Steroids In Sports

Have you ever wondered why some athletes can hit farther, run faster, and jump higher? Well steroids are drugs used to enhance physical performance so that athletes young and old can do things never before imagined. Steroids are illegal drugs due to the side effects that they produce and the harm that they cause to the body of the user. Because of these side effects, the drugs were implemented into schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act of 1991.

Steroids have a history in the sporting community for about 80 years. They first appeared in the 30's when testosterone was first isolated as a male hormone from the male testes. Once it was isolated, it was then easy to duplicate in the form of synthetic testosterone. This was the first form of an actual performance enhancing drug that actually worked. But with new drugs come unexpected results.

Because of taking the testosterone injections, the men were suddenly losing their ability to make it naturally. So once they took a couple of regular injections, the men and women even would stop producing the hormone. Women that took injections would develop male characteristics known as androgenic properties. This included deepening of the voice, facial hair, and development of an Adams apple.While these characteristics did increase in men, the results weren't as staggering as with the women.

So what does all this have to do with sports? Athletes use them so they can hit home runs, tackle harder, run faster, and lift heavier. Steroids first known use in the sporting community was with the Russian Olympic weight lifters in the 1954 Olympic games. The Russians dominated the games lifting heavier, harder, and longer due to testosterone injections. This was the start of an era of performance enhancing drugs that still haunts us today.

After the Olympic games, the United States coach asked the Russian coach how he had beaten everyone so easily. The Russian coach told him that his weight lifters had been using testosterone injections. The U.S. Coach, Dr. Zeigler, set out to make a better version of this hormone for use in enhancing strength. What he came up with was the drug methandrostenalone.

Methandrostenalone or Dianabol as it is commonly known, was the first type of synthetic drug that was not actually testosterone. This drug mimicked the effects of testosterone, but it had some other effects as well. This drug brought a whole new era to sports, making users obvious, but no way of proving it, until the 1972 Olympic games.

It was at these games where the first steroid testing was first implemented. But like many new tests, there were flaws. The first flaw in the new steroid testing of the time was that the tests the Olympic committee devised could only detect known substances. So if a drug developer were to make a new steroid then the user went undetected.This test was also devised using urine. The problem with urine is that it can be manipulated. At the beginning of this test, the user would bring urine from someone not on steroids. Now the way they test for steroids is blood tests. Blood is more accurate than urine and cannot be manipulated. It still measures the testosterone content, but it also holds the users DNA which makes it almost impossible to flaw.

Sports are a constant topic in the world of steroids. Steroids increase athletic ability and so mostly athletes use them. Some of the most popular sports for steroid use are baseball, football, bodybuilding, and track and field. These sports commonly use steroids in order to increase pitching speed, bat speed, ability to run faster, lift heavier, and hit harder. These drugs can also cause many side effects which you can read about in my next hub called: What are the side effects of steroids?