Anabolic steroids are a form of the male sex hormone testosterone which is considered the most important and essential hormone for a man’s health, both physically and psychologically, and for anyone who is searching to increase muscle mass as this is the most important hormone for physique and performance enhancement purposes too.
A lot of people are using anabolic steroids all over the world with great success for such purposes but we recommend customers to read and to inform themselves about “what do anabolic steroids do?” before actually using anabolic steroids. For answering this question, you’re going to be given a short summary of the most important things about what you can expect from using anabolic steroids.
What Do Steroids Do?
- Enlarged Muscles
Anabolic steroids have been widely used and are still used by bodybuilders, by sports athletes as well as ordinary people trying to get a better looking physique in order to aid their muscle building processes. This is the most noticeable effect of using steroids and is the main reason why so many people use them. Steroids are working by retaining huge amounts of nitrogen in the body as well as to hugely increase protein synthesis.
Nitrogen is the substance that is present in the human body in various amounts and is more present in healthy people in normal conditions, as a result this helps to synthesize proteins. Using steroids is leading to an increase in nitrogen amounts and this is ultimately leading to more protein uptake from the digestive tract and synthesis after you eat foods.
In the end, with more protein synthesis this is increasing the muscles amounts and muscles strength. This is the biggest reason why people use steroids and the most desirable result.
- Increased Body Performance
It has been proven that steroid users are showing much better performance in almost all sports fields where speed, strength, agility, performance and endurance are required. People using steroids are having an obvious advantage over those who do not use them in sports and athletics because they were able to register much better results.
Because of the boost in all those factors – strength, performance, speed, agility, endurance and all others, is quite obvious that steroid users have a big advantage. Medically, this occurs because steroids are increasing oxygen delivery to the muscles alongside with an increase in red blood cells counts. This is offering the user more energy, more muscle strength and so on and so forth.
Energy levels, strength levels, endurance levels and so on and so forth are greatly enhanced for a steroid user, that’s why they are better performing at activities when physical strength is required.
- Enhanced Male Characteristics
Due to the fact that the anabolic steroids are increasing testosterone levels in the human body, is quite obvious that anabolic steroids would greatly boost male sexual characteristics. This is the main reason why female users are having a much lower tolerance to anabolic steroids and they are much prone to get side effects, especially virilization.
Users of anabolic steroids tend to develop man like traits such as more facial and body hair growth, deepening of the voice, jaw enlargement, development of more pronounced skeletal muscles, hair loss, muscle growth, and so on and so forth.
- Increased Sex Drive
Due to the same reason of increased testosterone as a result of using anabolic steroids, the users tend to get an increased sex drive. That’s why, libido increase is common among anabolic steroid users. There are many people all around the world suffering from libido issues and reduced sex drive. Using anabolic steroids may be helpful for them.
There are other benefits when talking about anabolic steroids and sex drive. There are reports indicating that sexual arousal in users have been boosted and even sexual performance can be increased in males.
Anabolic Steroids Side Effects
The abuse of anabolic steroids in terms of prolonged use or abusive dosages would lead to side effects of steroids.
- There are studies done which prove that there is an occurrence of male infertility associated with the use of anabolic steroids for long periods of time. That’s because steroids increase testosterone levels unnaturally and your testicles do not produce them on their own. As a result, it causes testicle shrinkage and therefore it leads to low sperm count and as a final result – infertility.
Enlargement of prostate and prostate cancer is possible too when too long periods use of anabolic steroids are attempted. Other than prostate issues, there are certain anabolic steroids which convert into estrogen. This is lead to high estrogen levels in a man and therefore leads to a condition known as gynecomastia (or simply gyno, or as many people tend to call it – man’s breasts, man’s tits etc).
The use of anabolic steroids can be associated with early onset of male pattern hair loss especially to those men who are prone to get such types of side effects.
- Teens are always recommended to stay away from the use of anabolic steroids unless a doctor recommends their use for various health conditions. There’s a reason why – there are studies proving that anabolic steroids can cause stunted growth and as a result – short stature. That’s happening because the use of anabolic steroids is linked to the closure of growth plates and therefore, this is retarding the growth to the normal height.
- Females are most prone to anabolic steroids side effects as they are having much less tolerance to them compared to men. That’s because women’s body, generally, cannot tolerate such high amounts of testosterone as men’s body can. Taking in consideration that anabolic steroids are increasing the amounts of testosterone in the body, no wonder that females are most susceptible of getting negative side effects.
Generally, in females, the variety of unwanted negative side effects are quite a lot and they are more compared to those of them, but they are mainly seen only in those women who are being engaged in an improper and unregulated usage of anabolic steroids. That’s why is extremely important, especially for women, to carefully check the dose and never go over the limit.
For example, there are women who are experiencing an increased hair growth in some regions of the body that are not good for females such as on different parts on the body like legs, arms etc. and even on face. Except for unwanted hair growth, females are getting other virilization side effects too such as deepening of their voices, similar to those of men. Other than this, women who are using anabolic steroids risk interfering with their menstrual cycles too. There are other virilizing side effects like the enlargement of female genitalia like clitoris and some other side effects too.
- Psychological Effects
It is important to mention that the use of anabolic steroids might also lead to some mental issues too and that’s taking in consideration that anabolic steroids are interfering with your hormones, therefore by having hormonal fluctuations it obvious affects the way you’re feeling and thinking.
When talking about psychological related negative effects linked to the use of anabolic steroids use there are short term side effects but there are also long terms side effects too. The short terms side effects usually include: incontrollable aggression, getting easily irritated, having an awkward behavior as well as questionable decision making. Usually, the long terms psychological effects include depression and moody feeling.
- Medical Disease
By irresponsibly using steroids, there are side effects that are associated with cardiovascular system. Various heart issues may arise like for example cardiomegaly – this is a health condition when the patient’s heart chambers are getting enlarged, but this is happening as a result of a long period steroid use and usually in higher doses than those recommended.
Another serious side effect associated with the use of steroids is liver and kidney failure. Once again, this usually occurs with a long standing use of steroids. In addition, there are different steroids which affect liver in different ways meaning that there are some specific steroids that are more dangerous for liver and kidney compared to others.
Other serious conditions associated with the use of steroids include increased levels of bad cholesterol and decreased levels of good cholesterol offering an overall bad cholesterol condition. The prolonged use of anabolic steroids, especially in high doses is also associated with high blood pressure (hypertension).
There are other health conditions which can occur from the use of anabolic steroids but they are all closely related to the dosage and period of time that those steroids are being administered. By using steroids in proper dosages and not exceeding the recommended cycle length without having any pre existing health conditions (especially heart, blood, liver or kidney related), then you’re most likely going to avoid getting all of those negative side effects.
There are various different methods which may help a person avoid the negative side effects explained in this article. Avoiding side effects of anabolic steroids is very important and that’s why, before actually using steroids, you need to learn how to reduce or avoid those side effects.
