There are two very different stories when it comes to steroids. The first is one of
hope. The other is one of overindulgence and addiction. There are types of steroids
that can save your life. However, when steroids are taken in excess and without
the approval of a medical professional, they can also lead to your death. Which
type of steroids should you never put in your body? Let’s find out.
At a basic level, steroids are synthetically created hormones that the adrenal glands in
your body produce normally. Hormones are chemical messengers that tell your cells which biological
processes they should carry out. For example, the hormone insulin signals your cells to take in more
sugar from your bloodstream and use it to create energy. The human body also uses hormones such as
testosterone and estrogen to signal different physiological changes during someone’s life.
These hormones can also aid in the growth of muscles, which will come into play later.
Corticosteroids are the steroids most often prescribed by doctors due to their
anti-inflammatory properties. They have a number of applications and can aid in the recovery of
countless medical conditions. The other more dangerous type of steroids are anabolic-androgenic
steroids. These are the steroids that bodybuilders and athletes use to enhance their muscle strength
and performance. It’s these types of steroids that can be dangerous if used incorrectly.
First, let's understand why steroids, if used properly,
can help you or even save your life. Again, remember that most steroids need
to be prescribed by a doctor to ensure the right dosage and type of steroid is given.
You are struggling to breathe. Every time you try to take in air, it feels like your
windpipe has been sealed shut. You scramble for your inhaler and fumble it. The precious
device falls to the ground. Your lungs feel like they are going to explode as you reach
down and pick up the device. You stick the inhaler into your mouth and push down. A cool,
moist mixture of air is forced down your throat. For a moment, you hold your breath;
then, with a sigh of relief, you breathe out. You can now gulp down the much-needed air.
Your chest heaves up and down as your lungs once again bring in oxygen and release CO2.
People with Asthma suffer from long-term chronic inflammation and swollen muscles in
their airways. When the airway becomes inflamed, the body also produces extra mucus, all of which
blocks the airway and causes difficulty breathing. It’s the swollen muscles that
the mixture of steroids and bronchodilators in an inhaler help to relieve. The anti-inflammatory
effects of steroids allow the muscles to relax and the person to begin breathing
normally again. When steroids bind to the membranes of muscle cells in the throat,
they signal the cells to shrink in size through a series of biological processes.
This causes the swelling in the throat to go down and allows the person to breathe
normally again. It’s absolutely terrifying for those several seconds that someone is
having an asthma attack and can’t breathe. Their body is literally choking them to
death and depriving them of the oxygen they so desperately need. An asthma attack can
become life-threatening without the aid of the anti-inflammatory signals the steroids
in inhalers send to the muscle cells. This is just one way steroids can be used to save lives.
Doctors can prescribe steroids for a number of different reasons. Many times they are used to
relieve uncomfortable conditions that can arise in the body but might not be life-threatening.
However, without them, people would be in an incredible amount of pain and discomfort.
You are sitting at home when your eczema begins itching like crazy. This condition
is caused by an overactive immune system along with environmental factors that affect
the skin. As you scratch and scratch to try and relieve the discomfort,
it feels like your skin is on fire. The swollen part of your body becomes so
inflamed that you just want to cut off the entire body part and just be done with it.
Luckily, the doctor prescribed you steroids to help reduce the inflammation and return the
skin to its normal state. The steroids can either be taken in pill form or by rubbing
cream on the infected area. If taken orally, the pills are broken down in the digestive
tract and diffuse into the bloodstream, where they’re carried around your body
by the circulatory system. When they reach the inflamed site, the steroids bind to the muscle
and skin cells and signal them to carry out processes to reduce inflammation. Similarly,
when a cream containing steroids is applied directly to the body, they bind to skin cells
and suppress the immune response that is causing irritation and inflammation.
Although eczema is uncomfortable, there is another
disease that is much more painful and even life-threatening that steroids can help with.
For inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s and IBS, steroids can help reduce some of the
most intense discomforts of someone’s life. These diseases cause the gastrointestinal
tract to become inflamed, resulting in truly nasty side effects. Medical professionals
are not entirely sure what the exact cause of Crohn’s or other inflammatory bowel diseases is,
but the swelling in this region of the body is due to the fact that the immune system
is attacking the cells, which causes irritation and swelling. Doctors think these conditions may
be caused by a virus or bacteria infecting the cells in the gastrointestinal tract,
but no single pathogen has been identified as a culprit yet.
In these situations, doctors will prescribe steroids that reduce the swelling in the
intestines and bowels to allow waste to pass through the system more easily. If left untreated,
the excretory system might become backed up with waste, which would eventually start to
poison the body. In these circumstances, bowel inflammation can become life-threatening,
and surgery must be conducted to remove the scarred tissue causing the blockage.
