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Lead Stories: Saturday, September 6, 2008

Athletes on Performance- Enhancing Drugs Risk Harming Their Children

Posted November 30th, 2007 at 4:10 PM by Jamal Walker

Section: News & Results, Nutrition, Supplements, Health & Fitness, Drugs In Sports

Some people think that we should let athletes take performance- enhancing drugs because they think that these athletes can only harm themselves and do not harm others. We already know that anabolic steroids can cause liver damage, heart attacks and strokes, and that growth hormone causes heart attacks by causing the heart muscle to outgrow its blood supply. Now a two-year study of former East German athletes shows that athletes who take these drugs can harm their children.

In the 1970s and 80s, almost all government sponsored East German athletes were forced to take anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. A study of 69 children of 52 of these athletes showed that seven had birth defects and four
were mentally retarded, an unusually high incidence for a group of this size. More than 25 percent had allergies and 23 percent had
asthma. The women suffered 32 times the normal incidence of miscarriage and stillbirth, 25 percent suffered cancer and 61 percent had therapy for mental disorders. The study was conducted by Dr. Giselher Spitzer at Humbolt University in Germany.
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Should I be concerned about raising my growth hormone levels?

Posted January 2nd, 2007 at 4:00 PM by Hariz Siddiqui

Section: Nutrition, Supplements

As you age, blood levels of growth hormone drop. A 1990 study from the University of Wisconsin showed that taking growth hormone enlarges muscles. Since then equal numbers of studies support and refute that growth hormone increases muscles and decreases fat. But over-the-counter growth hormone releasers do not contain ANY growth hormone.

The advertised products are amino acids, the building blocks of protein, the same as the protein you get in your food. Eating anything raises your blood level of growth hormone temporarily, and protein raises it a little bit more than fats or carbohydrates. So any food can be sold as a growth hormone releaser without lying, but food sources of protein are a lot less expensive than the pills.
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