Juice or no Juice
On the other hand there is an advantage of using steroids. Steroids were developed in the 1930s to treat men that didn’t produce enough testosterone so they could develop properly. To this day we still use steroids to treat sick patients. You can treat Arthritis, cancer, asthma, inflammation and pain, and even to help you sleep, eat, and feel better. Even for these examples it can be dangerous. There have been cases in asthma patients where fungal infections in the mouth take place along with Hoarseness, bruising, and weight gain. To prevent these side effects, you shouldn’t take steroids for a long period of time. Even in cancer patients, it can be dangerous to consistently take steroids. You can have swelling, due to fluid retention, rise in blood pressure, and mood swings. In most cases, the side effects from steroid use in patients only last as long as you are using them. As soon as you stop taking them the side effects go away. People that need steroids to treat their sickness most times deal with the side effects that steroids bring about because the side effects of the steroids are much less than that of their sickness. Another claim I would like to make is the negative effects that it has on the body. There are a lot of underlying issues about what steroids do to the body. I would say the most important effect that it has on the body would be Inhibition of natural hormones. When you take steroids you most times are adding a hormone into the body. You might not think that do this isn’t bad but you are wrong. Adding a hormone like testosterone, which is found in most steroids, into your body in substantial doses will cause your body to send a message to your endocrine system to stop producing that hormone. The reason that your body does this is to create a balance or homeostasis inside the body. Introducing that much testosterone into your body, it tries to even everything out and tells the endocrine system to slow down or to stop making that certain hormone. In most cases, the inhibition is over once the steroids aren’t in the body anymore or the body senses that there are not high amounts of any particular hormone. In some cases if steroids are abused for long enough the body will actually stop making that testosterone. When this happens your testicles will no longer produce its own testosterone and you can become sterol. To combat this, most long term users of steroid take a drug like Human Chorionic Gonadotropin or anti-estrogens to confuse the endocrine system into thinking that the levels of testosterone are normal. The good thing is that, like smoking, as soon as a user stops the body will start to heal itself unless you have been exposed to these high levels of testosterone for years at a time.
On the other hand someone who is just taking steroids to get ahead of the curve, the side effects, such as kidney problems and for males the shrinking of the testicles and drastic mood changes. Females also have kidney problems, shrinking of the breasts, deepening of the voice, and growing of facial hair seem unreasonable to most, however people still take them. Slowly killing your body from the inside out to make it on a sports team or bench that extra weight seems a little drastic but, nevertheless people still do it. Being the best on a sports team and being “jacked” are just short- term goals; therefore you shouldn’t kill your body over something that you want today but not tomorrow. I assume that everybody wants to live as long as they can; however taking steroids that goal keeps gets farther and farther away. People today are just becoming too lazy and are willing to put their health at risk to become bigger and better faster however you can just do it naturally with all of the benefits and none of the side effects.
I think in order to keep all athletes from using steroids we coaches and athletic directors of all sports need to test for them more often than what has been to make sure that athletes do not have any opportunities to take them. We always hear on the news that a baseball player or a wrestler has tested positive for steroids. The underlining cause of these stories is because the leagues that they are in don’t monitor them close enough in the off season. If they still kept on them and tested them more we wouldn’t be having any news casts like we see so often.
Taking steroids would be a hard thing to do while on a sports team because everyone lifts at the same time which makes you think, there might be a group of people taking them. They all work out and do things as a team so someone has to see them using them especially the trainers. The trainers are the glue that holds the team together. They are with the players every day tending to their every injury. Being a trainer you should be looking out for the best interests of that individual along with the team. They should be attentive to their players making sure that steroid use is not a problem. People might think that being monitored all the time would be a little insidious but if you’re a professional athlete and you get paid millions of dollars, I’m sure having to take a few more drug tests shouldn’t make you that angry.
Another claim I would like to make is that taking steroids it is bad role modeling for kids. Children are the heart and soul of most sports. They will worship you for the good things, however they will be devastated in the bad thing that you do, which is why making poor decisions about taking body enhancing supplements such as steroids can make athletes out to be more like a villain then a hero. They will follow in your foot steps and become one of the thousands of children that start taking steroid so they can be accepted and known like their favorite sports player. The fact that children look up to sports players should be enough incentive for them to abstain from using steroids. Through hard work and determination instead of taking the easy way out, you can be the player that everyone knows and loves, it might take a little longer but in the long run it will pay off.
In my childhood there was nothing cooler than watching baseball with my dad, every time there was a game on he would come get me to watch it with him. I was a cubs fan and I will always be one but when I found out that Sammy Sosa had been taking steroids I was devastated. I was no longer a Sosa fan and when he got traded I thought it was one of the best moves that the Cubs have done. Steroids ruined one of the athletes that I looked up to and wanted to be. How would you feel if your favorite athlete tested positive for steroids? It’s like everything you were taught to believe was just a joke. Steroids for you might not seem that big of a deal, but think of the kids that look up to you and what it would mean to them if you were like my Sammy Sosa.
I hope you take into consideration the effect that steroids can have on your body and the people around you. If you like to gamble think of it like this, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages so taking steroids is not the optimal thing to do. With a little more inspection from coaches and sports trainers we could really crack down on the usage of steroids and on day make them obsolete from sports.
Works Cited
"Asthma Center." Partners HealthCare. Partners Asthma Center, 2010. Web. 22 Apr 2011.
Norman, Frost. "Vertual Mentor." Steroid Hysteria. American Medical Association, Novermber 2005. Web. 22 Apr 2011.
Roberts, Anthony. "Steroid Side Effects." Steroid.com. Steroid.com, 2011. Web. 22 Apr 2011.
Steroid Facts and Figures." Office of National Drug Controle Policy. Office of National Drug Controle Policy, 2010. Web. 22 Apr 2011.
