Steroids and Performance Enhancing Supplements The use of performance-enhancing supplements among athletes should be banned from all athletic sports and competition, in that it provides an unfair advantage over other athletes trying to excel naturally. Performance-enhancing drugs are a controversial topic in today’s society, which are currently under debate. Performance-enhancing drugs are substances, which are used to stimulate certain areas of the body to make an athlete excel in a certain event. A performance enhancing supplement is defined by Edward Dolan in his book Drugs and Sports as “any substance or method used to enhance athletic performance”. The most common form of performance-enhancing supplements are called steroids.According to Hank Nuwer in his book Steroids, steroids are anabolic drugs that build growth hormones that include the androgens (male sex hormones) principally testosterone and estrogen and progestogens (female sex hormones). Steroids were first developed for medical purposes. Steroids are compounds that are necessary for the well being of many living creatures, including human beings. These include sex hormones, bile acids, and cholesterol (Nuwer 17). In addition to the medical use, another purpose of steroids and performance-enhancing drugs are that they are used by athletes to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors. They also use them to keep up with the competition since so many athletes are using these types of drugs. These desired effects range from increasing muscle size and strength, to decreasing fatigue, providing quick temporary weight gain, inhibiting growth, and even simple pain relief (Lupica 24). The most common kind of performance-enhancing drugs are Nelvar, Deca-Durabolin, Anavar, Stanzolol, Dianabol and Anadrol-50 (Nuwer 19). These drugs are much more dangerous then legal performance enhancing drugs because the athletes take more than the recommended doses tha...
