11. HORMONES AND STEROIDS—A TWO-EDGED SWORD

When I was a young boy, seeing muscles bulge here and there was really cool. If a vein popped out a little that was even more awesome. There were no fitness centers or gyms to amount to anything back then. About the only option was to order Charles Atlas paraphernalia from comic book ads, or get muscles the 'legitimate' way by hard work.
 
I did lots of farm work and construction, but leaving nothing to chance, I built my own weight set with a pipe that I would insert into the holes of cement blocks. I loved the sense of strength that exercise brought and reveled in the pumped muscles that followed a workout. Sorry to sound so narcissistic. But it's the way we young boys thought, particularly those of us involved in sports. We would even compare muscle bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who could do the most push-ups.
 
My dad was of the school that exercise could make a person "muscle bound." I guess he must have worried as he saw me in the backyard hoisting my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. He chided and teased me about this and always made me feel like I should have been spending my time hoeing the garden or chopping wood.
 
I don't mean to bore you with this trip down memory lane, but my own history came to mind as I thought about how far muscle building has come. Now that we are out of the forest and off the farm, exercise is a perfectly legitimate way to replace the physical activity lost with modern living.
 
The now popular use of anabolic steroids, however, is a perversion of what should be clean and healthy personal development. Use of these hormones totally misses the point. The inflated bodies created through their use do not represent health, yet 'health and fitness' magazines are filled with photo spreads presenting steroid-bloated behemoths as icons we should emulate. The influence on the young is particularly dangerous.

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​Aside from the dangers of steroids, which I will address momentarily, consider this as well. Although strength and fitness are something to aspire to, musculature of Brobdingnagian (a ridiculous word fitting ridiculous muscles) proportions can be thought of as disease, not health. At the cellular level, enlargement is due to hypertrophy (increased cell size), and/or hyperplasia (increased cell number). It is a principle in medical pathology that enlarged organs resulting from these cellular changes usually signal stress and disease. An enlarged heart or kidney is an indication that the organ is reaching the end of its adaptive rope. We normally don't think of grossly enlarged muscles as pathology, but we should.
 
Aside from the fact that natural bodies and developed talents should compete in sports, not drug regimens, the damage these powerful chemicals can do is enormous. And there is a lesson here for anyone taking hormones for any purpose. Of all the drugs dispensed in medical practice, hormones are among the scariest. They can create dramatic and immediate results (and that is their allure), but hormone treatment continued for any length of time comes back to haunt.
 
An example in humans is the use of testosterone patches to increase libido in women. If they are taken for any length of time, passion may be triggered but so too will the voice start to deepen and a beard blossom—not so good for the libido of the husband. Corticosteroids taken for allergies or injuries can result in extremely serious adrenal gland diseases, immune suppression, and vulnerability to infection. Birth control hormones are fraught with dangers, yet their use has even become fashionable to limit the inconvenience of menstruation. Hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women is directly linked to breast cancer.
 
The same dangers apply in veterinary medicine. One situation I am reminded of is related to hormones that were 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. Their abdomens would enlarge due to the uterus swelling gigantically with pus (pyometra). Pints of it could accumulate, all just because a little ol' hormone was given years ago, with nary a hint of any ill effect at the time.
 
To better understand the dangers of taking hormones, we must remember that the body is extremely wise. It is not fooled, enamored of fad, or forever forgiving. For example, if an arm is broken and put in a sling, the muscles don't grow bigger, they atrophy. This is because the body is also efficient and will not do what is not needed. Why grow muscles, or even maintain them, if they are not needed? When the sling is removed the arm will have withered and lost most of its strength. The body shuttled its resources into building bigger muscles in the arm that had to perform 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 everyday stress.
 
The same thing would happen to both arms—to the whole body—if servants did everything and we just reclined in our easy chairs. If we then suddenly had to get out of the chair and run a mile, or lift 200 pounds to survive, we wouldn't make it. An atrophied and weak body could not rise to the challenge.
 
Hormones are metabolic slings. They replace the hormones that the body normally produces. When this happens there is a negative feedback mechanism: the more that hormones from the outside are introduced into the body, the less the body does what it no longer needs to, which is synthesize its own hormones. So the metabolic 'muscles' that create hormones atrophy. If all of a sudden the outside source of hormones is withdrawn, the organs that are now withered from the easy-chair life do not have the strength to produce their own hormones. Since almost every function in the body is hormone influenced, and every hormone interacts with every other hormone in some way, catastrophe results.
 
So what would be expected with massive doses of hormones at a level the body would never produce on its own? In the case of anabolics, what happens to the digestive system that cannot grow digestive muscle paralleling the pecs, but is being forced to digest and assimilate massive amounts of food daily? For example, some body builders try to consume 600 grams of protein per day. That's about 20 chicken breasts—and represents only the protein fraction of their diet.

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​Is it also any wonder that over time modern anabolic bodybuilders are racked with heart disease, cancer, immune weakness, atrophy of the testicles (in effect, they are put in a sling when hormones are taken), digestive failure, and metabolic disorders?
 
A huge number of high school kids are now trying to 'get big' with steroids. What an incredibly dangerous proposition for them. Parents need to be aware that this fad is prevalent and not innocuous. If the argument is that taking hormones is the only way to excel in a sport, then have them change sports. Insist.
 
Adults who are toying with the idea of taking hormones for one reason or another should think long and hard. Read the contraindications and cautions on the drug insert sheets. Take heed. Find other ways to stimulate the body's own natural ability to enhance or improve itself through exercise, lifestyle, and nutrition. We can't put our organs in slings by taking hormones and then expect long-term benefit. The disease piper will always be paid if we ignore, attempt to supercede, or defy nature.