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Excellent article about the realities of steroid use in pro sports
Dont get me wrong, training and hard work is what makes a fightere/athlete. But drugs play a major part in every pro sport. This is trom T-rmag and says is it all:
Atomic Dog
'Roid Ball
by TC
The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine in that, just as no man is completely one-dimensional and only interested in one subject, neither are we. If it makes you think or laugh — or even get angry — it's served its purpose.
I think I'm going to write an article about sex for my local newspaper. The trouble is, I'm a virgin. The closest I ever came to sex was when I was riding the subway at rush hour and a fat lady pressed against the front of my pants as the train rounded a tight corner. It was great. I found her on the same car the next day and gave her some flowers, but she didn't recognize me and she stuffed the bouquet of daisies and daffodils up my nostrils.
It doesn't even matter that I don't know a thing about sex. I'll watch The Bold and the Beautiful a couple of times and I'll learn everything I need for my article. And, if I still have some questions left, I'll ask my doctor friend. Of course, he hasn't had sex either, but they probably covered it during one of his med-school classes 20 years ago.
And so what if I get a few of the facts wrong? No one will know the difference, right?
Okay, in reality I have had sex. A one-eyed Thai hooker once took pity on me after her family mistook me for a chicken thief and beat the hell out of me with sticks. Even though I was in traction, it was great. However, my point is this: it'd be irresponsible and downright absurd for me to write about a subject I knew nothing about without at least talking to the right people.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of that going around lately.
If you've so much as picked up a newspaper or sports magazine in the last week, you've no doubt seen at least a half-dozen articles about the "recent scourge" of steroids in baseball. And, if you know anything about steroids, you're probably sporting a baseball-sized knot on your head from hitting your head on your desk and yelling "Jesus H. Christ!" over and over again.
How can so many supposedly intelligent people get so many facts wrong?
Those of us who are in bodybuilding first noticed that steroids were probably starting to impact baseball back in 1993. That's when the Philadelphia Phillies started getting a little too vascular and a little too beefy a little too quick. Former pipsqueak Lenny Dykstra suddenly looked formidable. Catcher Darren Daulton suddenly looked meatier too, and those tired old catcher knees suddenly had more life in them. Pete Incaviglia struck out a lot, but boy, when he connected….
The 1994 Texas Rangers seemed to follow suit. My one-time ex-partner/ex-employer, Bill Phillips, once told me that Rangers' power hitters Jose Canseco and Juan Gonzalez often called him with questions about 'roids. Whether Phillips was supplying them with their gear, too, I don't know.
And each year after that, the players got bigger and bigger, and while weight lifting in general plays a lot more significant role in the sport than it used to, the changes were far too dramatic to be attributed to hard work and good nutrition. Besides, when you take into consideration that baseball probably has the worst conditioning coaches in professional sport, the progress the players made becomes even more suspect.
When second baseman Brett Boone played for the San Diego Padres during the 2000 season, he weighed between 170 and 180 with a little flab on his midsection. The following year, he reported to the Seattle Mariner's spring training camp carrying about 20 pounds more muscle with negligible body fat, and he suddenly became a long-ball hitter.
How many of you have gained 20 pounds of lean mass in one two-year period, let alone a five-month off-season?
Take a look at players like Barry Bonds, who, when standing next to Reggie Sanders, a guy who has a body a lot of T-maggers would kill to have, dwarfs him. It wasn't always the case. Barry used to be downright lanky and he was never really known as a homerun hitter. Not so, anymore. Or, look at the catcher for the Rockies, Bobby Estalella. This guy isn't far from being a competitive bodybuilder. The list of big bodies is long.
No matter. It's perfectly understandable that the players would want a little relief from the chemical bullpen. Steroids bring increased strength and mass which equates to more rotational torque and all the other muscular intangibles that add up to hitting the ball more frequently, not to mention harder and further. They might even improve nervous system efficiency so that a 95-mile an hour fastball can be thwacked with increased proficiency.
Still, it's taters that the ballplayers are after. In today's game, singles hitters just don't get the big bucks. Witness Tony Gwynn, who, while winning 8 batting titles over his career and having a string of six consecutive seasons where he struck out less than 20 times, never hit more than 17 homeruns in a season. Correspondingly, Gwynn was making 2 million a year when he retired last year. Contrast that with Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, who sometimes gives up as many runs with his defense as he gets back with his bat. Sosa currently makes about 10 million a year.
Chicks — and general managers — dig the long ball.
And so baseball players will always use drugs. And despite the caterwauling of the journalists about how "sickening" it is, you can bet that the line would be mighty long indeed if those same journalists were offered a drug that would turn them into the next Pulitzer Prize winners.
Personally, I wish that a drug like that existed and that they'd all take it, especially when you consider all the misconceptions, errors, and lies about steroids that have surfaced in the papers and mags in the last week.
One of the worst articles I read was in The Wall Street Journal online. Author Christopher Caldwell, in response to Jose Canseco's recent admission that up to 85% of major leaguers use steroids, writes that "Doctors are unanimous that they [steroids] increase the risk of heart disease, and of liver, kidney, prostate and testicular cancer."
As evidence, Caldwell goes on to mention that former Padre and Phillie John Kruk, now retired, lost a testicle to cancer in 1994. Well, if you remember John Kruk, pot-bellied, beer drinking John Kruk, he wasn't exactly a pin-up boy. Anyone who has any experience with steroids knows that bodies like his are a result of cheeseburgers, malteds, and Budweiser. And never mind that testicular cancer is the number one cancer in young men between the ages of 25 and 34, Kruk must have been a steroid user! He just doesn't have the balls, literally, to tell you.
But beyond all that, in all my years in the biz, I've not once heard of anyone getting testicular cancer from steroids. In fact, in almost all the current research, it's not even listed as a risk factor. Neither is kidney cancer, for that matter. And the much ballyhooed steroid-induced prostate cancer? I haven't been able to find any studies to date that show an increased risk or incidence of prostatic cancer or even benign prostatic hypertrophy with androgen use, or that androgens per se even predispose to these conditions!
As far as liver cancer, it's a definite possibility, but almost always when taking large amounts of oral steroids for long periods of time. Injectables, because they don't have to be first processed by the liver for them to be made "usable" by the body, don't inflict the liver to the same stress. Hence, no significant increase in the risk of cancer.
And heart problems? It's possible that steroids can cause a condition known as polycythemia, which simply means that the drugs often cause the body to produce too many red blood cells, which may increase the risk for stroke. The remedy? Having some blood drawn. Steroids might also elevate levels of an amino acid called homocysteine, which is often regarded as a "smoking gun" in heart disease. However, 800 milligrams of folic acid per day almost always brings levels back to normal.
Later on in the same article, Caldwell asserts that human growth hormone is "taken from the pituitary glands of cadavers and distilled to high potency." Good God, has the man never heard of genetic engineering? While it's true that growth hormone was once derived from the pituitary glands of cadavers, that hasn't been true for at least a decade. GH is now made in labs, with nary a cadaver in sight.
And last in a long list of bonehead arguments is the author throwing up the hanging curveball that Lyle Alzado is evidence of the dangers of steroids. You probably remember that Alzado died from a relatively rare type of brain cancer. It's true that Alzado used steroids and died from cancer, but from what I'm told, it's pretty much accepted in the gay community that Alzado died of a type of brain cancer often associated with AIDS. You fill in the blanks.
But we'll never know what the true cause of his cancer was. Who knows, maybe he sat too close to the friggin' Sony Trinitron? When a young body fails, it's a natural instinct to blame it on something. After all, young people aren't supposed to get sick.
The fact is, people who don't use steroids get cancer just as often.
Only a few days after Canseco's promise to tell all in his upcoming book, recently retired 3rd baseman Ken Caminiti shocked Sports Illustrated by admitting that he used steroids the year he won the league's Most Valuable Player award. Along the same lines as Canseco, Caminiti confirmed that a huge percentage of major leaguers shoot up regularly.
And that's when the literary sports walls came down. Every columnist in the country has saddled up his high horse and rained shame down onto major league baseball and its coterie of junkies. But like, Wall Street Journal contributor Caldwell, they're talking — or writing — out of their collective asses.
Writers for papers like The Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union, and even Sports Illustrated threw out wild pitches like these in the past week:
"…[Baseball] educates big leaguers on the danger of steroids, which increase muscle mass by elevating the body's Testosterone."
'Scuze me, but steroids are essentially synthetic forms of Testosterone — they don't elevate the body's production of Testosterone.
