Testosterone In Sports

Robert Sapolsky’s collection of essays “The Trouble with Testosterone” is a thorough examination of the evolutionary roots of human behavior, by discussing the biology behind it. The book contains eighteen essays that explore this issue. The Stanford neuroscientist is a great writer: he concisely explains his views in each essay and makes it funny and easy for a layman to understand and absorb. He unpacks complex scientific ideas and explains them. The essay that I found most interesting was the titular essay, which was an examination of flawed logical reasoning that biologists make when they think there is a causal relationship between testosterone and aggression. Sapolsky, in that essay, explains why that is not true. These essays did not

Steroids were around at this time but no one wanted to experiment with them because they didn’t know what the side effects where or what could happen. Suddenly scientist started to study steroids and found out that it would increase their natural abilities, then word started to get around fast and it finally reached sports players. At this time period some people took competition way too seriously and would do anything to claim victory against an opponent even if they had to cheat.

In sports, the competitive drive to win can be very intensive between athletes. Winning in the game usually brings rewards to athletes both financially and psychologically. Such temptations and the consecutive pressures faced by athletes to excel in the sporting events, attempts to achieve a rival edge especially when the application of performance enhancing drugs by athletes in sports activities has becoming a new trend and relatively common. Performance enhancing drugs are used so athletes could achieve better results with least efforts, even as their health and their athletic careers will be placed in danger. That explains why athletes, sports people and body builders turn to performanc enhancing drugs.

Testosterone is a hormone in both men and women, but in greater extent in the men, testosterone is a chemical compound (C19H28O2) and is responsible for the characteristic of men such as, sexual characteristics/sexual organs, deepening of the voice, and facial and body hair. (Neil Schlager, Jayne Weisblatt, and David E. Newton 2006) Testosterone/Steroids has bodybuilding and masculinizing effect as well as treating a variety of medical conditions, like asthma, the steroid is used in a puffer, they can be used for anabolic or androgenic purposes and made for synthetic purposes making them illegal. (BROWER, K. J. 2001) Many athletes will use these to gain an advantage on competitors, with lean muscle and higher endurance, with many uses, there

This news article gives a variety of issues that emerged on account of the utilization of steroids in expert games. For instance, on 1976 the International Olympic Committee restricted the utilization of steroids. Steroid use in expert games turned into a gigantic point when competitors were getting discovered utilizing the execution improving medication.

Steroids have first known its way to sports trough the 1952’s Olympics. In Muscular Strength sports Soviet Union and other European countries were taking a significant lead over athletes from other nations including the U.S. At the time, the Olympic U.S team physicians doubted the success of the Union Soviet sportsmen, as it was their first participation ever in the Olympics Games and they were the closest rival to the U.S team which was dominating at the time (Union Soviet defeated America in the following Games). American physicians were investigating this unexpected good performance of the European athletes generally and Soviets’ specifically.

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.

The desire to compete — and win — is as old as history itself. From the beginnings of sport, athletes have sought out foods and potions to turn their bodies into winning machines. As early as 776 BCE, the very first Olympic games, there are records of attempts to increase testosterone levels (“Steroid Abuse in Sports”). Ancient Greek wrestlers ate vast amounts of meat to gain muscle mass, and Norse “Berserker” warriors took hallucinogenic mushrooms before battle. The first competitive athletes to be charged for doping, however, were swimmers in 1860s Amsterdam. Doping of all kinds, from caffeine to cocaine to anabolics quickly spread to other sports (“Anabolic Steroids, a Brief History”).

Pressure to perform well is widespread throughout amateur and professional athletics and can lead some individuals to pursue unsafe and illegal means to enhance performance. According to an article of LiveLeak in 2011, “Anabolic steroids are primarily used by bodybuilders, athletes, and fitness "buffs" who claim steroids give them a competitive advantage and/or improve their physical performance.” Likewise, individuals who have jobs wherein physical strength is necessary such as bodyguards, construction workers, and law enforcement officers, are said to take these drugs. Steroids are believed to cause expansion in body mass, muscle strength and even aggressiveness. Steroids are also thought to diminish the time of recovery in workouts, allowing

