Anabolic Steroids
When I look at baseball players today, I just can not believe how big they are. They are bigger and stronger than the best players of the years 1930 to 1970. Babe Ruth, perhaps the greatest hitter who ever lived, was a big elephant with a huge and relatively small muscle belly relative to the average player today. The best baseball players in the world 30 years ago probably would not even Major League teams too small and weak.
You can say that the reason they are superior because they lift weights, weight training athletes because thirty years ago. You’re right, but I lift weights and I do not like the smallest baseball today. Very few people who lift weights to develop muscles that stretch their skin to the extreme. An article in Sports Illustrated quotes baseball player Ken Caminiti, saying that “at least half the players use steroids. This is to be true. If you lift a heavy weight, your muscles tear, so you feel pain the next day. Then take the next two to ten days to ease the pain to go away and your muscles to heal, because you know when the pain goes away, your muscles will be stronger than before they were lifted and damaged. Soon you find that you can only lift very heavy weights once a week or two, and that the heavy lifting of more than sore muscles you will all the time, so you can not even lift a bat or throwing a baseball. You are committed to obtaining the benefits of lifting heavy weights only about once every ten days.
When someone tells you to try steroids. You said not to take as steroid pills go to the liver where they lower blood levels of good HDL cholesterol to increase your risk of heart attack. Your friends tell you that as anabolic steroids or male hormones taken by injection, the steroids are not even reach your liver, so they do not lead to heart attacks. So you start with steroid injections and something strange happens. You used to ten to 14 days to recover from lifting heavy weights and suddenly you can recover in 48 hours, so you can lift very heavy weights every second or third day. After a few months, you find yourself 15 pounds of muscle and experience you’re hitting the ball further than ever before. Your manager is happy with you, because he pays the long ball, home runs because the fans love and adore them home run hitters.
You decide that if getting the injections once a week that made you strong, gets the same dose twice a week should you even more. So you double the dose and you are stronger and you hit more home runs. The fans love you. You do not feel guilty, because most ball players are also given steroid shots. Then go to three shots per week and you swing hard at a ball, you hear a pop and your shoulder hurts like hell. You go to the team doctor who tells you that you have torn your rotator cuff and that you should have surgery. You’re afraid of the surgery, so you do not you stay and take tea or two shots of one weeks male hormones. Your shoulder heals in six weeks and your doctor is shocked that you have healed so quickly. You do not tell him why you heal, and continue to take the pictures. Then you can slide into third base, and break the cartilage in the knee. You go to your doctor, who has some blood tests and tells you that you are all abnormal liver tests. You tell him you on steroids, he tells you that steroids break cartilage and can damage the liver. You stop steroids, but never cure your knee and you are baseball. Four years later, the knee pain so bad that you can not sleep at night and you have a knee replacement. Now the only exercise you can do is cycling.
Anabolic steroids help you recover faster so you can lift more heavy weights. This makes you stronger and a better athlete, but it can also increase your risk of heart attack, caused liver damage, shrink your testicles, make you infertile, do you act crazy, and eventually lead to an injury that never heals. Is it worth? All athletes that I’ve asked say yes. I have a very good friend who was once an Olympic champion and one of the largest and most famous athletes in the world. He has two knee and hip replacements. I asked him if it was worth it. He looked at me like I was an idiot and said “of course”. I know he’s right, because I am not an Olympic gold medal.