You'd Be Nuts To Pump Yourself Up On Steroids
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday June 1, 1994
IF Professor David Handelsman is right, an enormous self-deception is being perpetrated in gyms and on sports fields throughout Australia. Men are paying good money for false hope. They are buying drugs which they believe will boost their performance and improve their physique.
These anabolic-steroid abusers are swallowing handfuls of tablets (often at$15 to $25 each) or injecting themselves regularly in the quest for increased strength and muscle mass.
But what they are really buying is myth and illusion, says Professor Handelsman, head of the andrology unit at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
Professor Handelsman has expertise in androgen pharmacology. Androgens are the class of synthetic steroids based on testosterone, the natural male hormone.
In the 1950s pharmacologists thought they could make a synthetic steroid based on testosterone which would have anabolic effects (muscle building)without having virilising effects. They thought this wonder drug, which they called the anabolic steroid, would build strength and not cause masculination. This was a complete failure and the physiological reasons for this are only now being understood.
Despite this failure, in the past three decades these drugs have become mythologised and imbued with great powers of muscle building and improving sporting prowess.
If they are given to people who don't have their own good supply of testosterone, such as women, children and men with testosterone deficiencies, they have masculinising effects and can build muscle.
In males with normal testosterone production, however, they will not cause many changes. There will be no significant change in masculinisation nor in muscle mass. In fact, ordinary men who pump themselves full of synthetic testosterone may just cause themselves harm.
Professor Handelsman equates anabolic-steroid abuse with fad diets. Both are aimed at desperate, gullible people and propagated by wishful thinking.
Anabolic steroids have been a problem worldwide for more than 30 years but now their abuse has grown and moved beyond the sports arena and they have become cosmetic and recreational drugs.
They are bought on the black market and are often impure. In some instances counterfeit vials with no active hormones are sold. Sometimes even veterinary steroids are offered for human use. Known as "juice", "sauce", "gear" or"muscle", these are fashionable among the gym set, body builders, bouncers and people in the security industry.
Recent surveys have found that an alarming number of high-school boys have been trying them, too. A Victorian survey showed that 4 per cent of boys in Years 9 to 11 had used steroids - mostly, they said, to increase their sporting proficiency or muscle size. Abusers take these drugs at many times the recommended dose and often use the same compounds with different trade names thinking they are taking different substances.
Pharmacologically, this is as irrational as taking six different brands of aspirin at once. As far as the body is concerned, they are all synthetic testosterone and act as such.
Professor Handelsman says the male body can react to a certain level of testosterone and no more. Beyond that level the androgen receptors become saturated. When this happens any excess testosterone is simply unable to exert any further action.
Male steroid abusers often have shrunken testicles, or "raisin nuts" as they are called in the gym. These men take so much synthetic testosterone that they swamp their androgen receptors. The receptors can't cope.
With so much excess testosterone coming in, the pituitary gland switches off the testicles, which stop producing testosterone and sperm and gradually shrink.
This change is reversible and when the man stops taking the steroids, his testicles gear up and eventually regain normal hormone and sperm production and size.
Professor Handelsman says many men firmly believe they get some benefit from the steroids and because of this strong conviction, they may actually experience a placebo effect. They expect to improve and so they do.
Physiologically, however, there is no good scientific reason why anabolic steroids should help significantly. Men may experience marginal benefits but real benefits actually come from the diet, exercise and training that accompany the drug-taking. He believes the same training regime would produce the same results without the drugs.
The marginal benefits to be gained from anabolic steroids become important only when very small improvements make a big difference, such as among Olympic athletes.
Professor Handelsman says there have been several placebo-controlled studies of anabolic steroid use at normally recommended doses and none of these showed any advantage or improvement in performance.
Critics say these studies didn't use high enough doses to show the effects. For ethical and safety reasons using immense doses in such studies is impossible but Professor Handelsman says that because the receptors become saturated, it shouldn't make any difference. The excess hormone can't be used
He does concede that in huge doses the steroids may have an effect on a different receptor, so they act like high doses of cortisone and can cause psychological changes and disturbances. Women who live with steroid abusers vouch for this.
In 1992 an Anabolic Steroid Wives' Association was started in Britain to provide counselling and support for partners of physique-obsessed males who became unbalanced and violent. The women complained that the men had "roid rages" and acted irrationally, like raging bulls.
The Australian Sports Drug Agency runs a hotline for elite athletes but each week gets several calls from other people inquiring about anabolic-steroid abuse. Wives, mothers and girlfriends complain about aggression and irritability and, because the man won't discuss it, are often not sure whether he is taking the drugs.
The agency provides information to the women and refers them to a counselling service. One counsellor, who has had several such calls, believes the behaviour was symptomatic of deeper problems in the relationship and while the steroids might have exacerbated such problems, they were unlikely to have caused them.
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald