Better safe than sorry - Educate your child about steroids!

Steroids are widely used in the world of sports, being notorious for being abused and used illegally. Due to the fact that steroids, when taken, need to be chosen and dosed properly, one needs to be very careful whenever dealing with these.

So, you might want to teach your child everything about steroids, allowing him/her to know what these are, using them solely for proper purposes. It is better to be safe than sorry when it comes to steroids, so learn all about them from the following lines.

What Are Steroids?

Steroid are also referred to as roids, juice, hype, weight trainers, gym candy, pumpers or stackers. However, more precisely, these are chemicals greatly resembling the hormones found in our body. In fact, our body creates steroids naturally in order to fight off stress and stimulate the growth and development of our physical characteristics.

Therefore, many athletes and people who are into sports use steroids in order to boost their performance and aesthetic appeal.

One of the types of steroids are the anabolic steroids, being hormones which resemble androgens, the male sex hormones. There are more than 100 different types of these steroids, the strongest and most potent being testosterone. Even females produce testosterone in smaller quantities. Basically, all the traits that make males male are expressed through the actions and effects of this hormone, from voice mutation to growth of body hair. Also, the more testosterone a person has, the more aggressive he is.

Apart from anabolic steroids, there are steroidal supplements, formerly obtained from health stores, now considered illegal and issued only to those who have a doctor's prescription. Nevertheless, a couple of these medications can be purchased over-the-counter.

These supplements are not as strong as actual steroids. Thus, people take these in greater quantities, commonly risking their health due to a vast variety of side-effects these supplements are known to cause.

Dangers of Steroids

Steroids are known to cause many different health issues, some of which are more severe than others. The worst case scenarios include hair loss and dizziness, along with mood swings, delusion, paranoia, sleeping disorders, nausea and vomiting. Additionally, steroids can lead to trembling, hypertension, blood vessel damage, joint pain, increase in susceptibility to muscle and tendon injury, jaundice, liver complications, urinary problems and development issues, where individuals do not grow as much as they could. Finally, due to some other effects of steroids, people may become more prone to heart diseases, strokes and even various variants of cancer.

If we are to separate typical male and typical female problems related to steroid use, we can make quite a list here as well. Namely, girls may experience more bodily hair due to steroids, along with the stronger presence of feminine body characteristics. Their breasts may shrink and their clitoris may become bigger. All these changes can happen hand-in-hand with a change in menstrual cycle.

As for the male part of the population, once they use steroids, they face having their testicles shrink and experiencing pain during urination, along with breast growth, erectile dysfunction and infertility.

Yet, the long list of risks related to steroids does not end here, making these supplements even more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. Due to the fact that these are injected into the body like some types of drugs, the side-effects can be the same. Basically, the users can develop HIV if they share the needle with others. Additionally, hepatitis, liver problems and bacterial and viral infections, all are possible scenarios.

Some people who are into sports and physical development try to increase the effect of certain steroids by combining them. This is a bad step to take since we are yet to learn all about the possible interactions between these chemicals. Thus, some of these combinations can be life-threatening or straightforwardly deadly. Moreover, using steroids over a long course of time may increase chances of becoming dependent, developing an addiction.

Do Kids Really Use Steroids?

If we are to trust the public opinion and attitude, the answer to this question is an affirmative one. Namely, if we are to judge the vox populi and transfer this into statistical data, the global society believes that every 6th 12th grader can bench press astounding 225lbs.

On the other hand, according to researches carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the situation is not so grim, even though the number of college students using steroids has increased from 1991 to 2003 by up to 6.1%. However, a steady drop has been noted since, with up to 4% less people being on steroids towards the end of 2005. If we are to transform this data once more, according to these researches, about 660,000 students were using steroids in 2005. Thus, the use of steroids among younger people, even children, is quite bothersome and defeating, commonly leading to various scandals and mishaps.

All in all, teach your child about the numerous harmful effects of steroids mentioned above, teaching him/her better ways of being active in sports. The risks of using steroids are too high and it is much safer to be of average body build and performance than to be exceptional and terminally sick.