Dangers Of Boosting

Each year an athlete's creativity comes into play to create ways to become the best in his/her competitive sports; especially when one have to use a lot of endurance and energy to win. In order to be the best you have to put in the work. Some athletes do it the hard way, such as eating healthy, exercising and training. Others use the easy way out, engaging with steroids, enhancements, and blood doping to get ahead of the competition. Many professional athletes have taken to the practice of blood doping in order to gain a competitive edge in their field. But there are those who are crying that doing so can have serious consequences not only to the sports world, but to one’s body as well. Sometimes they look for harmful procedures that increase their athletic ability but can potentially do more harm than good. In this argument, I will be discussing called induced erythrocythemia, commonly known as blood doping, which can lead to medical, physical, and psychological problems.

A common adverse affect of overtraining for an elite athlete is ‘Overtraining Syndrome’. Overtraining syndrome is a neuroendocrine (neural input cells in the brain) disorder characterized by poor performance in competition, inability to maintain training loads, persistent fatigue, frequent illness, disturbed sleep and the most frequent in an elite athlete: alterations in mood state (Nature Immunology and Cell Biology Laurel T Mackinnon May 2000). Nearly all athletes experience the mood deterioration observed without impairment in sport performance. Since the goal is to reach a point of improved performance within the athlete the athlete then has to reach his/her limits of physical capacity (or even beyond) and since the balance between the right amount of training and overtraining is a fragile line many athletes suffer from this overtraining syndrome. It is not the hard training that makes you stronger in fact it makes you slightly weaker, it is the rest that will allow your body to grow stronger. Physiologic improvement in sports only occurs during the rest period following hard training. Due to this need for hardened training many elite athletes overwork themselves

Abstract:  With the increase of competition has also come the need to become bigger and stronger than the opponent.  The use of steroids among athletes has caused the focus of the game to change.  No longer does an athlete want to win by doing their best, but they want to become bigger and have an advantage over the opponent.  Ultimately, all athletes feel that they need to use performance-enhancing drugs to compete at the same level. Despite all of the warnings and information on performance-enhancing drugs, athletes continue to use them and overlook the potential health risks associated with steroids.

Using performance enhancing drugs have become the major part of any athletic life since the early Greek time. The first attempt for

Men and women have always wanted to surpass themselves and for some people, sports is the way they achieve that. All throughout sporting history there has always been a technique to try or a substance to take to increase their strength or improve their performance artificially. Doping is the misuse of performance enhance drugs during training or a sporting event, and it came into the scene in the 19th century. Heroin and morphine were the first drugs to be used and Heroin was used in horse-racing circles, and morphine was in boxing and endurance sports such as cycling and track and field. The first recorded victim of doping

Blood doping creates unneeded risk and endangers an athlete’s life for a slightly increased chance of winning a competition. This practice should remain banned and athletes should seek alternative practices that do not come with unusual added health risks. Though there are logical arguments for each side, there is more evidence to support the argument that blood doping should not be legal in athletic competitions. There is too much risk involved for the reward to be so miniscule.

Certain Countries, such as China and East Germany have been guilty of abusing such practices. The glory of winning a gold medal and what follows is more important to them than anything else. It is one of the major influences behind drug use in sports. A major concern for new athletes representing their countries is not simply about the satisfaction of winning but the rewards of success. The rewards are staggering, as the dollar volume being showered on winners is second to none. The figures have become so mind-boggling that the interests of people involved in this lucrative business is no longer centred around ethical and health-related concerns.

lead to complicated and costly administrative and medical follow-up to ascertain whether drugs taken by athletes are legitimate therapeutic agents or illicit. Furthermore, legalization of doping, we believe, would encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport, leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems associated with doping. Finally, by allowing medically supervised doping, the drugs used could be assessed for a clearer view of what is dangerous and what is not... Acknowledging the importance of rules in sports, which might include the prohibition of doping, is, in itself, not problematic. However, a problem arises when the application of these rules is beset with diminishing returns: escalating costs and questionable effectiveness." Bengt Kayser, MD, PhD Professor of Exercise Physiology, Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva Alexandre Mauron, PhD Professor of Bioethics, Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva Andy Miah, PhD Reader in New Media and Bioethics at the School of Media, Language, and Music at the University of the West of Scotland "Viewpoint:

