Drugs And Sports

Drugs and Sports - Athletes on Steroids

As the use of performance enhancing drugs is becoming more popular among athletes, many of them don't understand the risks involved in taking these drugs. Many people are looking for a quick way to build muscle, or to get stronger the fastest way possible. Using these performance aids may very well be a quick fix for many athletes, but taking these supplements is unethical and dangerous. Using special drugs to boost an athletes performance is degrading to sports and to the athlete. The human body can produce the same substances naturally, without taking drugs, but people continue to load up on these supplements such as creatine or androstenedione. If the athlete is patient and works hard he can achieve the same strength that he would obtain using supplements. Athletes are trying to cheat using unnatural shortcuts to gain their muscle instead of spending the long hours in the weight room.

Athletes should not take these supplements because it is harmful to their health, to sports, and to future athletes who follow their example by using these dangerous substances. These ergogenic aids popularity is growing among young teenage athletes which see big superstars taking certain drugs and they expect their athletic ability to be boosted if they take these drugs too. On the contrary, taking these supplements are especially dangers when used by adolescents.

The ergogenic aid called creatine is used to build muscle mass very rapidly. Many people consume this supplement without even knowing the consequences or potential hazardous when they use this drug. It is true that creatine will build muscle mass in most people and it works fast, but in contradiction to that it may not work for everyone and there are side effects which are just barely being found out and many hazardous which are unknown. Beth Fontenot who is a nutrition consultant and freelance nutrition writer wrote, "Athletes taking creatine have reported muscle cramps, pulls, and tears, as well as stomach distress... In addition all of the studies that have been done to date have looked at creatine use for a short period of time, generally about a month. No one knows the effects of long [term] supplementation." This should cause great concern to athletes taking supplements such as creatine. The short term effects are very painful and can cause serious complications in the future. Also the long term effects which are unknown should be very worrisome. Would someone jump off a cliff not knowing how far of a drop it is to the ground" It is common sense to not use a drug when the consequences are unknown.

Body building supplements for the most part will give the extra energy an athlete needs to do a few more reps in the weight room, which will help build muscle faster. However, the dangers greatly outweigh the advantages. Writer for Newsweek, Karen Springen, states that, "If it were so dangerous...it wouldn't be used so widely."(68) In response to that Joannie M. Schrof, writer for U.S. News& world Report, quoted San Francisco Giants head physician William Straw, "Too many athletes decide to use supplements until they are proven dangerous, when they should be holding off until they are proven safe."(53) A lot of supplements claim great strength gains and athletic improvement, but athletes get to caught up in the advantages that they don't even wait to hear what the disadvantages are.

Another common misunderstanding is that because your body produces it naturally that it must be safe. "Americans assume that anything natural must be safe. That's the buzz about creatine, a muscle building supplement that's become as common as sweaty towels in gyms across the country." (Springen, Karen 68) This attitude of natural is safe is very ignorant. This "process...happens naturally: creatine is made in the liver and kidneys and [is] ingested in meat and fish. Yet athletes often consume 20 or more grams a day?the amount found in 20 eight-ounce steaks." (Spingen, Karen 68) Although creatine is naturally produced in your body using creatine supplements is overloading your system with creatine which can cause serious side effects. Short term side effects include: dehydration, muscle cramping and tearing, nausea, diarrhea, and other stomach discomforts. "As with many other alleged ergogenic aids, creatine seems so promising to so many?but in turn may hide dangers that no coach, athlete, or parent should ever accept." (Fontenot, Beth 11) Long term effects are completely unknown at this point. This should strike fear into athletes using these wonder drugs. Athletes might very well be damaging their bodies more than they know by taking these supplements.

Their have been many performance enhancing drugs in the past, this is no knew craze, and many of these old drugs had the same potential as these new supplements, but they all turned out to be seriously harmful to the athlete's health. Among the side effects that were previously listed the old drugs also caused fatal diseases, such as cancer. Nobody knows the side effects of these ergogenic aids but athletes shouldn't volunteer themselves as guinea pigs, and find out after it's too late.

Another drug taken by athletes to give them an extra boost is androstenedione. Andro boosts the amount of testosterone in the athletes body when taken. Although this is also naturally produced in the body it's effects are very similar to that of anabolic steroids. Marion Jones author of "Mark McGwire's Muscle Pills: supplements or Steroids?" summarizes Karlis Ullis, M.D., a sports medicine doctor.

"In addition to producing tree-trunk muscles and power performance, an artificially jacked-up testosterone level can cause men to become infertile: the brain reads the artificially produced testosterone as natural, and signals the body to stop producing its own testosterone, Ullis says[.] Artificially high testosterone levels also stimulate