune system would promptly destroy the foreign substance. Another thing is that rhesus monkeys are as rare as yellow diamonds and just about as expensive. Human corpses are by far more plentiful and a hell of a lot cheaper, which leads us to believe that monkey juice is a big hoax. Most likely the stuff is a concoction of various anabolic steroids with a little strychnine and/or amphetamine thrown into it to give you a little bang. In brief, you have to be pretty dumb to go for the stuff. Recently, the FDA approved the sale of several synthetic growth hormone products that are exact biochemical replicas of human growth hormone…meaning that HGH is now available to athletes at a much better price. Believe us, this stuff is power packed. It is the most powerful anabolic drug known to man. As we previously mentioned, research has revealed that HGH can enhance size, strength and muscle mass almost beyond comprehension. For instance, a number of studies revealed that animals that were given massive doses of HGH sometimes grew to twice their normal length with a 250% gain in muscle weight and 40% reduction in body fat. Dr. William J. Taylor at the National Convention of the American College of Sports Medicine stated that there was little doubt that it’s possible to give a youngster, who under normal conditions would reach a maximum height of six feet, sufficient growth hormone to cause him to grow to seven feet or even seven and a half feet with a corresponding body weight of over 500 pounds. In other words, according to Taylor, a sort of selective gigantism could be produced with HGH. Without question, growth hormone is the most powerful elixir available to an athlete. It is far more powerful than anabolic steroids. It can literally take an individual beyond his genetic parameters. The problem with growth hormone is not that it makes your muscles bigger, but rather that it makes everything bigger, hypertrophy of the skin, tongue, internal organs, bone cartilage, tendons and everything else not nailed down. Even stuff that is “nailed down” can be a problem. As we mentioned before, if your long bones are not totally ossified, the drug will actually cause you to grow taller. If on the other hand your long bones are already ossified, the other bones in your body that don’t ossify, like the ones in your hands, feet, forehead and jawbone, will continue to grow. This can cause a condition known as acromegaly…a not so fun thing. With this condition, you literally take on the appearance of a mutant. Your hands and feet elongate, your jawbone juts out and your forehead enlarges, giving you the look of something on the third rung of the food chain. This is commonly referred to as a Frankenstein type look. It should also be noted that growth hormone has side effects similar to that of anabolic steroids in that it can produce diabetes, liver damage, cardiovascular difficulties and possibly cancer. Perhaps Dr. Michael Culgan summed it up best in an informative article entitled “Growth Hormone.” His words are both revealing and frightening: It is 100% certain that growth hormone will be used illegally to promote muscle growth in athletes. It is 100% certain that some of the athletes using it will make huge gains. It is 100% certain that athletes will use excessive amounts of the drug and will suffer the side effects of acromegaly, including thickening and coarsening of the skin, darkening and overgrowth of bone ends in the hands, feet, and skull which causes an apeman appearance. It is 100% certain that people will die from using this drug. Enough said!!!!!!!