The Steroid Effect
Over the past decade, many baseball players and other athlethes have used steroids to achieve a certain "level" in a sport. Most players take illegal sports drugs to gain respect and at the same time conquer certain obstacles that no other player has ever done. It is well known that steroids can maximize your physical abilities and your muscles; it can also cause a breakdown in your immune system and interfere with your bone growth. As a result of using illegal steroids, most athlete face the horrors of humiliation and therefore, suffer the obliteration of there careers.
One of the most shocking steroid effects in this present time is the increase of your physical abilites and your muscles. Throughout the league, players have increased there muscles the old fashioned way by working out to become fit in every field of baseball. However, well renowned hitters of our time have used steroids to increase their muscles for a whole other purpose. Jose Canseco, for example, started a controversy dealing with steroid use and how it would affect everyone in baseball and the fans themselves with the commissioner of baseball and eventually, with the House of Representatives. By using steroids and increasing his muscle growth, Canseco had become a steroid scapegoat throughout the league. With the increase of his muscles, he may have had muscle power, but he had definitley lost his career, mentally. This is what the increase of muscles does to you. Henry A. Waxman, a representative of the committee in the minority office stated from his website www.reform.house.gov that "for thirty years, Major League Baseball has told us to trust them. But the league had not honored that trust."(1) This quotation by Waxman shows exactly how the league covers up its tracks on steroid abuse and how Waxman tries to analyze why players use steroids to increase there muscle growth. With the entire controversy taking place, many baseball players such as Jose Canseco, may have the physical power of using steroids and breaking records but at the same time, feel left out because of the muscle growth mentality. When a player increases his muscles, there might be a possibility that he might be tested for steroid 95% of the time. There is no doubt that you will get the strength of a god but as a result, you might get the mind of a true weakling.
Besides increasing muscle growth, steroids have also destroyed the immune system. Since steroids have increased muscle growth by accelerating the muscles and pumping more blood, they have no doubt decreased the production of the immune system and its antibodies. Without any antibodies, no one player can play baseball or any other sport. This is due to the fact that it is the immune system that fight all the diseases across the body and propels you to become healthier. When the immune system goes down, any disease such as cancer and pneumonia can affect the body. Steroids have been deadly in this sense becasue now it can affect the player's reputation. When a player goes from muscular to impossibly sickening, there is no way that the player is not using steroids. When a player becomes sick from steroids, he will eventually have to face the media and a public convention. The breakdown of the immune system is crucial because there is no way of fixing it back.
For the most part, steroids have definitely affected the bone growth amongst most athletes. As you normally stop growing around your adolescence years, it is normal to look the way you are. However, when you take steroids, you become exposed to the ability that these drugs might affect your bone growth. Without bone growth, the entire muscular system would fall apart. Since bone growth is the essential part for both the immune system and the muscles, it is a definite cause for most disabilities. According to Dr. Alan I. Leshner, a former director for the National Institute on Drug abuse, from the website www.nida.nih.gov,Leshner stated that "When a child or adolescent takes anabolic steroids, the resulting artificially high sex hormone levels can signal the bones to stop growing sooner than they normally would have done." (2) Leshner clearly demonstrated in his own words that bone growth can be affected at a faster pace with the use of steroids. Since steroids decrease the bone growth in a smaller amount of time, many athletes face the fact that they can become sicker and faster with the most advanced diseases in the world today.
The steroid effect was derived from the urge of power and selfish need. When the Major League players and other athletes use steroids, they hurt there chances of being a true athlete to themselves and to the world. As a result of using steroids, players of all calibers faced the law and the world through selfless pity and disgrace. Many of there careers were destroyed because of the effects of steroids and the damage it has done to there bodies.
Works Cited List
Cossack, Roger. "Palmeiro docked 10 Days For Steroids."ESPN BASEBALL 12.2(2005):2pp. Online. Internet. 14 December 2005. www.sports.espn.go.com
Leshner, Alan I. "What Are The Health Consequences Of Steroid Abuse." National Institute On Drug Abuse. 4.2(1991):5pp. Online. Internet. 14 December 2005. www.nida.nih.gov
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