The Dangers Of Enhancing Drugs In Sports

The Dangers of Enhancing Drugs in Sports

From basketball to football to gymnastics, enhancing drugs have changed the face of sports as we know it. Performance enhancement drugs, like anabolic steroids, may help athletes perform better by giving them greater muscle strength; however, these athletes may not realize that these illegal drugs are highly dangerous. Is it rally worth risking ones life or health just to win that game or medal?

Performance enhancing drugs are substances that are used to increase certain physiologic functions. These drugs affect muscle strength, endurance, the ability to pump blood, the ability to breathe, liver function and kidney function. Taking these substances help athletes with their performance, which enables them to do better in competition. Performance enhancing drugs range in many types from dietary supplements to steroids.

The most common enhancing drugs are the anabolic steroids, which include testosterone, and its precursors; androstenedione and dehydroepiandrosterone sulfate. Dentalplans.com had an article breaking down the process of how steroids work:

Anabolic means we build up tissue. So, we as we eat protein, we get more

muscle. If we inject steroids that are anabolic, we hold on to that protein

and our muscle mass grows; we get stronger. The normal response to

running or weightlifting might be to grow muscles and become stronger

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to a degree. But to add anabolic steroids to that recipe, so the muscle get

bigger or stronger, is unnatural and there can be hazards from doing that.

When taking these drugs, they are consumed orally or by injection. I guess you could say one would not have to be afraid of needles, that or grin and bare it; athletes will go to major extremes to get to that certain strength.

Speaking of athletes, what athletes are taking these dangerous drugs? Savulescu (2004), states that enhancing drugs have been dated back to the late 1800's and the first official ban on "stimulating substances" was introduced in 1928, by the International Amateur Athletic Federation. He also goes on to state that performance enhancing drugs have been used as early as the games of the third Olympiad by Thomas Hicks. It is amazing to me that an illegal drug so dangerous, causing so much harm, being used still to this day by gymnast, baseball players, weightlifters, and other athletes. Barry Bonds, a well known baseball player, a few years ago on trial for the use of steroids and many other well known athletes being exposed for their use of steroids.

One may take the side of the United States and say if it were not for the use of enhancing drugs our country may not have one that medal; if it were not for the steroids, our favorite baseball team would not have one that big game; or if it were not for the enhancing drug that particular weightlifter may not win that weight competition. Athletes would use steroids not only to build mass and strength to muscle and bones, but also steroids increase delivery of

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oxygen to exercising tissue, they reduce weight, and performance enhancing drugs have the tendency to hide the use of other drugs that athletes may be taking. I guess there are some advantages to these drugs, but the use of the illegal enhancing drugs, anabolic steroids, are more dangerous than beneficial.

So how exactly is steroids dangerous, legality aside? Anabolic steroids are very harmful to ones health, even for women. When women take steroids, Freudenrich (2006) states, that the excessive concentrations causes male characteristics to develop and interfere with normal female functions, such as: stimulating hair growth on the face and body, interfere with the menstrual cycle and possibly causing infertility, thicken the vocal cords (which causes a deeper voice), and if pregnant it may interfere with the developing fetus. Freudenrich (2006), also adds the affects in a male to be as followed, baldness, infertility, and breast development. Those were just some of the physical disadvantages; there are several side effects that interfere with ones health such as, jaundice, liver damage, and pancreas. Just when you thought that that was enough for disadvantages, one will also suffer from mood swings, depression, and aggression because they act on various centers of the brain, also adds Freudenrich (2006). Volkow (2006), goes on to add some other dangers of steroids which are: heart attacks, strokes, and liver tumors, not to mention if you are injecting steroids with a needle you take the chance of contracting HIV/AIDS or hepatitis b and c. All of these disadvantages and athletes still risk the lives of themselves and other teammates taking these very addictive drugs.

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Performance enhancing drugs are not only addictive and dangerous, but they are illegal. Collin states, "Under the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990, which applies across the country,