Most athletes are competitive, and they have a fierce drive to win. They hope they can accomplish goals and maybe even one day win a medal in their home country. A lot of professional athletes hope to gain an advantage by taking supplements that help with muscle buildup. (Mayo Clinic) Performance enhancing drugs or doping has been a problem for athletes since the 1960s. (CNN)
There are many different types of performance enhancing drugs and the four main types are “anabolic steroids, human growth hormones, stimulants and diuretics.”(CNN) An anabolic steroid is a natural substance which helps with muscle buildup. It enables athletes to train in a harder way and helps them recover from tough workouts quickly. Tetrahydrogestrinone or THG which is also known as clear is a strong steroid that is used by legendary and well-known athletes such as track star runner Marion Jones and Major league baseball player Barry Bonds. (CNN) Athletes find these drugs to be appealing. Not only do they make your muscles larger the steroids help to recover from a tough workout in a quicker way and reduce the damage they get on their muscles during a workout session. This allows athletes to exercise harder and more often without having to over train. (Mayo Clinic)
Stimulants are drugs that contain amphetamines and they affect the central nervous system by making you more alert and reducing your appetite. They can also help improve endurance and raise alertness. A Human growth system or HGH is used for endurance improvement and for strength. Androstenedione is a drug that was in sold in the market as an over the counter drug, but FDA interfered, and the drug stopped being sold in 2004. The NFL, Olympics, NBA and MLB have banned this drug for being used by athletes. (CNN) Androstenedione is an anabolic steroid and the body turns it into testosterone. The last main type of PED is Diuretics and they are drugs that can change how much fluid and salts your body has which leads to dehydration. The loss of the water can make an athlete decrease its weight which can help them compete in a lower weight division which most athletes prefer. Diuretics are banned because these products can dilute a urinary sample in urine drug tests and they are also taken for achieving weight loss.
There have been many scandals of doping in sports. Some scandals have started a debate regarding Performance enhancing drug use in other parts of society. Should military soldiers be allowed to pump themselves with drugs to help them reach the top and how much of this is already happening? Fighters of war are assigned with protecting and defending and if they succeed or fail it can impact the lives of citizens. Amphetamines is a performance enhancing drug that is used widely by the military workforce. In Samuel Good’s blog Drug Abuse Among Military Personal drug use is on the rise with rates being high. “The stresses of deployment during wartime and the unique culture of the military account for some of these differences…. Those with multiple deployments and combat exposure are at greatest risk of developing substance use problems.” This would make sense for military workers using amphetamine because they are tasked with long and excessive missions that can sometimes even last 20 hours. (Army-Technology, 2013)The performance drugs can help with the stresses the militants are facing and push their talents and give them more stamina while they are on a physical task. (Business Insider)
Performance enhancement drug use brings many risks. Anabolic steroids come with severe side effects. Many athletes take doses of anabolic steroids that are a lot higher than they are supposed to. Steroids can also cause mood swings and road rage. Most athletes who take steroids feel like they need to get to the next level. You may get results and taking steroids can be a solution, but it isn’t simple. You can’t just sit down on your couch by eating bad foods and think you will get a nice physique magically. Steroids can help with the volume of training and recovery, which than allows you to train harder. (Brotherhood life)
Diuretics and Stimulants taken at any dose can give athletes adverse side effects. Although simulants can increase performance and make you feel more aggressive they come with side effects that can hurt an athlete’s performance. Being nervous and feeling irritable can make it hard for a person to concentrate on a game or task. PED’s can be very dangerous and in some situations, they can be deadly. (Mayo Clinic)
Regularly drug testing athletes and military personal could tackle the problem of doping in some countries. The problem is athletes and the militants could avoid being detected of drugs. They can use masking agents that can speed the PED’S elimination from the body and they can also switch their samples that are positive with a sample that is clean. (SciTech Connect)
References:
Army technology: Creating Supermen: battlefield performance enhancing drugs. Retrieved April 15, 2013, from http://www.army-technology.com/features/featurecreating-supermen-battlefield-performance-enhancing-drugs/
CNN: Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports Fast Facts. Retrieved May 28, 2017, from http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/06/us/performance-enhancing-drugs-in-sports-fast-facts/index.html
Mayo Clinic: Performance Enhancing Drugs: Know the risks. Retrieved October 15, 2015 from https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/performance-enhancing-drugs/art-20046134
Kennedy, Wes: Brotherhood life: Military Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs. Retrieved February 6, 2017 from http://brotherhoodlife.com/performance-enhancing-drugs/
Hackney, Anthony. SciTech Connect: Doping Sports. Retrieved on November 4, 2016 from http://scitechconnect.elsevier.com/doping-sports-athletes-using-performance-enhancing-drugs-caught/
Woody, Christopher. Business Insider: Military and defense. Retrieved on May 17, 2017 from http://www.businessinsider.com/special-operations-super-soldiers-using-performance-enhancing-drugs-2017-5
"In The World of Drugs" 
Performance enhancing drugs have been leaving negative effects on sports for a while now. I am glad to see that over the years that there have been stricter rules and harsher punishments placed on those who decide to use these to gain an unfair advantage. They can ruin a sport and take an individual to heights that they could not achieve on their own. However, allowing the military to use these types of drugs could be beneficial. If scientist can find a way to properly distribute the drugs to military personnel without having the negative side effects it would be extremely beneficial. The military using these drugs to make themselves better could help them achieve more tasks and could ultimately keep the nation much safer. However, scientists must be able to find out how to properly distribute these drugs and to not have any of the side effects since they could be detrimental to the military.
-Christian Trayer
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Reading this blog post was very interesting as I don’t have very much background in knowledge when it comes to steroids other than the normal stories you hear in the news. One thing that I am curious about is the difference in why different athletes take the different types of steroids. Just a few comments, I’m not quite sure your stance on steroid use when reading this, and I think it would help for you to go into more detail when talking about why athletes should be tested and ways athletic organizations can go about this. I’m also curious to know more about the psychological strains that these drugs can have on athletes, as well as the psychological triggers that make athletes get to the point where they feel they need to take these. Do you think it has anything to do with body image? If so I wonder if there is anything the organizations could do to change this.
-Hannah Reid
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Performance enhancing drugs are a really interesting topic of the drug spectrum that are not focused on as much. We definitely see performance enhancing drug in the news when it comes to sports but rarely hear about it with anything else. I think when it comes to performance enhancing drugs in the military this would not be a good idea. The side effects of performance enhancing drugs can lead to mood swings and anger issues. I think that this coupled with soldiers that could already be mentally stressed would just not be a good idea. Performance enhancing drugs have such a negative connotation in the media, yet there will still be a good portion of people that will partake in them. Do you think there is anything that leads to this? I knew a good number of kids in my high school that had used steroids or testosterone boosters at a young age like 14 or 15.
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Like you said, performance enhancing drugs have been around for quite some time now. As far as sports, I feel as if they haven’t really been a concern of the public until recently. There were so many athletes using them at one point that it was just “what everyone was doing” rather than taboo or unfair. Nowadays, both the public and official sports governing agencies are much more mindful and observant to the usage of these types of drugs. We have even seen the legacies of athletes considered to be “all-time greats” torn down after news of their steroid use became known, like with Barry Bonds. Using these same drugs on our military personnel raises some interesting points. It would seem that we would want our soldiers to perform at the highest level possible, even if that meant taking drugs. Having dealt with friends who have tried these performance enhancers however, I can say that the mental state that steroids put one in is very often times not the state we would want people on the front line to be in. They are easily agitated and sometimes react without thinking about what they are doing.
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