Joseph Goring Mrs. Diaz-Cooper English 101, TTH 8:55-10:20 17 October 2014 Banning Steroids Steroids have been around in some form for a great deal of years. They have been used in all types of sports by professional and amateur athletes as well as people who just want massive muscle growth. Steroids have always played a major role in sports and sparked a great controversy of whether professional athletes should be allowed to use different forms of steroids or not. In Let Steroids into the Hall of Fame by Zev Chafets, the author discusses this topic of steroids being made illegal in professional sports. Steroids in sports have been frowned upon for years now as people see it as a way of cheating the system and having unfair advantages over other players. A topic that is commonly missed when talking about steroids is the health risks that it holds. People tend to focus on the performance part of steroids more than the deeper issue at hand which is, how will this affect a persons overall health? Steroids have been known to help peoples health in some cases but not very many. Steroids should be an illegal drug in professional sports due to the fact that the negatives by far outweigh the positives when it comes to peoples health. Steroids have always been used in sports but especially in the medical field. Despite all the negatives that steroids brings along, it can not be denied that many people have been helped by the use of steroids. Steroids when prescribed and taken as directed by the doctor are often safe and effective. One area that steroids can benefit a person is when a male takes anabolic steroids for low testosterone levels. Patients who have low testosterone levels are often prescribed steroids because it is a very safe and effective way to even out the testosterone levels. Steroids were created to give your testosterone levels a boost and bring them up. When a person has low testosterone they are prescribed steroids because the boost in testosterone will bring them back up to a normal level. Steroids are also a very effective treatment for people that suffer with arthritis. Arthritis is an inflammation that occurs in the joints. Steroids are a good treatment for arthritis because they work as an inflammatory so the joints are less inflamed allowing more comfort and movement. Steroids also help because in some cases the immune system works too hard and causes tissue damage, but the steroids weaken the immune system not allowing this to happen. Steroids are also a very effective drug used when trying to heal athletes faster. After and athlete has suffered and injury and gone through surgery the next goal is to get them back to playing health as fast a possible. This is where the steroids come in. What steroids do is they increase the speed of muscle growth to give greater support to the injured area and also increases the production of red blood cells which is always a factor in a quick recovery. Steroids do have beneficial uses in different areas of health and can be of great use to certain people. While steroids have been proven to help in some areas of health, they have been shown to do more damage than good, and even the beneficial treatments have side effects from steroids. The area which steroids have a very major negative consequence is the reproductive system in both men and women. When men take anabolic steroids it have a major effect on just about every aspect of the males reproductive system. In many cases men that use anabolic steroids tend to notice that their erections get very painful. The reason erectile dysfunction occurs in men is because when steroids are used the body often stops producing its own hormones and this causes men to not be able to hold or even get an erection. Steroids also cause a mans sperm count to reduce quite dramatically and it also affects the size of a males testicles. When a man takes steroids it starts to decrease the amount of sperm he produces and on top of that the steroids weaken the remaining sperm quite a bit. These sperm become so weak and altered that they are usually too weak to swim strongly. Due to the weakened sperm and low sperm count a man taking steroids can often become infertile after a certain amount of time using the steroids. Women can also be affected in their reproductive system by the use of steroids. There are only two major ways a female is affected in her reproductive system by steroids. The first way a woman is affected is her menstrual cycle. When on steroids a womans menstrual cycle becomes very irregular in the long term. The reason this is dangerous is because long term menstrual irregularities are known to have detrimental effects on bone mineral status and fertility. The most serious risk is the impact on the skeleton. Osteoporosis and increased risk for stress fractures are of major concern and have been a known effect of weakened bone minerals from menstrual irregularities. Another side effect steroids can have on a woman is very serious. A woman that uses anabolic steroids has an increased chance of having a masculinized female fetus. What this means is that woman who use steroids have a greater chance of having a female born with female reproductive organs but instead of a vagina the girl will be born with a penis. This is a very serious danger of using anabolic steroids. The use of anabolic steroids has not shown to be a very helpful drug when it comes to peoples reproductive systems. On top of the damage steroids do to the reproductive system, they are very dangerous to other aspects of peoples health. Steroids also have negative affects on the heart, liver, and they can cause dangerous mood swings. When using steroids there is an increased chance of having a weakened heart which can lead to heart failure or sudden cardiac arrest. The reason this happens is because steroids weaken the left ventricle to the heart. What the left ventricle does is it pumps a large majority of blood to your heart, about 50 to 70 percent of blood flow goes through this chamber. When steroids weaken this chamber it causes a significant drop in blood flow to under 50 percent and this causes the weakened heart and cardiac arrest. Another way that steroids affect the heart is that they create a larger amount of bad cholesterol. What this means is that when using steroids your arteries are getting clogged and blocked by this bad cholesterol and it limits the amount of blood that can be pumped into the heart on top of this already weak left ventricle. This is an absolute recipe for a cardiac arrest and a recipe for disaster. Steroids is also known to cause severe liver damage. How this happens is that there is a liquid, bile, formed in the liver that does not get to where it needs to go. The reason this is bad is that this liquid from the damaged liver now leaks into the blood stream. This causes even more damage when an enzyme in the liquid called aminotransferases is leaked into the blood. When this happens it is often a cause of liver failure or even worse liver cancer. The last way steroids have a major effect on a person is in their mood. Because steroids tend to throw a persons hormonal balance way out of its normal range it causes drastic mood swings. These mood swings are usually more on the emotional and violent side of things. The reason this is dangerous is because a drastic change in hormone levels makes people make irrational decisions and in males this often leads to getting angry and getting what many call “roid rage” and strike their partner or children out of anger. This is often the case and not safe for the family or steroid user. So despite the fact that there are some health problems that can be solved by the use of steroids there are just way too many negative affects that far outweigh the positives. Science has shown us that steroids are not all bad and evil, they do have certain benefits and uses that can be greatly appreciated in medicine. With those positives also come many negative affects which have also been shown to people from doctors and science. Knowing and understanding steroids before using them is a very important thing to consider. People should be told by the steroid companies what can happen if the people use their product for non-medical purposes. People should still take caution when taking prescribed steroids. Steroids should be a drug that is closely monitored and not made available to the public due to the fact that it is a drug that can cause serious health issues for medical and non-medical purposes. This is why steroids should not be allowed in amateur or professional sports because the players can cause serious damage to their bodies in the long run.