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DEATH IS WAITING IN THE WINGS
Steroids Versus Natural Growth
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.musculardevelopment.com/wings.html
By Dr. Michael Colgan, PhD, CCN, The Colgan Institute
For the last 23 years I've done nutrition and exercise programs for thousands of athletes, including Mr. and Ms. Olympia bodybuilders, Olympic track and field champions, World boxing champions, Tour de France cyclists, Super Bowl players, PGA tour winners, Indianapolis racers, even Grand Prix equestrians. I've seen it all.
Most of these athletes did not use anabolic steroids to enhance their performance. They use effort and guts and an indomitable will, and the best nutrition and training programs I and their coaches could devise. Against my advice, some turned to steroids. When they did, and could not be dissuaded, I continued to help them with nutrition and exercise, and when steroids became illegal, even showed them how to beat drug testing.
From this two decades of experience, I want to pull some live examples that show why I am, and always have been, so much against steroid use. At the same time I want to give you a glimpse of the new science that now makes it possible to achieve as good or better performance without steroids. And, most important, that performance will continue to improve for many years, long after the flash-in-the-pan heavy steroid users have declined into disability and disease.
Look Back in Disgust
Many of the young athletes I see today are unaware that steroids only recently became illegal. During the 60s and 70s, tens of thousands of American physicians prescribed steroids freely to athletes, and they and their pharmaceutical henchmen grew rich to the tune of tens of billions, yes, tens of billions of dollars.(1) Make no mistake, the proliferation of steroid use throughout America was caused directly by irresponsible and greed-motivated inaction of the American Medical Association, aided and abetted by egomaniacal sports officials nationwide.
It started in 1954 with Dr. John Ziegler, physician to the Olympic weightlifting team. At the World Weightlifting Championships in Vienna, he learned that the much superior Soviet team was using synthetic derivatives of testosterone. On his return to the U.S., Ziegler persuaded CIBA pharmaceuticals to develop methandrostenolone (Dianabol). Tested on top weightlifters at the York Barbell Club in Pennsylvania, Dianabol produced spectacular increases in strength. A slew of similar drugs quickly followed, and steroids took center stage as the quick and easy road to athletic success. By 1969, Track and Field News, the official journal of The Athletics Congress (TAC), called anabolic steroids the "Breakfast of Champions."(2)
But death was waiting in the wings. Ziegler wrecked his own heart with steroids. As he lay dying in November 1983, he warned everyone in a tape recorded message:
"I wish I had never heard the word steroid... All these young kids... they don't realize the terrible price they are going to pay."(3)
Cardiovascular Damage
Cardiovascular and other damage makes steroid use easy to spot. One certain effect is depression of HDL cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol fraction that "scrubs" your arteries clean.(4) Another effect is elevation of total cholesterol.(5) A third effect is liver inflammation. I have numerous cases in my files of young athletes, who admitted to steroids only after their normally high HDL levels took a sudden dive, and their cholesterol and liver counts went up, and I told them straight their blood tests revealed steroid use.
Low HDL levels are a major risk for heart attack. So are high cholesterol levels. But, they were never a great concern to me in young, healthy athletes. Nor was liver inflammation, because all these abnormalities usually returned to normal on cessation of steroid use. The real worry is that low HDLs, high cholesterol and liver inflammation reveal steroid effects that are also doing irreversible damage to the heart and arteries.
One biggie that accompanies steroids, is silent and symptomless thickening of the left ventricle of the heart, until it can no longer function in correct rhythm with the right ventricle.(6, 7) Another biggie is increased platelet aggregation, that is increased tendency of the blood to form clots. The older the steroid user the worse the risk.(8)
Cardiovascular damage from steroids has killed or incapacitated a long line of famous athletes from John Ziegler to Steve Vallie, Larry Pacifico, Steve Courson and many others in my files that I cannot name, because their use of steroids is not public knowledge. Steroids are not usually tested for on autopsy, and in most cases would not be detected anyway. But numerous researchers agreed with me that the increased incidence of heart attacks in aging athletes in the US may be linked to heart and artery damage from steroid use years or even decades previously.