Before this point, however, doctors will prescribe steroids to aid in reducing
inflation and getting the swelling under control. When the steroids bind to the cells
in the colon and intestinal tissue, they suppress the immune system in the region,
allowing the inflammation to go down and waste to flow out of the body.
There are some side effects to taking steroids prescribed by doctors such as an increase in
appetite, mood changes, and difficulty sleeping. These are all a result of the chemical composition
in your body being changed by the steroids and the processes they trigger. Don’t forget
that steroids mimic hormones, which signal changes to occur in the cells of your body.
And although steroids might be used for their anti-inflammatory properties, they also change
the chemical levels in your body, which will inevitably affect multiple organs and tissues.
This brings us to the really nasty things that steroids can do to you.
You have probably heard that people who abuse steroids can have a lower
sperm count or suddenly explode into fits of rage. And although this may be true,
there are some much, much worse side effects that result from steroid abuse.
The type of steroids that are often misused are called anabolic-androgenic steroids, which is also
abbreviated as AAS. These are the type of steroids people take to increase their metabolism and build
larger muscles. AAS is typically a synthetic form of testosterone. Both females and males
produce testosterone naturally. It’s one of the hormones in the body responsible for growth,
and in males, testosterone signals the body to develop male characteristics during puberty.
In women, testosterone also plays an important role in growth and development;
however it’s present in much lower quantities in females than in males. People have found that by
using AAS to trick the body into thinking there is testosterone present, it speeds up the growth of
muscles. This is by no means a healthy process, and although it can create the desired results
of muscle growth, abusing anabolic-androgenic steroids can have some serious consequences.
So, what actually happens to your body if you take these types of steroids?
Well, your muscle mass will certainly increase, but everything else that
will happen should make you think twice before pumping your body full of AAS.
Performance-enhancing drugs such as anabolic-androgenic steroids are banned
in most sports and competitions. Every year athletes who are caught using steroids are
fined heavily and forced to forfeit their right to compete. Therefore, it seems crazy
to use steroids as the risks far outweigh the gains. Yet, it still happens all the time.
Imagine you are an athlete who is obsessed with gaining bigger muscles
so that you can be stronger and faster than your competitors. You train hard but hit a plateau,
so you decide to take steroids to enhance your performance. After every workout session,
your muscle fibers are stretched or torn apart. Your body naturally repairs any damage,
which results in more muscle mass developing. But if you can trick your body into thinking
it’s also growing at the same time, muscle creation will increase exponentially.
You pump iron all day to break your muscles down, then gulp down an energy drink full of
steroids. These steroids circulate around your body and attach to your muscle cells.
They signal the cells to produce more proteins to aid in the repair and strengthening of your
muscles. Simultaneously, the steroids trigger cell division, causing the body to create more muscle
cells. These processes can create a hormone imbalance, which may cause your body to start
developing characteristics that it shouldn’t while also affecting your brain chemistry.
Neither the growth of muscles nor the unpleasant side effects develop right away. It may take
weeks for these things to happen to your body. But it’s estimated that anabolic-androgenic
steroids increase strength by around 5 to 20 percent, which is why people abuse AAS.
Each time you take steroids, the cells in your body ramp up protein synthesis.
This is important for muscle growth but can also lead to the overdevelopment of
certain male traits. This happens in both men and women who take anabolic-androgenic
steroids. Since your cells are working harder, they require more energy,
which is why you experience an increase in appetite. The feeling of hunger is
just your brain telling you that your body needs more nutrients to make more energy.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids also trigger the body to break down fat stores and use the fuel
in them to increase muscle mass and promote growth. This causes body fat to decrease
drastically in people who take steroids. The steroids also signal the body to create more
red blood cells to aid in oxygen delivery around the body so more energy can be made. These might
all seem like good things, but it’s what comes next that should worry you.
Anabolic and androgenic steroids contain a combination of different chemicals. It’s the
ratio between the anabolic chemicals and the androgenic chemicals that determines what the
steroid actually does to your body. Anabolic refers to chemicals that signal and promote
muscle growth, while androgenic signifies the chemicals that promote the development of male
sex traits. A steroid needs to contain both of these properties to work effectively. For example,
a steroid that only contains anabolic chemicals will not allow muscles to grow
at the desired rate due to the fact that other hormones and proteins are needed to
facilitate the process that can only be triggered by androgenic chemicals.
The ratio of androgenic to anabolic steroids can also cause certain negative reactions in
the body to occur. Using steroids increases your blood pressure and heart rate as the
body needs to circulate nutrients more quickly to fulfill the needs of the cells
that are now producing more proteins and dividing more frequently. Unfortunately,
both high blood pressure and heart rate can lead to heart disease or stroke. Therefore,
the very thing the steroids are telling your body to do may also kill you.
