Over the last 20 years or so, there has been a large outbreak of professional athletes (mainly baseball players) taking Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) in order to make them bigger, faster, and stronger. This is against the rules of the game, and many players, such as Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds, have had records stripped from their name after the discovery of their PED use. It is clear that Steroids have a positive impact on your performance, but they are also said to take many years off your life. For this blog I will investigate the validity of this claim, and the negative side effects that steroids have on their users.

Because “steroid” is a very general term, I will focus on only Anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids are a category of synthetic substances that affect testosterone levels in the body. Because they heighten testosterone levels, they make the process of “bulking up”, or adding lots of muscle in a short period of time, much easier than the natural way. Originally developed in order to treat a disease called hypogonadism, these steroids can obviously be used for a good cause, promoting growth and development in underdeveloped males.

Bodybuilders were the first group to ever use anabolic steroids strictly for muscle growth, but athletes soon followed, and this has since become an epidemic in the sports world. In a 1999 study done on middle and high schools across the nation by the

For professional baseball players, the numbers are shockingly higher. In 2014, ESPN Magazine did an anonymous player poll of 143 Major league players which estimated that 9.4% of MLB players are still on steroids, even after a huge crackdown on steroid use, and the said end to the “Steroid Era”. During this era, players like David Wells said “25 to 40 percent of all Major Leaguers are juiced” and Jose Canseco estimated that nearly 80 percent of MLB players were on steroids. The issue got so bad that the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig commissioned George J. Mitchell, a highly respected lawyer to write a 409 page report detailing steroid use in the game’s past and present. In this report, 89 players were ousted as steroid users. In addition to this, Mitchell reported that in a random drug test in 2003, nearly 7 percent of players tested positive. This number though is much lower than the actual number of players doping, because until 2008, there was no widely used test for Human Growth Hormone, one of the most commonly used steroids. Doping is absolutely epidemic in the game of baseball, and also in many other areas, and while it does help performance greatly, athletes do not consider the adverse side effects.

The use of anabolic steroids most closely affects the hormonal system. Common side effects, which I will investigate, are testicular atrophy, which results in the shrinking of the testicles and reduced sperm count. Males also often develop female breasts, which is caused by the hormone imbalance caused by the anabolic steroids. In a study  done by Medscape, 500 subjects were chosen due to their activity on an anabolic steroid chat-room. The subjects were issued a 30 question, self reported questionnaire. Here are the results of this questionnaire:

As you can clearly see by only 4 out of the 500 respondents having 0 side effects, anabolic steroids seem to be exceptionally harmful. This survey, while it was self reported, was completely anonymous, and people who have already admitted their steroid use stand no advantage to not reporting the adverse side effects, which differs from those middle and high schoolers who might report that they were not using steroids in fear that the study was not actually anonymous. This study does not suffer from the Texas Sharpshooter problem, for it is a study with 30 very specific questions, not an experiment that could be interpreted in any number of ways. Additionally, because it was published, there is no issue with the File Drawer problem either.

From all of this data, it is clear that anabolic steroids are quite harmful, but their users do not seem to be concerned with this. In the last study, although nearly 100% of users experienced negative side effects, only 61.4% of users were worried about the negative effects that they brought. This is very concerning, because the side effects that they are experiencing are quite serious, yet these users seem to be taking them quite lightly.

In conclusion, due to the overwhelming amount of data, I believe it is safe to say that steroids are quite harmful, and the amount of people still using them is quite concerning. I am not sure there is a way to curb the usage of steroids, for they are already illegal, and carry heavy penalties for possession. People manage to get around these laws, and steroids are still quite present in our nation. Hopefully, soon people will realize the significant adverse effects present, and will make a change for the better.