Despite the mounting plague of steroid-caused disease, and numerous controlled studies to prove it, it took until 1988 for government to act against steroid-pushing physicians, and make it an offense to prescribe steroids to healthy people. Then in 1990 the Anabolic Steroids Control Act made it a felony to sell steroids on pain of five years in jail, forfeiture of your property, and a $250,000 fine.
Use still continues, but mostly with black market garbage steroids, over 90% of which are fake and ineffective, and often contain toxic stimulants such as strychnine, or are contaminated with E. coli or other organic matter.(8) If you use black market steroids especially those from Mexico, you're thicker'n two planks.
Tendon Damage
Even when they manage to get the genuine juice, steroid users who blindly deny the damage to their hearts, readily accept that steroids put tendons at terrible risk. Studies show tendon damage every time, when animals fed steroids are made to exercise.(9)
We know now how it occurs. Tendons are those white bands, composed mainly of densely-packed, parallel collagen fibers, that join your muscles to bones and other structures. Steroids cause the body to make abnormal collagen, so they weaken tendons more than other body bits. Especially weakened is the muscle-tendon junction.(10)
Pathological effects on collagen is also a big reason why steroid users quickly get lined and wrinkled, because of all the abnormal collagen deposited in their skin. Look at some of the haggard faces of IFBB champions still in their 30's, and you'll see what I mean. (Tip: You have to look at them in person because the mag photos are air-brushed.)
Steroids Compared With Drug-Free Growth
Here are two contrasting examples from my computer files: Bodybuilder A, the steroid user, I'll call George to protect his identity. Bodybuilder B is Doug Benbow, well-known Masters champion and a TV model for the Soloflex weight training machine. Both men are the same age, both are hard gainers, both similar bodyweight. George turned to steroids when he failed to make the cut in a local bodybuilding show. Doug has never used steroids.
Over the last 10 years of my records, George put on 15 lbs., and came in 3rd in the same bodybuilding show, after one year of steroid use. He passed Doug in muscle by a good 10 pounds. In 1988 he was out because of elbow tendon injuries. Doug remained injury free and, using decent vitamin supplementation, good protein, and hard training, won a regional masters title.
I didn't hear from George again until 1991, when he took a program with me to "make a comeback." He began heavy steroids again too, against my advice. His use included growth hormone, 3 IU three times a week, clenbuterol up to 200 mcg a day, testosterone enanthate 100 mg weekly, and a sundry stack of Deca-Durabolin, primobolan and parabolin, depending on availability. That year he came in 9th in a regional. Meanwhile, training steadily without injury, and using creatine monohydrate, ion-exchange whey protein concentrate, and decent antioxidants, Doug won another contest and landed a plum job as a Soloflex TV model.
In 1992 George complained of sore elbows all the time, and took narcotic analgesics daily for pain. Midyear he suffered a severe rotator cuff injury and succumbed to corticosteroid injections. A routine physical check also revealed an EKG irregularity, that prompted his physician to ban weight-lifting.
George stopped the steroids and sank into deep depression. I have seen it many times. Steroids are shown in numerous studies to cause psychological dependence and major depression on withdrawal from heavy use.(11) The depression is often so bad it fails to respond to common antidepressants, and requires hospitalization. One recent report suggests that electroconvulsive therapy might do the trick.(12) Yetch!
Reduced back to fence post stature, a much subdued George still works out lightly, "for fitness," but has little hope of ever competing again, or of doing any vigorous sport. Doug is still fighting fit, training as hard as ever, and kicking butt against a lot of younger men. So what does a single case comparison prove? Nothing! But if I could show you the hundreds of similar comparisons in my files, you might think differently. In the magazines and other media, apart from one or two high-profile cases like Benaziza, you see only the successes. Most of those killed or injured by steroids simply disappear without notice. And for reasons of ego and shame the living casualties hardly ever tell.
