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U.S. Medicine Chronicle 11/24/09
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
Steroids Killing Sports
Most athletes that use steroids take it through a syringe
One of the biggest issues in sports on every level is the use of steroids. Players are willing to do almost anything in order to be successful and become known. However, many of those players are looking towards steroids as a way to get that done. Rather than work hard and give 100 percent athletes are deciding to take the easier way and to take steroids. Use of illegal performance
enhancing drugs in sports is giving a player an unfair advantage over someone who may be working really hard. It takes away the heart and hustle about sports. It makes the teams that work the hardest and deserve it the most go down in failure. A team that supplies it’s players with performance enhancing drugs doesn’t have to work as hard but still gets the glory and the fame. If this awful epidemic of steroid use in athletics doesn’t end soon athletics could be headed in a very bad direction. Steroids are killing sports one player at a time whether a
Definitions
player thinks its benefiting his team or not it is completely unacceptable and a bad way to go about participating in athletics.
ral steroid, an artificial version of testosterone. Dianabol– first perform-
ance enhancing drug that wasn't simply testosterone Hypothamalus– a group
of nerve cells at the base of the brain that controls the body’s testosterone
How it all started The beginning of performance enhancing drugs began in the world weightlifting championships in 1954. The Russians had discovered a way to receive testosterone injections. There were many different cases before that in the use of performance enhancing drugs was in question but not proved such as the 1936 Berlin Olympics where testosterone preparations were
Epitestosterone– a natu-
Table of contents
taken by the German Olympic team. Back in Greece Olympic competitors wouldn’t eat anything but meat for up to 3 months prior to the competition. These were the sacrifices they had to make in order to win the prize money. Dr. John Ziegler, the team physician for the United States at the time discovered Dianabol. Dianabol was the first performance enhancing drug that was-
n’t simply testosterone. Dianabol was available to anyone looking for an extra edge. It allowed new muscle to be built at a rate that was much more rapid than would otherwise be possible. This was just the beginning of the horrible use of performance enhancing drugs in sports.
What steroids do to the Brain and body
2
MLB: The Steroid Era
2
Steroids in the Olympics
3
Steroids in High School Sports
3
Bibliography and Resources 4
U.S. MEDICINE CHRONICLE
Page 2
What Steroids do to the brain and body
The image similar to the one on the left are typically the Steroids can have very seriously affect the brain and body
“For the use of steroids there have been 34 players implicated,16 admitted, and 25 suspended.”
ideal steroid-user in being
very muscular. This happens because anabolic steroids contain artificial testosterone which causes muscles to grow. As a appealing as this is to athletes it is the same to regular people. Many nonathletes take steroids to build muscle.(2) However, anabolic steroids weaken the immune system. They can permanently stop bones from growing and cause liver damage or cancer. They affect the limbic system which influences your mood and is involved in learning and memory. This
MLB: The Steroid Era Above all other sports baseball has become the most serious concern in the players taking steroids. Over the past decade star after star has fallen to allegations or convictions of steroid use. These players of many include sluggers Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, Mark McGwire, Miguel Tejada, and Barry Bonds. Steroids are taking the integrity out of Major League baseball. Since the massive list of play-
ers on the Mitchell Report released on December 13, 2007 baseball just hasn’t been the same. For the use of steroids there have been 34 players implicated, 16 admitted, and 25 suspended.(4) Baseball more than any other sport has had to deal with the use of steroids. It has gotten to the point where you can’t trust the best players in the game anymore. In the back of your mind there is always the thought that he
means that steroids can cause someone’s mood to change, sometimes a small change, other times quite radical. The hypothalamus is a group of nerve cells at the base of the brain that controls the body’s testosterone. Steroids change the message the hypothalamus sends to the body which disrupts the normal hormone function. This can cause girls to grow facial hair and attain a deepened voice. For boys it causes the testes to shrink lessening the sperm count and reproductive activity. These are all very serious negatives to the use of steroids and are just a few reasons why steroids are not worth the risk.
will be the next to allegedly take steroids. It is ruining baseball and it needs to end now or else this steroid era will affect baseball forever.