"…it is common for men to develop breasts when they stop using steroids."
It's a possibility, but it's more likely to occur while they're using steroids. Of course, that only happens if they're complete morons and don't concurrently take an anti-estrogen like Arimidex, Teslac, Clomid, or an herbal formula like "M."
Add the usual stuff about "uncontrollable mood swings" and impotence to the list of bogeymen unearthed by the assorted journalists. While bad TV dramas would have people believe that steroids turn you into less green versions of the Incredible Hulk, "roid rage" is more indicative of a user's natural tendencies. If you're prone to flying off the handle, some steroids will make it more likely that you'll do so. You won't, however, start attacking Girl Scout troops. The term "roid surliness" wouldn't be as alliterative, but it'd be more apt.
As far as impotence, it's a rarity associated with certain kinds of steroids and what the medicos don't mention is that in almost all cases, it's temporary. If the general public found out the truth, that most steroids act like long-lasting Viagra, they'd all be wiping their butts with alcohol swabs.
It's true that gross abuse of steroids can lead to problems. However, gross abuse of any drug carries the same risk. Ironically, if ballplayers started using drugs in the amount that pro bodybuilders do — in amounts that truly could be dangerous — it'd be counterproductive to their sport. After all, if you get too big, you can't steal bases or flag down fly balls as well. Besides, the temptation to do a front double-biceps pose before catching the ball would be too hard to resist.
So what would the journalists have found out about steroids had they talked to someone in our business? Probably something like this:
Steroids, when used judiciously, can safely improve performance. Of course, you have to take precautions. Cycling is recommended to ward off any suppression of Testosterone. Users should also take an anti-aromatase to prevent gynecomastia, along with something like finasteride to prevent any associated hair loss. Regular blood tests are advised, paying special attention to homocysteine levels and hematocrit levels. Caution should be used by patients who have pre-existing prostate problems. A diet filled with ample servings of fruits and vegetables is also advised, along with antioxidant supplementation.
Man, that doesn't sound nearly as scary, does it? Of course, if it's not scary, it wouldn't make very good press.
© 1998 — 2002 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Atomic Dog
'Roid Ball
by TC
The Atomic Dog is a weekly feature that isn't necessarily about weight training or bodybuilding. Sometimes it's about sports in general, sex, women, or male issues of some kind. At times it's inspirational, but it can also be informative, funny, and even a little weird, but hopefully, always interesting and a little controversial. We hope it reflects the nature of Testosterone magazine in that, just as no man is completely one-dimensional and only interested in one subject, neither are we. If it makes you think or laugh — or even get angry — it's served its purpose.
I think I'm going to write an article about sex for my local newspaper. The trouble is, I'm a virgin. The closest I ever came to sex was when I was riding the subway at rush hour and a fat lady pressed against the front of my pants as the train rounded a tight corner. It was great. I found her on the same car the next day and gave her some flowers, but she didn't recognize me and she stuffed the bouquet of daisies and daffodils up my nostrils.
It doesn't even matter that I don't know a thing about sex. I'll watch The Bold and the Beautiful a couple of times and I'll learn everything I need for my article. And, if I still have some questions left, I'll ask my doctor friend. Of course, he hasn't had sex either, but they probably covered it during one of his med-school classes 20 years ago.
And so what if I get a few of the facts wrong? No one will know the difference, right?
Okay, in reality I have had sex. A one-eyed Thai hooker once took pity on me after her family mistook me for a chicken thief and beat the hell out of me with sticks. Even though I was in traction, it was great. However, my point is this: it'd be irresponsible and downright absurd for me to write about a subject I knew nothing about without at least talking to the right people.
Unfortunately, there's a lot of that going around lately.
If you've so much as picked up a newspaper or sports magazine in the last week, you've no doubt seen at least a half-dozen articles about the "recent scourge" of steroids in baseball. And, if you know anything about steroids, you're probably sporting a baseball-sized knot on your head from hitting your head on your desk and yelling "Jesus H. Christ!" over and over again.
How can so many supposedly intelligent people get so many facts wrong?
Those of us who are in bodybuilding first noticed that steroids were probably starting to impact baseball back in 1993. That's when the Philadelphia Phillies started getting a little too vascular and a little too beefy a little too quick. Former pipsqueak Lenny Dykstra suddenly looked formidable. Catcher Darren Daulton suddenly looked meatier too, and those tired old catcher knees suddenly had more life in them. Pete Incaviglia struck out a lot, but boy, when he connected….
