Anabolic steroids

What are they?

Some athletes take a form of steroids — known as anabolic-androgenic steroids or just anabolic steroids — to increase their muscle mass and strength. The main anabolic steroid hormone produced by your body is testosterone.

Testosterone has two main effects on your body:

• Anabolic effects promote muscle building.
• Androgenic effects are responsible for male traits, such as facial hair and a deeper voice.

Some athletes take straight testosterone to boost their performance. The anabolic steroids used by athletes are often synthetic modifications of testosterone.

These hormones have approved medical uses. But improving athletic performance isn't one of them.

Why are these drugs so appealing to athletes? Besides making muscles bigger, anabolic steroids may reduce the muscle damage that occurs during a hard workout, helping athletes recover from the session more quickly and enabling them to work out harder and more frequently. Some athletes, as well as nonathletes, may like the muscular appearance they get when they take the drugs.

Designer steroids

A particularly dangerous class of anabolic steroids are the so-called designer drugs — synthetic steroids that have been illicitly created to be undetectable by current drug tests. They are made specifically for athletes and have no approved medical use. Because of this, they haven't been tested or approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and represent a particular health threat to athletes.

Risks

Many athletes take anabolic steroids at doses that are much higher than those prescribed for medical reasons. Anabolic steroids have serious physical side effects.

Men may develop:

• Prominent breasts
• Shrunken testicles
• Infertility
• Prostate gland enlargement

Women may develop:

• A deeper voice, which may be irreversible
• An enlarged clitoris, which may be irreversible
• Increased body hair
• Baldness, which may be irreversible
• Infrequent or absent periods

Both men and women might experience:

• Severe acne
• Increased risk of tendinitis and tendon rupture
• Liver abnormalities and tumors
• Increased low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol)
• Decreased high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol
• High blood pressure (hypertension)
• Heart and blood circulation problems
• Aggressive behaviors, rage or violence
• Psychiatric disorders, such as depression
• Drug dependence
• Infections or diseases such as HIV or hepatitis if you're injecting the drugs
• Inhibited growth and development, and risk of future health problems in teenagers

Taking anabolic-androgenic steroids to enhance athletic performance is prohibited by most sports organizations — and it's illegal. In the past 20 years, more-effective law enforcement in the United States has pushed much of the illegal steroid industry into the black market.

This poses additional health risks because the drugs are either made in other countries and smuggled in or made in clandestine labs in the United States. Either way, they aren't subject to government safety standards and could be impure or mislabeled.