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
Page 3
Steroids in the Olympics Steroids in the Olympics began with the German Democratic republic starting a program that provided anabolic steroids for their athletes in International Sports Competition. 1972 was the first year the Olympics started a full-scale drug testing program. The Testosterone/ Epitestosterone test was developed by the International Olympic Committee.(6) This test measured the levels of testosterone against the levels of epitestosterone; if the testosterone level was found to be six times more than that of the epitestosterone level, it can be concluded that the extra testoster-
one was not produced naturally and that some form of testosterone was illegally and artificially induced by the athlete.(6) The Germans were a step ahead though developing a form of testosterone that leaves the body quickly and restores the testosterone level back to normal. It was able to go through this process within three days of testing. In the early 1990s the Germans were finally caught and there was a major scandal. Since then there have been many steroids incidents in the Olympics such as Ben Johnson, a Canadian sprinter who was stripped of his gold medal in 1988 and Szymon
Kolecki, a Polish weightlifter who was not allowed to participate in the Olympic Games in Athens.(5) These are all exam-
ples of how steroids have negatively affected Olympic sports. Steroids have negatively affected the Olympics for years
among high
Steroids destroying high school sports High school sports is all about the doing it for he love of the game and for bond of a strong team. Right? I guess not anymore. More and more high school student-athletes are deciding to take the risk and use steroids. According to a survey by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, steroid use among high school students more than doubled between 1991 and 2003. 5% of teen boys and 2.5% of teen girls have used some form of anabolic steroids.(1) High school student-athletes are under intense pressure to get a college scholarship or win that they will do anything that it takes and sometimes steroids is the solution. More than
6% of 15,000 students surveyed admitted trying steroid pills or injections.(3) However, less than 4% of the nation’s high schools were testing for steroids, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations’ survey of athletic directors.(3) Steroids are starting to ruin high school sports. Kids put the individual in front of the team when they take performance enhancing drugs and the sad truth is that most of the time coaches don’t mind. It is unfair for a high school athlete to take steroids and have an advantage over an athlete who is working his butt off to win a championship or get a scholarship. It
“Steroid use
school students puts a hard-working team that deserves to win at a disadvantage if they go up against teams that they lose to because of their unfair advantage in using steroids. The love for the game and the bond of a team soon turns into boot camp.
more than doubled between 1991 and 2003.”
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Bibliography (1)Dowshen, Steven. “Steroids”. Kids Health. March 2007. 11/17/09. http://kidshealth.org/parent/fitness/safety/steroids.html# (2)Lemonick, Michael. “Steroids: Not Just For Athletes.” Time Magazine. 10/12/07. (3)Nevius, C.W. “Impact of Steroids felt across High School Sports.” San Francisco Chronicle.
9/20/06.
(4)Roberts, Anthony. “Steroids in Baseball and Sports.” Steroid.com. N/A. 11/17/09. http://www.steroid.com/steroids-insports.php (5)Schlensker, Todd. “Steroids in Olympic Games.” N/A. 10/22/04. 11/17/09. http://www.nku.edu/~issues/steroids/Pages/olympics.htm (6)N/A. “The History of Steroid Use in the Olympics.” Steroid Sources. 3/5/09. 11/17/09. http:// www.steroidsources.com/Steroid-Information/2009/03/the-history-of-steroid-usein-the-olympics/
Resources The National Institute on Drug Abuse
Friends with a Better Plan
6001 Executive Blvd, Bethesda, MD
5622 Delmar Blvd, St. Louis, MO
Information@nida.nih.gov
friendscap@sbcglobal.net
301-443-1124
314-361-5482
Steroid.com. 2009. Steroid Community Center. 11/17/09. http://www.steroid.com/drugprof.php Gallaway, Steve. The Steroid Bible. Belle Intl, 1997.