Mar
31
Anabolic Hormones – A Two-Edged Sword
Filed Under Uncategorized
When I was a young boy, emerging
muscles were the coolest thing. If a
vein popped out a little, that was even more awesome. There were no fitness
centers or body-building gyms to amount to anything back then (Stone Age). If you aspired to brawn, Charles Atlas
paraphernalia advertised in comic books was guaranteed to help you turn the
cards on the guy who kicked sand in your face on the beach last summer.
Back then, muscles seemed
more legitimate if you earned them from work on the farm or from other
labor. Muscles from exercise were
thought of as sort of “artificial”. So I did lots of farm work and construction
in the summers. But leaving nothing to chance, I also cheated by building my
own weight set with a pipe that I would insert into the holes of cement blocks.
My dad was of the school
that I had better be careful or I could get all “muscle bound” if I exercised
too much. I guess he must have worried as he saw me in the back yard hoisting
my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. But I loved the exercise and
reveled in the pumped feeling in my biceps.
Sorry to sound so
narcissistic. But it’s the way all of us “guys” thought. We would
even compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could
do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still
not important to me, but now I focus primarily on exercise that will help me
stay healthy, in shape and trained for the competitive sports I play.
I bring this up not to
brag or appall you, but as a backdrop for the current situation in the sport
and bodybuilding worlds. Now that society is off the farm, exercise has
become a perfectly legitimate way to replace the physical activity lost with
modern living. The use of hormones to force the body to grow in a way it
would never do naturally, however, is a perversion of what should be clean and
healthy personal development. Anabolic hormones totally miss the point of
it all. The freaky bodies that can result are aberrations, yet magazines
are filled with their photo spreads as if drug induced bodies are icons we
should emulate and aspire to.
Aside from the fact that
only people with natural bodies and developed talents should compete in sports
(otherwise drugs are competing, not athletes), the real tragedy is the toll on
health any hormone can take. Of all the drugs I used in medical practice,
hormones scared me the most. They could create dramatic and immediate
results (and that is their allure), but hormone treatment continued for any
length of time always seemed to come back to harm the patient and haunt me.
An example in humans is
the use of testosterone patches in women to increase libido. Take them
very long and although your passion may be triggered, your voice will deepen
and a beard will start to grow (not so good for the libido of the
husband). Corticosteroids for allergies can result in extremely serious
adrenal gland diseases, immune suppression and vulnerability to
infection. In veterinary medicine the same things can happen. One
situation I am reminded of that occurred many years ago was related to hormones
given to dogs for birth control. Years after discontinuing the drugs,
treated dogs would present to veterinarians with life threatening illness,
extreme thirst and white blood cell counts off the charts. When their enlarged
abdomens were surgically explored, a gigantic uterus would be found filled with
pus – quarts of it! All this just because a little ole hormone was given
years ago without a hint of an immediate ill effect.
You see, the body is
extremely wise. It is not fooled or endlessly forgiving. If you
break your arm and put it in a sling, the muscles don’t grow bigger, they
atrophy. Why? Because the body is also efficient. Why grow
muscles or even maintain them if they are not needed? When the sling is
removed, the arm will have lost much of its strength. The body shuttled
its resourc
es into building bigger muscles in the arm that had to do double
duty. It’s a very pragmatic thing. The body doesn’t pay attention
to your agenda; it just does what it must to stay alive, make do and meet
stress.
The same thing would
happen to both arms – to your whole body – if you had servants do everything
for you as you reclined in an easy-chair. Then, if all of a sudden you
had to get out of the chair and run a mile or lift 200 pounds to survive, you
wouldn’t make it. Your wasted and weak body could not rise to the
challenge.
Hormones are like a
metabolic sling placed on the hormone producing glands—testicles, ovaries,
adrenal, thyroid, pituitary, etc. They replace the hormones that the
glands normally produce. When this happens there is a negative
feed-back: the more hormones from the
outside that are introduced into the body, the less the glands do what they no
longer need to – synthesize hormones. So the metabolic “muscles” (glands)
that create hormones atrophy. If all of a sudden the outside source of
hormones is withdrawn, your weak and withered organs may then not have the
strength to take up the task again and supply hormones. Since about every
function in the body is hormone-influenced, and every hormone interacts with
every other hormone in some way, catastrophe results. Is it any wonder that
modern anabolic body builders are also racked w
ith heart disease, cancer,
immune disorders, digestive failure and metabolic disorders in their (early)
later years? The use of anabolic
hormones is most certainly a case of desire being a ruinous tenant of its
landlord, the body.
Consider this also with
regard to anabolics. A normal body
weight of 170 lbs. can be changed to 250 lbs. of solid muscle. To get there, massive amounts of food have
to be consumed. Yet digestive “muscle” is not being built to keep pace, So the
digestive tract and associated organs (liver, pancreas, gall bladder) suited
for maintaining a 170 lb. body is forced to digest and assimilate extremely
large amounts of food? The result is
digestive exhaustion and resultant damage that can last a lifetime. Most of us suffer some digestive problems
and intolerances as we age due in large part to eating abuses when we were
young. Note the number of television
commercials hawking stomach remedies.
Body builders force feeding can exaggerate this damage leaving a ruined
digestive system tolerant of little more than Maalox.
A huge number of high school
kids are trying to “get big” with steroids. What an incredibly dangerous
proposition for them. Parents, be aware that this is not innocuous.
If the plea is that a little won’t hurt, particularly if they are “cycled”
properly, don’t buy it. If the argument
is that taking them is the only way to excel in a sport, then change
sports. Insist.
For you adults who are
toying with the idea of taking hormones for one reason or another, think long
and hard. Read the contraindications and cautions on the drug insert
sheets. Take heed. Find other ways to stimulate your body’s own
natural ability to enhance or improve itself through exercise, lifestyle and
nutrition. Don’t put your organs in slings and then expect long-term
benefit.
The piper will always be
paid.
For further reading, or
for more information about, Dr Wysong and the Wysong Corporation please visit www.wysong.net or write to wysong@wysong.net. For resources on healthier foods for people
including snacks, and breakfast cereals please visit www.cerealwysong.com.
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