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Using Hormones for Sport

Summary & Participants

While the controversy over performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports makes for good water cooler debate, these hormones can do more than pump up your muscles.

Medically Reviewed On: July 05, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: But people who use these drugs for performance enhancing are taking different formulations. Sometimes called designer drugs, they are more difficult to detect in the blood.

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Synthetic drugs, which are not naturally produced in the body, differ from the natural drugs by just certain very small alterations and these alterations allow those synthetic drugs to be undetectable by commercial assays or screening, to see if somebody's doping.

ANNOUNCER: While some people look healthier on the outside, doctors say what is happening inside the body is a different story.

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: The adverse effects of anabolic steroids, such as testosterone, is decreased sperm count. The good cholesterol, the HDL, goes down and that has an unfavorable effect. That can predispose to atherosclerosis and hardening of the arteries, heart disease. It can make the blood count go up way too high. It can make the blood thicker than it ordinarily is. As a result, it doesn't flow so well and you can have almost like strokes. You can have chest pain and you can't think so well. It can affect the liver in certain ways, particularly if you take the testosterone by ingesting it by mouth.

Testosterone can cause growth of the prostate gland. Can cause you to lose your hair. Can cause you to break out. You can have actually other musculoskeletal abnormalities and joint pains and bone pains and muscle pains. Testosterone also causes increased breast tissue.

ANNOUNCER: Some people taking testosterone become more aggressive. Sometimes it's called "roid rage."

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Anabolic steroids, particularly androgenic, male-type anabolic steroids affect the mood in such a way that the person becomes more aggressive. Now, on the one hand, that might be beneficial. The person is just really into that sport more. There might be less fatigue or central fatigue or perception of fatigue. They can go that extra mile, they can fight harder, they can win.

On the other hand, the use of anabolic steroids is associated with a higher mortality, a death rate. And, as it turns out, a lot of these deaths are due to suicides, are due to violent behavior.

ANNOUNCER: And the outlook for growth hormone is not much better.

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: It can make our sugar go up, it can give us diabetes, it can make our triglyceride levels go up, it can make our phosphorous levels go up, it can give us carpal tunnel syndrome. It could potentially make cancers that you have, but you're unaware of, grow.

You can actually have a myopathy, a disease in the muscles where they hurt, where they're not as strong. You can have actually the opposite effect that you're intending to have.

ANNOUNCER: So why would anyone risk derailing a professional career or put themselves at risk for these serious health effects?

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Any person who is using one of these illegal drugs or anabolic steroids or growth hormone for performance enhancement ought to stop. They ought to stop because it's going to hurt them in the long run.

It certainly makes sport more interesting, it's good to see lots of home runs and athletes running faster and jumping higher, but knowing that they're hurting themselves to do this and knowing that our children are associating those role models with a certain behavior and then our children are at risk of hurting themselves by emulating those role models, that's something that is intolerable for our society.

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