With a steroid that simulates testosterone, like with many anabolic-androgenic steroids,
there are some mental side effects as well. One of the byproducts of high levels of testosterone,
especially in males, is that they can become aggressive and prone to mood swings. Again,
this is due to an imbalance in chemical levels as a direct result of the steroids
stimulating protein synthesis, among other cellular processes. The new proportions
of biochemicals in the body affect the neural pathways and the composition of the chemicals
in your brain. When these symptoms are taken to the extreme, it can cause you to lose control
of rational thought and lash out in aggressive ways. This has come to be known as roid rage.
There also seems to be a correlation between steroid use and body image
disorders. The chemical imbalance caused by anabolic-androgenic steroids may distort
your view of your own body and push you to work out more to lose fat you
don’t have and gain more muscle. This is a vicious cycle because if your brain is
telling you that you don’t look good or that your body should be more muscular,
you will likely take more steroids in order to reach an unobtainable body image. This leads to
steroid abuse and is relatively common for people who use AAS without consulting their doctor.
In these circumstances, the steroids are not just messing with your biochemical processes;
they have also become an addictive drug. Anabolic-androgenic steroids
themselves may not be classified as addictive, but what they do to your
brain chemistry can make you crave them as if they were a drug you can’t get enough of.
While you gain muscle and the biochemical processes in your body are altered due to
the steroids, other dangerous side effects are occurring.
The liver filters blood while also balancing nutrients and metabolizing certain chemicals,
such as the complex molecules found in steroids. When you take steroids, it forces your liver to
work overtime to break down the chemicals in the drugs and the byproducts generated
by the increased levels of protein synthesis happening around your body. Protein synthesis,
like most cellular processes, generates waste, which also needs to be broken down by the liver.
What this means is that steroids overwork the liver. People who abuse steroids never
allow their liver to rest or recover, which leads to complications or liver
failure later on. This is when steroids become life-threatening. It doesn’t really
matter if anabolic-androgenic steroids give you larger muscles if your liver fails and you die.
There are also other more noticeable side-effects of taking anabolic-androgenic steroids. Females
may start growing hair on their faces where they normally wouldn’t. Their voice might deepen while
their breast size decreases. Other changes, such as an enlarged clitoris and irregular menstrual
cycle, may also occur. All of these side effects are a direct result of the chemical and hormone
imbalances that happen within the body as a result of taking anabolic-androgenic steroids.
For males, there are some much more strange physical side-effects.
Abuse of anabolic-androgenic steroids can cause gynecomastia. This is a condition in
males where the breast gland tissue increases due to an imbalance in the hormones estrogen
and testosterone. When this happens, the breasts grow in size. Gynecomastia usually
affects both breasts, but sometimes only causes one to grow extra tissue. Either way,
this condition does not provide more upper body strength and is,
therefore, not the desired result of most people using steroids.
Although most anabolic-androgenic steroids mimic the hormone testosterone in some way, they are
not always a perfect substitute. In fact, abuse of steroids can actually lead to hypogonadism,
which is a condition that causes the testes in males and ovaries in females to stop or
produce very small amounts of sex hormones such as estrogen and testosterone. When this happens
in males, it can cause the testicles to shrink. In both sexes, it can render the person infertile.
Again this is a perfect example of how steroids can produce big muscles but
with consequences. Is risking the ability to have future offspring worth increasing
your muscle mass and becoming stronger for a brief period of time? For some,
it is, but for many younger athletes who start taking steroids, they don’t know
the risks or consequences these drugs have on their bodies later in life.
Some of the most severe consequences of using anabolic-androgenic steroids are
the long-term health effects they can have. In order to build bigger muscles,
your body needs to increase hemoglobin production along with the number of red
blood cells to deliver more oxygen to your cells. This oxygen is then used to create different
proteins and energy. However, increased levels of blood cells and hemoglobin can thicken your
blood and increase your chances of having a heart attack even after you stop taking the steroids.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids are also known to have long-term effects on your cholesterol
levels. Research shows that these steroids can reduce your HDL cholesterol while raising your
LDL cholesterol. Basically, it increases bad cholesterol overall throughout the body. Again,
this has nasty consequences for your heart and can lead to several other complications.
The use of steroids to increase muscle size and strength is just
not a healthy alternative to working out and eating a well-balanced diet. Athletes
and bodybuilders will take steroids to gain an advantage over their competition
but at a great cost to their bodies. If you take anabolic-androgenic steroids,
there is a good chance that you will not only experience unintended physical side effects,
but your brain, heart, and liver will suffer as well. The short-term gains are never worth
the long-term damage that anabolic-androgenic steroids can cause. That is why they should
only be taken when prescribed by medical professionals and in specific circumstances.
Now watch “What Happens To Your Body If You Never Move.” Or check
out “What Happens To Your Body When You Stop Drinking Alcohol.”