The 1994 Texas Rangers seemed to follow suit. My one-time ex-partner/ex-employer, Bill Phillips, once told me that Rangers' power hitters Jose Canseco and Juan Gonzalez often called him with questions about 'roids. Whether Phillips was supplying them with their gear, too, I don't know.
And each year after that, the players got bigger and bigger, and while weight lifting in general plays a lot more significant role in the sport than it used to, the changes were far too dramatic to be attributed to hard work and good nutrition. Besides, when you take into consideration that baseball probably has the worst conditioning coaches in professional sport, the progress the players made becomes even more suspect.
When second baseman Brett Boone played for the San Diego Padres during the 2000 season, he weighed between 170 and 180 with a little flab on his midsection. The following year, he reported to the Seattle Mariner's spring training camp carrying about 20 pounds more muscle with negligible body fat, and he suddenly became a long-ball hitter.
How many of you have gained 20 pounds of lean mass in one two-year period, let alone a five-month off-season?
Take a look at players like Barry Bonds, who, when standing next to Reggie Sanders, a guy who has a body a lot of T-maggers would kill to have, dwarfs him. It wasn't always the case. Barry used to be downright lanky and he was never really known as a homerun hitter. Not so, anymore. Or, look at the catcher for the Rockies, Bobby Estalella. This guy isn't far from being a competitive bodybuilder. The list of big bodies is long.
No matter. It's perfectly understandable that the players would want a little relief from the chemical bullpen. Steroids bring increased strength and mass which equates to more rotational torque and all the other muscular intangibles that add up to hitting the ball more frequently, not to mention harder and further. They might even improve nervous system efficiency so that a 95-mile an hour fastball can be thwacked with increased proficiency.
Still, it's taters that the ballplayers are after. In today's game, singles hitters just don't get the big bucks. Witness Tony Gwynn, who, while winning 8 batting titles over his career and having a string of six consecutive seasons where he struck out less than 20 times, never hit more than 17 homeruns in a season. Correspondingly, Gwynn was making 2 million a year when he retired last year. Contrast that with Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa, who sometimes gives up as many runs with his defense as he gets back with his bat. Sosa currently makes about 10 million a year.
Chicks — and general managers — dig the long ball.
And so baseball players will always use drugs. And despite the caterwauling of the journalists about how "sickening" it is, you can bet that the line would be mighty long indeed if those same journalists were offered a drug that would turn them into the next Pulitzer Prize winners.
Personally, I wish that a drug like that existed and that they'd all take it, especially when you consider all the misconceptions, errors, and lies about steroids that have surfaced in the papers and mags in the last week.
One of the worst articles I read was in The Wall Street Journal online. Author Christopher Caldwell, in response to Jose Canseco's recent admission that up to 85% of major leaguers use steroids, writes that "Doctors are unanimous that they [steroids] increase the risk of heart disease, and of liver, kidney, prostate and testicular cancer."
As evidence, Caldwell goes on to mention that former Padre and Phillie John Kruk, now retired, lost a testicle to cancer in 1994. Well, if you remember John Kruk, pot-bellied, beer drinking John Kruk, he wasn't exactly a pin-up boy. Anyone who has any experience with steroids knows that bodies like his are a result of cheeseburgers, malteds, and Budweiser. And never mind that testicular cancer is the number one cancer in young men between the ages of 25 and 34, Kruk must have been a steroid user! He just doesn't have the balls, literally, to tell you.
But beyond all that, in all my years in the biz, I've not once heard of anyone getting testicular cancer from steroids. In fact, in almost all the current research, it's not even listed as a risk factor. Neither is kidney cancer, for that matter. And the much ballyhooed steroid-induced prostate cancer? I haven't been able to find any studies to date that show an increased risk or incidence of prostatic cancer or even benign prostatic hypertrophy with androgen use, or that androgens per se even predispose to these conditions!
As far as liver cancer, it's a definite possibility, but almost always when taking large amounts of oral steroids for long periods of time. Injectables, because they don't have to be first processed by the liver for them to be made "usable" by the body, don't inflict the liver to the same stress. Hence, no significant increase in the risk of cancer.
