With the Mitchell report (baseball's steroid scandal) out anabolic steroids are in the news again, and I thought I'd share a few words.

When people talk about steroids in relation to sports they are referring to a class of steroids called anabolic steroids.  Not all steroids are anabolic!  My asthma medication won't put any muscle on anybody, even if one took very high doses of it.  Anabolic means muscle building.  Anabolic steroids mimic some of the effects of testosterone - they help you build muscle, mostly by speeding/ enhancing recovery.  If you take anabolic steroids without exercising they won't do much, but if you take them and work out, you'll build more muscle.  Since they speed recovery they will also help you get over injuries more quickly (pay attention to athletes who admit taking steroids and you'll find that many of them began using the drugs to get over an injury).

There are other drugs athletes take to enhance performance, like human growth hormone (which I don't think is actually a steroid, though I might be wrong), stimulants (amphetamines, etc.), laxitives and diuretics (though mostly in the bodybuilding community), fat burners (again, mostly bodybuilders), and various endurance enhancers whose names I can't remember that are used by long distance bicyclists (think Tour de France).  These all have different effects on the body.

Some people argue that these drugs don't work, that they do not, in fact, enhance performance.  I don't want to get into an argument over bat speed and muscle size or anything, but taking anabolic steroids would probably make you a better fighter.  Not only would they help you add muscle, and therefore probably speed and strength, but they tend to make people more aggressive.  Notice I said better fighter, not better martial artist.  Sounds pretty good so far.

There are three problems with taking these drugs.

The first is that there is no such thing as an anabolic- only compound.  Any drug that builds muscle or really does almost anything in your body is also going to have other effects.  Like increase your aggression, give you zits, damage your liver, give you cancer, whatever.  Some drugs are safer than others, and I suspect that most anabolic steroids are fairly safe in moderate dosages, but I'm not a doctor and fairly safe isn't the same as safe.

The second is that they're illegal.  This has two different kind of side effects.  The first is that you can get in trouble with the law for taking them - prison isn't fun.  The second is that it's relatively hard to get them the right way - to get pharmaceutical grade drugs (so you know exactly what you're getting, the dosage, and so on) and to get a doctor to monitor them.  Imagine a world where testosterone supplementation was legal, and you were buying your drugs from Walgreen's and having your liver function tested by your HMO ever 3 or 6 months.  Maybe you could take the stuff safely.  In our world you're buying stuff from a guy selling out of the locker room at your gym - what's in it?  Is it pure?  Is it even sterile?  Is the dosage consistent from batch to batch?  You just don't know, which makes drugs of questionable safety even less safe.

The third problem is homeostasis.  Your body is going to try to "get back to normal" when you're taking drugs.  If you increase the amount of male hormone in your body artificially your natural hormone production will shut down.  Add more drugs, shut down your own function even more.  Taking these drugs will compromise your body's ability to maintain itself.  When you stop taking them the side effects can be serious - your levels of these hormones will go back to below normal, below what you started with, and you'll lose many of the gains you had made.

Should martial artists take steroids?  I'll be honest - if I had a shot at a life as a professional athlete, and thought I could use the gear intelligently, I'd be more than tempted.  But if you're an amateur martial artist then using steroids is just plain stupid.  You'll be compromising your long term ability to succeed for a very short term boost with lots of negative potential side effects.  

Osu.