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When I was a young boy, emerging muscles were the coolest thing. If a vein
popped out a little, that was even more awesome. There were no fitness centers
or body building gyms to amount to anything back then (Stone Age). If you
aspired to brawn, Charles Atlas paraphernalia advertised in comic books was
guaranteed to help you turn the cards on the guy who kicked sand in your face
on the beach last summer.
Back then, muscles seemed more legitimate if you earned them from work on the
farm or from other labor. Muscles from exercise were thought of as sort of
"artificial". So I did lots of farm work and construction in the summers. But
leaving nothing to chance, I also cheated by building my own weight set with a
pipe that I would insert into the holes of cement blocks.
My dad was of the school that I had better be careful or I could get all "muscle
bound" if I exercised too much. I guess he must have worried as he saw me in
the back yard hoisting my pipe with blocks dangling from each end. But I loved
the exercise and reveled in the pumped feeling in my biceps.
Sorry to sound so narcissistic. But it's the way all of us "guys" thought. We
would even compare bumps on the school bus every morning and banter about who
could do the most push-ups. This is not to say muscles and fitness are still
not important to me, but now I focus primarily on exercise that will help me
stay healthy, in shape and trained for the competitive sports I play.
I bring this up not to brag or appall you, but as a backdrop for the current
situation in the sport and bodybuilding worlds. Now that society is off the
farm, exercise has become a perfectly legitimate way to replace the physical
activity lost with modern living. The use of hormones to force the body to grow
in a way it would never do naturally, however, is a perversion of what should
be clean and healthy personal development. Anabolic hormones totally miss the
point of it all. The freaky bodies that can result are aberrations, yet
magazines are filled with their photo spreads as if drug induced bodies are
icons we should emulate and aspire to.
Aside from the fact that only people with natural bodies and developed talents
should compete in sports (otherwise drugs are competing, not athletes), the
real tragedy is the toll on health any hormone can take. Of all the drugs I
used in medical practice, hormones scared me the most. They could create
dramatic and immediate results (and that is their allure), but hormone
treatment continued for any length of time always seemed to come back to harm
the patient and haunt me.
An example in humans is the use of testosterone patches in women to increase
libido. Take them very long and although your passion may be triggered, your
voice will deepen and a beard will start to grow (not so good for the libido of
the husband). Corticosteroids for allergies can result in extremely serious
adrenal gland diseases, immune suppression and vulnerability to infection. In
veterinary medicine the same things can happen. One situation I am reminded of
that occurred many years ago was related to hormones given to dogs for birth
control. Years after discontinuing the drugs, treated dogs would present to
veterinarians with life threatening illness, extreme thirst and white blood
cell counts off the charts. When their enlarged abdomens were surgically
explored, a gigantic uterus would be found filled with pus ? quarts of it! All
this just because a little ole hormone was given years ago without a hint of an
immediate ill effect.
You see, the body is extremely wise. It is not fooled or endlessly forgiving. If
you break your arm and put it in a sling, the muscles don't grow bigger, they
atrophy. Why? Because the body is also efficient. Why grow muscles or even
maintain them if they are not needed? When the sling is removed, the arm will
have lost much of its strength. The body shuttled its resources into building
bigger muscles in the arm that had to do double duty. It's a very pragmatic
thing. The body doesn't pay attention to your agenda; it just does what it must
to stay alive, make do and meet stress.
The same thing would happen to both arms ? to your whole body ? if you had
servants do everything for you as you reclined in an easy-chair. Then, if all
of a sudden you had to get out of the chair and run a mile or lift 200 pounds
to survive, you wouldn't make it. Your wasted and weak body could not rise to
the challenge.
Hormones are like a metabolic sling placed on the hormone producing
glands-testicles, ovaries, adrenal, thyroid, pituitary, etc. They replace the
hormones that the glands normally produce. When this happens there is a
negative feed-back: the more hormones from the outside that are introduced into
the body, the less the glands do what they no longer need to ? synthesize
hormones. So the metabolic "muscles" (glands) that create hormones atrophy. If
all of a sudden the outside source of hormones is withdrawn, your weak and
withered organs may then not have the strength to take up the task again and
supply hormones. Since about every function in the body is hormone-influenced,
and every hormone interacts with every other hormone in some way, catastrophe
results. Is it any wonder that modern anabolic body builders are also racked
with heart disease, cancer, immune disorders, digestive failure and metabolic
disorders in their (early) later years? The use of anabolic hormones is most
certainly a case of desire being a ruinous tenant of its landlord, the body.
Consider this also with regard to anabolics. A normal body weight of 170 lbs.
can be changed to 250 lbs. of solid muscle. To get there, massive amounts of
food have to be consumed. Yet digestive "muscle" is not being built to keep
pace, So the digestive tract and associated organs (liver, pancreas, gall
bladder) suited for maintaining a 170 lb. body is forced to digest and
assimilate extremely large amounts of food? The result is digestive exhaustion
and resultant damage that can last a lifetime. Most of us suffer some digestive
problems and intolerances as we age due in large part to eating abuses when we
were young. Note the number of television commercials hawking stomach remedies.
Body builders force feeding can exaggerate this damage leaving a ruined
digestive system tolerant of little more than Maalox..
A huge number of high school kids are trying to "get big" with steroids. What an
incredibly dangerous proposition for them. Parents, be aware that this is not
innocuous. If the plea is that a little won't hurt, particularly if they are
"cycled" properly, don't buy it. If the argument is that taking them is the
only way to excel in a sport, then change sports. Insist.
For you adults who are toying with the idea of taking hormones for one reason or
another, think long and hard. Read the contraindications and cautions on the
drug insert sheets. Take heed. Find other ways to stimulate your body's own
natural ability to enhance or improve itself through exercise, lifestyle and
nutrition. Don't put your organs in slings and then expect long-term benefit.
The piper will always be paid.
Dr. Wysong is a former veterinary clinician and surgeon, college instructor in
human anatomy, physiology and the origin of life, inventor of numerous medical,
surgical, nutritional, athletic and fitness products and devices, research
director for the present company by his name and founder of the philanthropic
Wysong Institute. He is author of The Creation-Evolution Controversy now in its
eleventh printing, a new two volume set on philosophy for living, several books
on nutrition, prevention and health for people and animals and over 15 years of
monthly health newsletters.
He
may be contacted at Wysong@Wysong.net
and a free subscription to his e-Health Letter is available at http://www.wysong.net
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