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The Effects of Steroids on the Human Body and Steroid Abuse by Athletes

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The Effects of Steroids on the Human Body and Steroid Abuse by Athletes For many years, the use and abuse of anabolic-androgenic steroids have been linked closely to athletes. Steroids come in different forms. They can be taken in pill form or injected straight into the user’s muscles by a needle. There are many sports that are associated with steroid abuse like weightlifting, basketball, and track and field. Anabolic-androgenic steroids are synthetic forms of male sex hormones, like testosterone. They speed up the growth and development process of muscles in the body. Steroids were originally developed around the 1930s in order to treat hypogonadism, which is a disease that prevents the male testes to not produce …show more content…

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has written a list of banned drugs that all athletes are not allowed to use to enhance their performance. The list includes steroids that can be taken orally or steroids that can be injected by a needle into the abuser’s muscle. There have been thousands of athletes that have been banned from the respective sports because of doping (using steroids) while training and/or participating. Several doping scandals in the athletic world have unfortunately come up in the past. One example would be the steroid scandal of Marion Jones. She had won the 100 meter dash, 200 meter dash, and the 4x1 meter relay in the Sydney Olympics. Around 2005, there was an investigation to see whether she was doping or not. Marion denied ever using steroids before or during the Summer Olympics. But in 2007, she admitted in court that she lied to the investigators and two grand juries saying she had in fact used steroids during the Summer Olympics. Because of this confession, she was sentenced to six months in 2008 prison for lying to the prosecutors who were investigating her case. In an interview with Oprah, Marion Jones admitted that she most likely could have won in the Sydney Olympics without the use of steroids.

Honestly, if she was confident enough to know that she was going to win without doping, what was the point of taking steroids in the first place? It makes me sad to hear that there are hundreds of thousands of

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