And heart problems? It's possible that steroids can cause a condition known as polycythemia, which simply means that the drugs often cause the body to produce too many red blood cells, which may increase the risk for stroke. The remedy? Having some blood drawn. Steroids might also elevate levels of an amino acid called homocysteine, which is often regarded as a "smoking gun" in heart disease. However, 800 milligrams of folic acid per day almost always brings levels back to normal.
Later on in the same article, Caldwell asserts that human growth hormone is "taken from the pituitary glands of cadavers and distilled to high potency." Good God, has the man never heard of genetic engineering? While it's true that growth hormone was once derived from the pituitary glands of cadavers, that hasn't been true for at least a decade. GH is now made in labs, with nary a cadaver in sight.
And last in a long list of bonehead arguments is the author throwing up the hanging curveball that Lyle Alzado is evidence of the dangers of steroids. You probably remember that Alzado died from a relatively rare type of brain cancer. It's true that Alzado used steroids and died from cancer, but from what I'm told, it's pretty much accepted in the gay community that Alzado died of a type of brain cancer often associated with AIDS. You fill in the blanks.
But we'll never know what the true cause of his cancer was. Who knows, maybe he sat too close to the friggin' Sony Trinitron? When a young body fails, it's a natural instinct to blame it on something. After all, young people aren't supposed to get sick.
The fact is, people who don't use steroids get cancer just as often.
Only a few days after Canseco's promise to tell all in his upcoming book, recently retired 3rd baseman Ken Caminiti shocked Sports Illustrated by admitting that he used steroids the year he won the league's Most Valuable Player award. Along the same lines as Canseco, Caminiti confirmed that a huge percentage of major leaguers shoot up regularly.
And that's when the literary sports walls came down. Every columnist in the country has saddled up his high horse and rained shame down onto major league baseball and its coterie of junkies. But like, Wall Street Journal contributor Caldwell, they're talking — or writing — out of their collective asses.
Writers for papers like The Los Angeles Times, The San Diego Union, and even Sports Illustrated threw out wild pitches like these in the past week:
"…[Baseball] educates big leaguers on the danger of steroids, which increase muscle mass by elevating the body's Testosterone."
'Scuze me, but steroids are essentially synthetic forms of Testosterone — they don't elevate the body's production of Testosterone.
"…it is common for men to develop breasts when they stop using steroids."
It's a possibility, but it's more likely to occur while they're using steroids. Of course, that only happens if they're complete morons and don't concurrently take an anti-estrogen like Arimidex, Teslac, Clomid, or an herbal formula like "M."
Add the usual stuff about "uncontrollable mood swings" and impotence to the list of bogeymen unearthed by the assorted journalists. While bad TV dramas would have people believe that steroids turn you into less green versions of the Incredible Hulk, "roid rage" is more indicative of a user's natural tendencies. If you're prone to flying off the handle, some steroids will make it more likely that you'll do so. You won't, however, start attacking Girl Scout troops. The term "roid surliness" wouldn't be as alliterative, but it'd be more apt.
As far as impotence, it's a rarity associated with certain kinds of steroids and what the medicos don't mention is that in almost all cases, it's temporary. If the general public found out the truth, that most steroids act like long-lasting Viagra, they'd all be wiping their butts with alcohol swabs.
It's true that gross abuse of steroids can lead to problems. However, gross abuse of any drug carries the same risk. Ironically, if ballplayers started using drugs in the amount that pro bodybuilders do — in amounts that truly could be dangerous — it'd be counterproductive to their sport. After all, if you get too big, you can't steal bases or flag down fly balls as well. Besides, the temptation to do a front double-biceps pose before catching the ball would be too hard to resist.
So what would the journalists have found out about steroids had they talked to someone in our business? Probably something like this:
Steroids, when used judiciously, can safely improve performance. Of course, you have to take precautions. Cycling is recommended to ward off any suppression of Testosterone. Users should also take an anti-aromatase to prevent gynecomastia, along with something like finasteride to prevent any associated hair loss. Regular blood tests are advised, paying special attention to homocysteine levels and hematocrit levels. Caution should be used by patients who have pre-existing prostate problems. A diet filled with ample servings of fruits and vegetables is also advised, along with antioxidant supplementation.
Man, that doesn't sound nearly as scary, does it? Of course, if it's not scary, it wouldn't make very good press.
© 1998 — 2002 Testosterone, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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