If you want longevity in your athletic career; and real pride in your accomplishment of athletic success by effort, guts and willpower, don't do steroids. If you do, don't call me when they cause you problems. I'm too busy these days working with drug-free athletes for the 2000 Olympics--and at 58, training hard myself for a coming triathlon.
REFERENCES:
1. Le Breo D. Of MDs and muscles-Lessons from two retired steroid doctors. J Amer Med Assoc, 1990;263: 1697-1705.
2. Hendershott J. Steroids: Breakfast of Champions. Track and Field News, 1969;22:3.
3. Almond E, Even the man who was in control regretted the results of his research. Los Angeles Times, 1984,1 February J8.
4. Kuipers H, et al. Influence of anabolic steroids on body composition, blood pressure and liver function in athletes. Int J Sports Med, 1991;12:413-418.
5. Keith RE, et al. Nutritional status and lipid profile of trained steroid-using bodybuilders. Int J Sports Nutr, 1996;6:247-254.
6. Salke RC, et al. Ventricular size and function in bodybuilders using anabolic steroids. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 1985;17:701-704.
7. De Piccoli B, et al. Anabolic steroid use in bodybuilders: An echocardiographic study of left ventricular morphology and function. Int J Sports Med, 1991; 12:408-412.
8. Ferenchick G, et al. Androgenic/anabolic steroid use and platelet aggregation. A pilot study in weightlifters. Amer J Med Sci, 1992;303:78-82.
9. Michna H. Tendon injuries induced by exercise and anabolic steroids in mice, Int Orthop, 1987; 11:157-162.
10. Wood TO, et al. The effect of exercise and anabolic steroids on the mechanical properties and crimp morphology of the rat tendon. Am J Sports Med 1988; 16:153-158.
11. Bahrke MS, et al. Psychological and behavioral effects of endogenous testosterone and anabolic androgenic steroids: An update. Sports Med, 1996;6:367-390
12. Allnut S, Chaimowitz G. Anabolic steroid withdrawal depression: a case report. Can J Psychiat, 1994;39:317-318.
Steroids Versus Natural Growth
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.musculardevelopment.com/wings.html
By Dr. Michael Colgan, PhD, CCN, The Colgan Institute
For the last 23 years I've done nutrition and exercise programs for thousands of athletes, including Mr. and Ms. Olympia bodybuilders, Olympic track and field champions, World boxing champions, Tour de France cyclists, Super Bowl players, PGA tour winners, Indianapolis racers, even Grand Prix equestrians. I've seen it all.
Most of these athletes did not use anabolic steroids to enhance their performance. They use effort and guts and an indomitable will, and the best nutrition and training programs I and their coaches could devise. Against my advice, some turned to steroids. When they did, and could not be dissuaded, I continued to help them with nutrition and exercise, and when steroids became illegal, even showed them how to beat drug testing.
From this two decades of experience, I want to pull some live examples that show why I am, and always have been, so much against steroid use. At the same time I want to give you a glimpse of the new science that now makes it possible to achieve as good or better performance without steroids. And, most important, that performance will continue to improve for many years, long after the flash-in-the-pan heavy steroid users have declined into disability and disease.
Look Back in Disgust
Many of the young athletes I see today are unaware that steroids only recently became illegal. During the 60s and 70s, tens of thousands of American physicians prescribed steroids freely to athletes, and they and their pharmaceutical henchmen grew rich to the tune of tens of billions, yes, tens of billions of dollars.(1) Make no mistake, the proliferation of steroid use throughout America was caused directly by irresponsible and greed-motivated inaction of the American Medical Association, aided and abetted by egomaniacal sports officials nationwide.