In today’s society, athletes are revered as heroes. There is immense pressure to be the best. Athletes are willing to do whatever it takes to gain an edge, even if it means compromising their health. For almost three decades, athletes have been supplementing their strength program with anabolic steroids to enhance their performance. To be sure, anabolic steroids are effective supplements to strength training programs, but there is no doubt that the consequences can be deleterious.

Since the dawn of the twenty-first century, performance enhancing drugs have become a religious practice in “the lives of some sport figures.” The use of these supplements have given the user an edge, an edge to perform at maximum capability. Most major athletes all agree on the fact that the competitive determination to win is intense. Despite all, most athletes have high hopes of either winning a medal, a full ride college scholarship or the once in a lifetime opportunity to play for a professional team. In such nature, the use of performance-enhancing drugs has become increasingly recurrent (Athletes & Drug Use). Accomplishing such goals includes taking performance-enhancing drugs. As society evolves and progresses, one has to realize

Sports performance enhancers help a lot in competition but are definitely damaging you in many ways. It can damage your health, your lifestyle and the people around you. Besides damaging the sport enhancers also change the way you are as a person. If you take something like Anabolic steroids this can make you more aggressive and violent. That's why enhancers shouldn't be taken at all but people still decided to take the risks and end up sick. Then make others worry for them even when they did that to themselves knowing all the consequences.

Performance enhancing drugs have been ruining competitive sports for a long period of time. Starting all the way back into the first Olympic Games, 776 BC - 393 BC. Even though the drugs were not the same as they are now. The way athletes are taking them is ruining competitive sports from here on out. Performance enhancing drugs are not only a form of cheating, but they can also be very harmful and dangerous. They can lead into serious body defects and could cause death as evidenced by some athletes who have used them extensively. The established side effects and adverse reactions for men and women included acne, genital changes, water retention in tissue, yellowing of eyes and skin, oily skin, stunted growth, fetal damage, coronary artery

This could lead to overreaching on part of the athlete leading to a physical and mental burnout with symptoms of fatigue, loss

To start off, “HGH brings its own set of risks. The list includes cardiomyopathy, an enlarging and thickening of muscles in the heart, that weakens heart function over time. HGH can also impair glucose regulation leading to 2 types of diabetes. HGH can lead to heart failure arthritis and acromegaly, or disfiguration of the jaw, skull hands and feet” ( Performance- Enhancing) (Scott). This shows that even though PED’s can help you in your sport for a little bit of time there are always going to be many side effects that can be life threatening and could impact you a lot. “EPO’s have been implicated in the death of at least 18 cyclist during alleged heavy use in the 1990’s. These cyclist were victims of bleeding events: stroke, heart attack, and blood clots in the lungs” (Performance enhancing drugs). This shows that because these cyclist took PED’s to boost their play in their sport they ended up losing their life and everything that they have trained for their entire life has gone to waste and they lost their life because they took those PED’s. “Steroids can interfere with the natural process of puberty. For boys, the sudden surge of testosterone steroids creates can cause male pattern baldness and violent mood swings….They can also cause people to grow breasts and get high voices” ( Drugs and Athletes). Because of young people using steroids the drugs can interfere with their puberty

Performance enhancement drugs should be illegal because it gives the individuals who use them more advantages than the people who don’t use the drugs and actually work hard. Here, the World Anti-Doping Agency defines the term blood doping and what it does: “Blood doping is the misuse of certain techniques and/or substances to increase one’s red blood cell mass, which allows the body to transport more oxygen to muscles and therefore increase stamina and performance.” These drugs can be administered via syringe, and blood transfusion. When administered these make the blood more thick with makes the heart work harder to pump the blood through the body. This can cause heart attacks, strokes, and even blood clots in various places.