Anabolic Steroids Information and Side Effects
What are Anabolic Steroids
Anabolic steroids and the many variations in which they come are synthetic drugs that have been deliberately created in a laboratory because they mimic the important growth hormones like testosterone and HGH. Sometimes anabolic steroids can be a life-saving drug for those with anything from AIDS to adolescents born with low testosterone production.
Anabolic steroids can be administered through skin cream but should not be compared to corticosteroids. From injecting directly into the muscle or fat to anabolic gel there are many different types of anabolic steroids and many different ways to get it into the bloodstream.
Anabolic Steroids Side Effects
The long-term side-affects are serious and range from facial hair in women to gynocomastia and acne in men, including shrunken testicles, reduced sperm count and male pattern baldness. Other potentially life threatening issues when taking steroids include high blood pressure, higher cholesterol plus well documented proof that the chances of tumors developing are three times more.
Something you might already have heard of is "roid rage" often associated with athletes taking steroids. Mood swings and depression is common amongst users. Often the user becomes addicted and will not train when he/she is not taking some kind of stimulant.
The problem with steroid users is that they are steroid abusers as they take upwards of 100 times more than the recommended dose for which the medication was original created. Stacking different steroids on top of each other and taken at the same time is also common amongst steroid users.
Although nobody really knows how many "sports people" take steroids the testing has improved. In 2003 steroid testing was first done in baseball where they found about 5% of all professional players taking some form of steroid on a regular basis. Taking steroids when a sports person is a professional makes the crime even worse for moral reasons. However sophisticated technology used in creating undetectable steroids and designer drugs that are difficult for the steroid testers to find are very common.
The problem is that anabolic steroid use will usually extend far beyond just the professional players in any sport. For example a survey done on high school boys taking steroids revealed more than 2.5% have taken steroids at some time during their school lives.
Steroid abuse is addictive, when the morality of taking any sports enhancement has been passed, the person becomes reliant on getting results leading to larger and larger dosages. The chances of a regular steroid user developing cancer or heart, liver and kidney disease are more than doubled.
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