Bulking up with anabolic steroids appears to damage and weaken the heart, a new study shows, in principle increasing the odds of heart failure.There is much to criticize, however, I will only deal with a few of the more glaring misrepresentations.
While it's nothing new that steroids have bad health effects, the new findings show they may be more harmful than previously thought. In heart failure, a weakened heart can't pump enough blood around the body.
The study did not find heart failure itself, just the signs of it, but in severe cases, the condition creates a backlog of blood in the lungs that makes breathing difficult, and may be fatal.
"What makes this scary is that the full magnitude of the problem may not declare itself until after 20 or 30 years," said Dr. Harrison G. Pope of Harvard University, who worked on the new study, published in the journal Circulation.
The allegedly perp drugs do not appear to be legally available anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS).
These drugs are thought of as relatively benign, but we are saying there are major problems associated with their use. We know they cause liver and skin problems...That's from one of the researchers.
There is only one class of AAS known to be associated with liver problems - oral meds that are chemically altered at the 17-alpha position of the molecule.
These meds are known as 17-alpha alkylated AAS. They are not the same as the legally available injectable or transdermal AAS used medically.
There is one oral preparation available in the USA that is 17-alkylated. Usually it is combined in a pill with estrogen and more than useless for athletic performance enhancement, though there is one straight 17-alpha AAS prep of this drug that is rarely if ever used by athletes.
It is believed that long-term illicit use of supraphysiologic doses of these drugs may cause adverse cardiovascular effects..."Supraphysiologic" roughly means more than is normally found naturally in the human body.
The data are clear that persons using AAS may take doses in excess of 100 times the therapeutic dose.
Consider the different effects on the body between one beer and 100 beers.
And by long-term, they are talking "20 or 30 years."
A lot can happen in 2 or 3 decades, either related to drinking 100 beers per day (supraphysiologic AAS use) or other processes associated with the passage of loads of time.
The study did not find "signs of" heart failure.
"The reductions in LV systolic function observed in this group of anabolic androgenic steroid users are of a magnitude shown to increase the risk of heart failure...But there was no heart failure and there were no signs of it either.
In fact, since the 1940s it has been known that AAS improve heart function and have a role to play in increasing exercise tolerance for persons with heart failure.
There are many, many more things wrong with the study and the reporting of it.
If you are interested, to learn more about AAS go here and here and read the books available at The Lending Library of The Anabolic Clinic (sm). Your library should either carry them or be able to obtain them for you.
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