Athletes use substances before or during their performance to increase their ability (Marzilli 12-13). Student athletes will use steroids to increase their strength for a better outcome in their competition. Testosterone is a common hormone in the body that most athletes abuse (Marzilli 12). Testosterone is produced naturally in the body of any animal (“Steroids in Sports”). It creates alertness and aggressiveness to improve performance (“Steroids in Sports”). That is why early athletes used to take some form of medication to boost the production of testosterone in their body. Both males and females will consume steroids to increase testosterone in their body. Due to all the medical advantages that steroids have to an individual, athletes use them to achieve and to sharpen their performance. Apart from fatigue and letting athletes train for hours, steroids also act as a compound to lactic acid which causes muscle pain during physical struggles (“Steroids in Sports”). Steroids also contain the hormones that can increase quickly to recover from injuries (“Steroids in Sports”). Since steroids can increase endurance levels several times, athletes find it simple to run faster and improve their performance in sports. According to Gary Becker, performance enhancers, like steroids and other types of doping, have a negative effect on long-term health ( “Top 10 Pros and Cons”). Athletes will hurt themselves in the long run. Competitors dope and consume steroids to achieve the short term rewards in their teenage years of competitions (Becker). It is not worth achieving something that is temporary than living with a long-term health condition. Student athletes are not educated enough of the effects that drugs have on a

While they are illegal the companies can experiment and create their own undercover. While their condition may seem to meet health standards, years into the future the long term effects of these drugs may never leave their system and can wreak havoc on former athletes lives. Most typical of these drugs are Anabolic Androgenic Steroids, which are injections of hormones which promote masculine features that promote tissue building and secondary reproductive system development. Usually this results in side effects like greasy/ oily skin and acne, infertility, hypertension, liver and kidney dysfunction, aggressive behaviour, and tumors. This can also harbor sex-specific effects, like in females: low voices, excess hair, baldness, and deeper voices and in males the opposite reaction giving them breast development, lower testosterone and risk for prostate cancer. A chilling example of these detrimental effects were seen at the olympics between 1968 and 1988 when East Germany had used state-funded drugs on countless athletes. From as young as the ages of 8, prospects were told to take certain “vitamins” everyday by coaches.

Performance enhancing drugs, specifically steroids, have a long history in sports and the United States. As a research shows while the first unofficial anabolic steroid was produced in 1935 (isolated testosterone), it wasn’t until 1936 that its use became popularized as a way to enhance athletic performance. German athletes were rumored to have used this testosterone in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but the lack of documentation as well as well known Nazi anti-steroid sentiment has made it difficult to verify such claims (Yesalis, 2000, p.52). It is this sentiment that began the early stages of the modern “anti-steroid epidemic,” with the belief that athletes should be successful due to inherent talent (in the Nazi ideal, genetic fitness), not medicinal enhancement. Despite some public dissatisfaction, Soviet

PEDs and steroids provide better stamina, stronger muscles, and more muscular endurance. "Society cares because steroid use is a form of cheating. Since steroids work so well, they create an unfair advantage for those who take them, and this breaks the social contract athletes have implicitly agreed to: We are going to have a fair contest. There are things we can and cannot do. Even if there were a safe performance-enhancing substance, if it weren't available to everybody, using it would still be cheating" (Dillingham). The end game will be actions that are increasingly violent, extreme, and meaningless, practiced by a class of chemical and or genetic mutant gladiators. The use of performance-enhancing drugs is not accidental; it is planned and deliberate with the sole objective of getting an unfair

While the name doping was not part of the world’ vocabulary until the 19th century, use of substance such as stimulant emerged in the ancient times as an artificial means to gain an edge in competitions or battles. The Greek physician, called Galen, prescribed the rear hooves of an Abyssinian ass, ground up, boiled in oil, and flavored with rose hips and rose petals’ to enhance the performance.”(Matern, ). Ancient Olympic athletes ate sheep testicles to boost testosterone. In the Roman times, before horseracing, they were fed substances to make them run faster in chariot races, and gladiators pumped their energy for spectacular contests, by ingestion of performance substance. The ancient Olympic games was dissolved in Greece due to factors

Embarrassments including steroid use by games figures are visit competitors seem willing to chance their wellbeing, business, and opportunity to pick up an edge on the opposition. Such hazard is not astonishing given the vast monetary rewards regularly included. The utilization of execution upgrading medications is ordinarily secret, in this manner well-done research demonstrating the impacts of anabolic steroids on competitors is uncommon.