With two recent deaths in the pro wrestling world related to steroid use, and the scandals in baseball and the Tour de France, the fitness industry should get a wake-up call. Although most fitness center members don’t use steroids, human growth hormone or testosterone, some do — especially athletes and serious weightlifters. Even child athletes have been known to use steroids to increase athletic performance. Some estimates suggest as many as 7 percent of high school students have used steroids.
This number should shock you, especially if you work with child athletes. And, a quick search on the Internet reveals that it is surprisingly easy to buy steroids without a prescription.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the major side effects from abusing anabolic steroids can include liver tumors and cancer, jaundice, fluid retention, high blood pressure, increases in LDL (bad cholesterol) and decreases in HDL (good cholesterol). Other side-effects include kidney tumors, severe acne and trembling. In addition, there are some gender-specific side effects. For men, shrinking of the testicles, reduced sperm count, infertility, baldness, development of breasts and increased risk for prostate cancer. For women, growth of facial hair, male-pattern baldness, changes in or cessation of the menstrual cycle, and a deepened voice. For adolescents, growth can be halted prematurely. This means that adolescents risk remaining short for the remainder of their lives if they take anabolic steroids before the typical adolescent growth spurt. Scientific research also shows that aggression and other psychiatric side effects may result, including extreme mood swings and manic-like symptoms leading to violence.
While these symptoms and statistics may seem out there for the mainstream fitness industry, I assure you they are not. I know at least one woman at my fitness center has taken some sort of male hormone in her life. (Either that, or she is a post-op sex-change patient.)
So what are fitness professionals to do? To start, your facility should have clear and posted rules about selling steroids while on your property. You can also post warning signs in your locker room about the dangers of taking anything for enhanced athletic performance. Your trainers should also know the signs of steroid abuse, and warn clients about taking them. The last thing your facility needs is a member harming themselves or others because of “roid rage.”
1 comment:
The topic of drugs has always been a hot issue in sports and even in the gyms. Even op ed editors are getting involved in writing about drugs. Instead of investigating the problem of drugs in sports and how it could be cleaned up, we instead see editorials on how some athletes are “unfairly” being singled out for drug use while others a given a pass.
For example, a recent editorial brought out how Bonds is the scapegoat for sports writers and commentators who take out their fury over the use of drugs. One of the most celebrated active pitchers, Roger Clemens, is given a pass despite being named a user in legal documents. In addition, the New York Yankees are given a pass even though they employed a trainer linked to the distribution of performance enhancing drugs. Baseball commissioner Selig gets a pass even though he ignored the warning signs for nearly a decade before finally being shammed into a crackdown by Congress.
But yet, with all these editorials, columns and articles being written about athletes and the use of drugs, not one article has dealt with the proven fact that athletes especially in baseball, can be as good as, if not better, without the use of drugs. This result is seen when the athletes are trained properly to improve performance. To date, most all players become “fit” to play but not trained or developed to perform better than they had in previous years or even up to their potential. This is such an obvious fact it is surprising that no one has picked up on it. How many athletes, once they have a great year, duplicate or have an even better year in the succeeding seasons? It is extremely rare to see this happen especially when using steroids..
The bottom line is that no one is willing to look at what can be done to improve athletic performance with scientifically based and natural ways of training. Instead they perpetuate the erroneous belief that drugs are the only way that athletes can become better. If athletes are shown other even more effective ways, the drug problem will be minimized lately. Until then we will see more and more athletes taking steroids and other drugs.
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