It started in 1954 with Dr. John Ziegler, physician to the Olympic weightlifting team. At the World Weightlifting Championships in Vienna, he learned that the much superior Soviet team was using synthetic derivatives of testosterone. On his return to the U.S., Ziegler persuaded CIBA pharmaceuticals to develop methandrostenolone (Dianabol). Tested on top weightlifters at the York Barbell Club in Pennsylvania, Dianabol produced spectacular increases in strength. A slew of similar drugs quickly followed, and steroids took center stage as the quick and easy road to athletic success. By 1969, Track and Field News, the official journal of The Athletics Congress (TAC), called anabolic steroids the "Breakfast of Champions."(2)
But death was waiting in the wings. Ziegler wrecked his own heart with steroids. As he lay dying in November 1983, he warned everyone in a tape recorded message:
"I wish I had never heard the word steroid... All these young kids... they don't realize the terrible price they are going to pay."(3)
Cardiovascular Damage
Cardiovascular and other damage makes steroid use easy to spot. One certain effect is depression of HDL cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol fraction that "scrubs" your arteries clean.(4) Another effect is elevation of total cholesterol.(5) A third effect is liver inflammation. I have numerous cases in my files of young athletes, who admitted to steroids only after their normally high HDL levels took a sudden dive, and their cholesterol and liver counts went up, and I told them straight their blood tests revealed steroid use.
Low HDL levels are a major risk for heart attack. So are high cholesterol levels. But, they were never a great concern to me in young, healthy athletes. Nor was liver inflammation, because all these abnormalities usually returned to normal on cessation of steroid use. The real worry is that low HDLs, high cholesterol and liver inflammation reveal steroid effects that are also doing irreversible damage to the heart and arteries.
One biggie that accompanies steroids, is silent and symptomless thickening of the left ventricle of the heart, until it can no longer function in correct rhythm with the right ventricle.(6, 7) Another biggie is increased platelet aggregation, that is increased tendency of the blood to form clots. The older the steroid user the worse the risk.(8)
Cardiovascular damage from steroids has killed or incapacitated a long line of famous athletes from John Ziegler to Steve Vallie, Larry Pacifico, Steve Courson and many others in my files that I cannot name, because their use of steroids is not public knowledge. Steroids are not usually tested for on autopsy, and in most cases would not be detected anyway. But numerous researchers agreed with me that the increased incidence of heart attacks in aging athletes in the US may be linked to heart and artery damage from steroid use years or even decades previously.
Despite the mounting plague of steroid-caused disease, and numerous controlled studies to prove it, it took until 1988 for government to act against steroid-pushing physicians, and make it an offense to prescribe steroids to healthy people. Then in 1990 the Anabolic Steroids Control Act made it a felony to sell steroids on pain of five years in jail, forfeiture of your property, and a $250,000 fine.
Use still continues, but mostly with black market garbage steroids, over 90% of which are fake and ineffective, and often contain toxic stimulants such as strychnine, or are contaminated with E. coli or other organic matter.(8) If you use black market steroids especially those from Mexico, you're thicker'n two planks.
Tendon Damage
Even when they manage to get the genuine juice, steroid users who blindly deny the damage to their hearts, readily accept that steroids put tendons at terrible risk. Studies show tendon damage every time, when animals fed steroids are made to exercise.(9)
We know now how it occurs. Tendons are those white bands, composed mainly of densely-packed, parallel collagen fibers, that join your muscles to bones and other structures. Steroids cause the body to make abnormal collagen, so they weaken tendons more than other body bits. Especially weakened is the muscle-tendon junction.(10)
Pathological effects on collagen is also a big reason why steroid users quickly get lined and wrinkled, because of all the abnormal collagen deposited in their skin. Look at some of the haggard faces of IFBB champions still in their 30's, and you'll see what I mean. (Tip: You have to look at them in person because the mag photos are air-brushed.)
Steroids Compared With Drug-Free Growth
Here are two contrasting examples from my computer files: Bodybuilder A, the steroid user, I'll call George to protect his identity. Bodybuilder B is Doug Benbow, well-known Masters champion and a TV model for the Soloflex weight training machine. Both men are the same age, both are hard gainers, both similar bodyweight. George turned to steroids when he failed to make the cut in a local bodybuilding show. Doug has never used steroids.
