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Using Hormones for Sport

Summary & Participants

While the controversy over performance-enhancing drugs in professional sports makes for good water cooler debate, these hormones can do more than pump up your muscles.

Medically Reviewed On: July 05, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: What makes one athlete superior to another? What allows an athlete to find the strength to run the extra mile or crack a ball clear out of the stadium? They have natural-born talent. It separates the average athletes from the great ones.

But what if you can sharpen that competitive edge with performance-enhancing drugs?

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Whether you're talking about performance-enhancing drugs or dietary supplements, you're talking about substances that affect things like muscle strength, endurance, the ability to pump blood, the ability to breath, to oxygenate.

ANNOUNCER: They are called "roids," "andro," "stacks," "juice."

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: There are no true conventional categories of performance-enhancing drugs by consensus, but if you had to think about what they are, there would be dietary supplements, drugs that require a prescription. And, of those there would be, anabolic steroids, there would be growth hormone; and other substances that don't really fit into a category that sometimes require a prescription, sometimes don't require a prescription and they're almost like designer compounds.

ANNOUNCER: While the controversy over drug use that has rocked Major League Baseball makes for a good water cooler debate, performance-enhancing drugs also appeal to weekend warriors.

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Persons use performance-enhancing drugs or dietary supplements if they want to just do better when they compete, if they're just casually exercising down in their gym, if they're running with a friend, if they want to grow muscles and look more muscular and have a better appearance when they look at themselves in the mirror. It might be children, teenagers, young adults. It could be the elderly.

ANNOUNCER: Some of the purported advantages of steroids and growth hormone come from what we learned from treating people with low levels of certain body chemicals. These people have what are called deficiency diseases.

JEFFREY I. MECHANICK, MD: Testosterone, androstenedione and DHEAS are naturally produced in the body. DHEAS and androstenedione are precursors for testosterone. They're made by the adrenal gland as well as reproductive organs in our body.

When anabolic-androgenic steroids are prescribed appropriately, a patient who had low levels, who was complaining of decreased mood, lassitude, fatigue, decreased muscle tone, decreased libido, decreased sexual function, each of those things could improve. Bone health can improve.

Approved uses of growth hormone would be children with growth hormone deficiency, children who have chronic kidney problems, children with certain genetic diseases that affect growth. Growth hormone is also indicated in adults who have had pituitary problems, who have low levels of growth hormone.

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