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> Teens > PED 411 PED 411 What Are Performance-Enhancing Drugs (PEDS)?
Performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) are prescription drugs, like anabolic steroids and stimulants, as well as sports supplements and growth hormones that some athletes take to improve their energy, stamina and power while training or competing.
Training is hard work, and it can be frustrating when you reach a training plateau where it just seems that no matter how hard you work, you just don’t see any results. It may be tempting to take a shortcut to a stronger, faster and more muscular body, but you should know that using PEDs can seriously damage your health and even end your athletic career.
Common PEDS Anabolic Steroids
Steroids are probably the best-known PED, and they’ve been in the news a lot lately.
What are steroids and how do they work?
Anabolic steroids are prescription drugs used to treat rare hormonal conditions as well as other diseases, like AIDS, that cause a loss of lean muscle mass. Using steroids without a prescription is illegal and dangerous.
Anabolic steroids build strength by increasing cell production of muscle protein. This process leads to an increase in muscle strength and size, which is amplified by weightlifting and training.
What’s the big deal?
Steroid use can have very serious effects on your body. In addition to side effects like bad acne, especially on your back, oily skin and bad breath, people who use steroids often have violent mood swings called “roid rage,” and can suffer from severe depression.
Because steroids are hormones, they have different effects on men and women – men can develop breasts and women can experience an increase in facial and body hair.
Using steroids also causes your body to stop growing, so you could end up being a lot shorter than you were supposed to be.
If these aren’t enough reasons not to try steroids, think about this: steroid use can lead to career-ending and even crippling injuries because the drugs cause muscles to grow stronger than the tendons that attach them to bones.
Are stronger muscles today worth never being able to play sports again?
Stimulants (amphetamines)
Stimulants, like pseudoephedrine found in cold medicine and even caffeine, cause your body to function on “overdrive.” They decrease fatigue, increase alertness and suppress appetite. But stimulants also increase your heart rate and blood pressure and raise your body temperature. These side effects can be dangerous, especially if you practice or compete outside in hot weather.
While you might think that taking stimulants improves athletic performance, the nervousness and irritability caused by these drugs can actually make it more difficult to concentrate on the game and impair your performance.
Sports Supplements
You probably think that sports supplements are safe to use and good for you because they’re sold at gyms and health food stores. You might be right, and you might be wrong.
Nutrition and sports supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government agency responsible for making sure food and drugs are safe and effective. So there’s no way to know what ingredients are in a sports supplement, the purity of those ingredients and the amount of each ingredient present unless you have it tested by a lab.
How do Sports Supplements Work?
There is a lack of scientific research on how these products affect the body and the potential side effects aren’t fully known. These substances have been linked to symptoms ranging from nausea and dehydration to heart attack and death.
You wouldn’t eat something if you didn’t know what it was. So why would you take a sports supplement that could contain anything and might not deliver on its claims of better athletic performance?
Common sports supplements include:
Creatine
Creatine is probably the most widely used sports supplement. In fact, in a study conducted by the Mayo Clinic in 1999, 8.2 percent of teen athletes reported using creatine.1
Creatine is actually produced naturally in small amounts by your liver and obtained from protein-rich foods like meat and fish. Your body only needs a small amount of creatine and taking high doses of it can damage your kidneys, liver and heart.
Androstenedione
Androstenedione (andro) is a hormone produced by your body that is converted to testosterone and estradiol in men and women. Basically, andro acts like a steroid once the body metabolizes it, so it poses the same health risks and side effects as steroids.
In October 2004, the government classified andro as a controlled substance, and its use as a performance-enhancing drug is illegal. Human Growth Hormone (HGH)
Human Growth Hormone (HGH) is not technically a drug. It is an external source of a naturally produced hormone that promotes growth.
Your body is very sensitive to HGH – just a small amount controls your slow but steady rate of growth from birth.
If the natural production of too much HGH causes a disease called acromegoly (gigantism) and can lead to disfigurement and early death, imagine what could happen if you artificially increase your body’s level of HGH?
Athletes and others who abuse HGH face serious potential side effects ranging from disfigurement to joint and ligament problems.
Blood Doping
Blood doping is a performance-enhancing method that isn’t very common in middle and high school athletics. It can be done in two different ways – by a transfusion of the athlete’s own blood or by taking a drug like erythroprotein (EPO), that causes the body to produce more blood.
With either method, the body has more blood and more red blood cells than normal. This improves the body’s ability to carry oxygen and allows athletes to run or jump farther and faster without cramps.
Besides being kind of gross, blood doping can lead to life-threatening increases in blood pressure as well as blood clots. Other serious side effects including seizures resulting from EPO use, have been reported.
Because blood doping involves needles and injections, athletes who use this method to improve their performance could contract serious diseases like HIV and hepatitis, a chronic liver disease.
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Sources:
1Performance Enhancing Drugs: Dangerous, damaging and potentially deadly. Mayo Clinic. www.mayoclinic.com.
Other Resources:
U.S. Food and Drug Administration -- www.fda.gov
Mayo Clinic -- www.mayoclinic.com
National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign -- www.theantidrug.com
Healthy Competition --www.healthycompetition.org
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