Over the last 10 years of my records, George put on 15 lbs., and came in 3rd in the same bodybuilding show, after one year of steroid use. He passed Doug in muscle by a good 10 pounds. In 1988 he was out because of elbow tendon injuries. Doug remained injury free and, using decent vitamin supplementation, good protein, and hard training, won a regional masters title.
I didn't hear from George again until 1991, when he took a program with me to "make a comeback." He began heavy steroids again too, against my advice. His use included growth hormone, 3 IU three times a week, clenbuterol up to 200 mcg a day, testosterone enanthate 100 mg weekly, and a sundry stack of Deca-Durabolin, primobolan and parabolin, depending on availability. That year he came in 9th in a regional. Meanwhile, training steadily without injury, and using creatine monohydrate, ion-exchange whey protein concentrate, and decent antioxidants, Doug won another contest and landed a plum job as a Soloflex TV model.
In 1992 George complained of sore elbows all the time, and took narcotic analgesics daily for pain. Midyear he suffered a severe rotator cuff injury and succumbed to corticosteroid injections. A routine physical check also revealed an EKG irregularity, that prompted his physician to ban weight-lifting.
George stopped the steroids and sank into deep depression. I have seen it many times. Steroids are shown in numerous studies to cause psychological dependence and major depression on withdrawal from heavy use.(11) The depression is often so bad it fails to respond to common antidepressants, and requires hospitalization. One recent report suggests that electroconvulsive therapy might do the trick.(12) Yetch!
Reduced back to fence post stature, a much subdued George still works out lightly, "for fitness," but has little hope of ever competing again, or of doing any vigorous sport. Doug is still fighting fit, training as hard as ever, and kicking butt against a lot of younger men. So what does a single case comparison prove? Nothing! But if I could show you the hundreds of similar comparisons in my files, you might think differently. In the magazines and other media, apart from one or two high-profile cases like Benaziza, you see only the successes. Most of those killed or injured by steroids simply disappear without notice. And for reasons of ego and shame the living casualties hardly ever tell.
If you want longevity in your athletic career; and real pride in your accomplishment of athletic success by effort, guts and willpower, don't do steroids. If you do, don't call me when they cause you problems. I'm too busy these days working with drug-free athletes for the 2000 Olympics--and at 58, training hard myself for a coming triathlon.
REFERENCES:
1. Le Breo D. Of MDs and muscles-Lessons from two retired steroid doctors. J Amer Med Assoc, 1990;263: 1697-1705.
2. Hendershott J. Steroids: Breakfast of Champions. Track and Field News, 1969;22:3.
3. Almond E, Even the man who was in control regretted the results of his research. Los Angeles Times, 1984,1 February J8.
4. Kuipers H, et al. Influence of anabolic steroids on body composition, blood pressure and liver function in athletes. Int J Sports Med, 1991;12:413-418.
5. Keith RE, et al. Nutritional status and lipid profile of trained steroid-using bodybuilders. Int J Sports Nutr, 1996;6:247-254.
6. Salke RC, et al. Ventricular size and function in bodybuilders using anabolic steroids. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 1985;17:701-704.
7. De Piccoli B, et al. Anabolic steroid use in bodybuilders: An echocardiographic study of left ventricular morphology and function. Int J Sports Med, 1991; 12:408-412.
8. Ferenchick G, et al. Androgenic/anabolic steroid use and platelet aggregation. A pilot study in weightlifters. Amer J Med Sci, 1992;303:78-82.
9. Michna H. Tendon injuries induced by exercise and anabolic steroids in mice, Int Orthop, 1987; 11:157-162.
10. Wood TO, et al. The effect of exercise and anabolic steroids on the mechanical properties and crimp morphology of the rat tendon. Am J Sports Med 1988; 16:153-158.
11. Bahrke MS, et al. Psychological and behavioral effects of endogenous testosterone and anabolic androgenic steroids: An update. Sports Med, 1996;6:367-390
12. Allnut S, Chaimowitz G. Anabolic steroid withdrawal depression: a case report. Can J Psychiat, 1994;39:317-318.
