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.
About the author:
Dr. Wysong is author of seven books on health, nutrition,
philosophy and origin of life. He is director of the non-profit
Wysong Instute and author of the Wysong e-Health Newsletter
(free on-line) now in its 18th year of continuous publication.
http://www.wysong.net http://www.cerealwysong.com