ANNOUNCER: What makes one athlete superior to another? What allows an athlete to find the strength to run the extra mile or crack a ball clear out of the stadium? They have natural-born talent. It separates the average athletes from the great ones.
But what if you can sharpen that competitive edge with performance-enhancing drugs?
JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Whether you're talking about performance-enhancing drugs or dietary supplements, you're talking about substances that affect things like muscle strength, endurance, the ability to pump blood, the ability to breath, to oxygenate.
ANNOUNCER: They are called "roids," "andro," "stacks," "juice."
JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: There are no true conventional categories of performance-enhancing drugs by consensus, but if you had to think about what they are, there would be dietary supplements, drugs that require a prescription. And, of those there would be, anabolic steroids, there would be growth hormone; and other substances that don't really fit into a category that sometimes require a prescription, sometimes don't require a prescription and they're almost like designer compounds.
ANNOUNCER: While the controversy over drug use that has rocked Major League Baseball makes for a good water cooler debate, performance-enhancing drugs also appeal to weekend warriors.
JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Persons use performance-enhancing drugs or dietary supplements if they want to just do better when they compete, if they're just casually exercising down in their gym, if they're running with a friend, if they want to grow muscles and look more muscular and have a better appearance when they look at themselves in the mirror. It might be children, teenagers, young adults. It could be the elderly.
ANNOUNCER: Some of the purported advantages of steroids and growth hormone come from what we learned from treating people with low levels of certain body chemicals. These people have what are called deficiency diseases.
JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Testosterone, androstenedione and DHEAS are naturally produced in the body. DHEAS and androstenedione are precursors for testosterone. They're made by the adrenal gland as well as reproductive organs in our body.
When anabolic-androgenic steroids are prescribed appropriately, a patient who had low levels, who was complaining of decreased mood, lassitude, fatigue, decreased muscle tone, decreased libido, decreased sexual function, each of those things could improve. Bone health can improve.
Approved uses of growth hormone would be children with growth hormone deficiency, children who have chronic kidney problems, children with certain genetic diseases that affect growth. Growth hormone is also indicated in adults who have had pituitary problems, who have low levels of growth hormone.
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.
©2007 Healthology, Inc.