Athletes, whether they are young or old, professional or amateur, are always looking to gain an advantage over their opponents. The desire for an "edge" exists in all sports, at all levels of play. Successful athletes rely on practice and hard work to increase their skill, speed, power, and ability. However, some athletes resort to drugs to improve their performance on the field or the court.

Some high school and even middle school students are using steroids to gain an edge, improve their skill level, or become more athletic. Steroid use is not limited to males. More and more females are putting themselves at risk by using these drugs. It is important to know that using anabolic steroids not only is illegal, but it also can have serious side effects.

Who uses steroids?

Most commonly, steroid use can be found among the following groups:

• Athletes involved in sports that rely on strength and size, like football, wrestling, or baseball
• Endurance athletes, such as those involved in track-and-field and swimming
• Athletes involved in weight training or bodybuilding
• Anyone interested in building and defining muscles

Will steroids make me a better athlete?

What are the side effects of steroids?

For both sexes

• High blood pressure and heart disease
• Liver damage and cancers
• Stroke and blood clots
• Urinary and bowel problems, such as diarrhea
• Headaches, aching joints, and muscle cramps
• Nausea and vomiting
• Sleep problems
• Increased risk of ligament and tendon injuries
• Severe acne, especially on face and back
• Baldness

A special danger to adolescents

Society cares because steroid use is a form of cheating. Since steroids work so well, they create an unfair advantage for those who take them, and this breaks the social contract athletes have implicitly agreed to: We are going to have a fair contest. There are things we can and cannot do. Even if there were a safe performance-enhancing substance, if it weren't available to everybody, using it would still be cheating.

Unfortunately, steroids are still ubiquitous, and one of the problems is that we let people use them. Society loves sports and tends to look the other way when they become dangerous. We tolerate boxing, where you have two guys beating each other's brains out; we tolerate sports that have severe lifetime side effects like some elements of track and field.

The conspirators in this are everywhere-coaches, institutions, even some parents. We see parents who are in complete denial when their kids-college athletes with eating disorders-have stress fractures of their tibias or patellas because their bones are fragile from anorexia. The parents are living through the children's achievements, so it's very difficult to break this pattern.

Steroid use is part of this whole youthful delusion that says, "If I just do this for a period of my life, I'll be fine. I'll smoke until I'm older; I'll only binge drink in college; I'll be anorexic or bulimic so I can run, and then I'll stop being that way and I'll go on and have a wonderful life."

That's playing Russian roulette, which is not a game I think we want to encourage.

The only things that work to discourage doping are testing and penalties. You can talk about personal responsibility until you're blue in the face, but to stop steroid use, testing is necessary. Cocaine and steroids have ceased to be big problems in professional football because of testing.

Source: http://www.aap.org, www.scu.edu