More and more people are moving to steroids in order to improve their physical appearance. This fact was confirmed by results of a survey at the 52nd American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) Annual Meeting in Nashville, Tenn.
It was also found out during the study that people do not seem to be bothered about effects of steroids despite being aware of them. However, there is an urgent need for these users to be educated about the fact that steroids may result in side-effects when they are abused or override a qualified medical advice.
Since steroids are considered to be beneficial by sportsmen to improve on-field performance besides gaining the required momentum to deliver dramatic performance on a consistent basis, their usage is increasing day-by-day.
From News-Medical.Net:
Of the 500 AAS users who participated in the survey, 78.4 percent (392/500) were non-competitive bodybuilders and non-athletes. Nearly 60 percent (298/500) reported using at least 1000mg of testosterone or its equivalent per week. The majority (99.2 percent or 496/500) of AAS users self-administer their injections, and up to 13 percent (65/500) report unsafe injection practices, such as re-using needles, sharing needles, and sharing multi-dose vials. In addition to using AAS, 25 percent of users admitted to also using growth hormone and insulin for anabolic effect. Finally, 99.2 percent (496/500) of users reported subjective side effects from AAS use.
“Clearly, the alarm is not ringing for the users who responded to our survey,” said Nick A. Evans, M.D., lead author for the study and physician at UCLA-Orthopaedic Hospital, Los Angeles. “They are not sensing or seeing the extremely dangerous game they are playing with these drugs. There are severe health risks associated with steroid use and abuse, but four out of five of our respondents report a greater desire to improve their physical appearance than to protect their health. Creating awareness among influencers like parents, coaches, trainers and health professionals may be a way to reach users and help them guide them back to safe health and fitness habits.”
From the above statements, one thing can be easily concluded that steroids are not harmful in the first place. They can be made dangerous by no one but the user if there is a lack of education and awareness about proper use of steroids.
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