The Olympic games start tomorrow. We get to see the best athletes in the world compete against each other. We will see courage, tears and triumph. We will see the result of what has being months and months of preparation. Tough dedication, long training sessions. It will all rest in Athens. Everyone will go in to it wanting to win. Why wouldn't they? It's what it's all about. You don't dedicate so much of your time to something you think you are going to lose in. Of course the taking part counts, but the passion for the winning has to be there, otherwise whats the point. The world of athletes is a very competitive place to be, and some will take that extra step to win. Hence the performance enhancing drugs people have being known to take. Anabolic steroids have being going round since the 1950's. Recent events such as scandal in the US involving the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative and its alleged supply of the illegal anabolic steroid THG to some of the world's top athletes, shows that this is actually a big business. Time and energy is put into producing these drugs. Making sure they get better, and putting time and effort into lab research to see just what improvements can be made, even though it is illegal.
For those who don't know about this drug (which I'm guessing is a few of us!) here is a brief history, Anabolic steroids were first produced in the 1930's and were later used in the 1960's by Russian weightlifters, and was soon caught on to by the American weightlifters. Over time it caught on into other areas of athletics, a ban was imposed, and later random drug testing was introduced, as the ban had little impact. So what do these steroids actually do? They give you more of the hormone testosterone, which gives you rapid development of the muscles and skeletal tissue. So it can improve speed, strength and in some cases stamina. It also comes with side effects though acne, mood swings, loss of hair, lack of sleep. Are all well known affects of taking these steroids. Too much testosterone triggers compensation reactions in the body that convert the male hormone into oestrogen – the female equivalent. The result is enlarged breasts, shrinking testes and low sperm counts. So if a male takes to much of this steroid then these are some of the things he can expect.
It is very difficult to tell just how much impact drugs do have. Because no one actually admits to taking them. No scientific tests can be completed. So just how much improvement they cause is unknown. Until now. Dr Robert Weatherby, gathered twenty four men together from all over the world in Australia. These men were pretty equally matched in age, fitness level and weight. None were professional athletes. That's important, but they all had a good general level of fitness. They were split into two groups. A steroid group and a group who used legal perfomance aids. Eighteen of the twenty four were in the steroid group, and the remaining six tested the legal performing aids. The eighteen were again split in to two groups of nine. Nine were given Anabolic steroids and nine were given a harmless placebo. No one knew out of that eighteen who was given what. Not the participants or the scientists. They went weekly over the six week period to recive their six injections in total. So in theory there was three groups. The steroid group, the placebos (no one knew who was in these groups though) and then the legal performing aids group. The legal performing aids group were given such things as caffine and colostrum. Some of these have being banned, or have had limits set on them for just how much you can take, not anymore though.
These twenty four young men lived and trained together, they were given baseline tests, before taking any drugs, to see what their basic level of health was, and were again tested at the three week mid point, and again after the full six weeks. They also had a mini games, where they took part in three events to test, strength, stamina and speed. In a 5000m long distance run, a 100m sprint, and throwing the shot put. They did this at the beginning and the end of the study, to compare results. It wasn't who won what that counted as much, as who improved the most. They all took part in a training programme, as steroids are pretty useless if you don't train at the same time as using them, and they did this over the six week period, they had to keep up a good level of fitness. As the participants didn't know who was on steroids and who wasn't, it was a guessing game all the way through. Some said they suffered from lack of sleep, or noticed they had more energy, or were more moody. You have to wonder if this was more just a psychological thing though, that they convinced themselves that they had the drug, and made up the symptoms in the head. This can also be said for real athletes who do take steroids, is alot of it to do with not actually taking the drug, but they psychologically convince themselves it will give them the advantage, and that helps them?
So what were the results of these tests? Not surprisingly the results showed that the group taking steroids did improve by a larger margin than anyone else. The surprising thing is that how fast they actually worked. Usually they would be expected to work at 4-6 weeks, but at the 3 week mark you could see a change in the athletes using steroids;
Average improvement after three weeks
Control group
Steroid group
Bench press
(measures upper body strength)
1.8%
8.2%
Ten second cycle sprint
(measures total power output)
0.2%
8.1%
So they may improve your chances of winning a gold medal, but they do have some worrying long term effects.....
"Even at the relatively low doses given to the volunteers, the drug had some serious, and potentially harmful, side effects. Analysis of the blood samples taken throughout the trial showed that the drug suppressed the activity of the natural killer cells, which form part of the body's armoury against viruses and tumours. 'For the first time, we've been able to show that androgenic anabolic steroids have a seriously detrimental effect on a specific part of the human body's immune system,' says Weatherby."
"And while the body was losing its ability to fight infection, the mind was being remoulded in some alarming ways. According to Roseanne Coutts, the team's exercise psychologist, individuals within the steroid group began to show less empathy for those around them. This was not increased aggression, but a decrease in their consideration for other people's feelings."
"Testosterone enanthate is just one drug among many. Each anabolic steroid will have some properties peculiar to itself. But Robert Weatherby seems in no doubt about the conclusions to be drawn from this particular experiment. 'If a person as part of their training programme is tempted to use an anabolic type steroid I think it will certainly improve their chances of winning a gold medal.' But his message comes with an important qualifier. This drug could seriously damage your health."
This is all very interesting information, and though this research is still in its early stages, and it has being suggested will actually encourage drug use from up and coming young athletes, if we take the results into consideration, it does raise alot of questions. It does improve your chances, but it doesn't gurantee a win, and the moral issues that also come with it are to be weighed up. Do you really want to have a win, that you didn't 100% earn, I know I would prefer to know if I could do it myself or not without the help of any drugs. Just food for thought I guess.