Steroids now often used for slimming, not just sports

[Chauga]

During the two months of its wide-ranging inquiry into steroid abuse, Congress has come a long way from slugger Mark McGwire. When lawmakers opened a fourth hearing on the subject Wednesday, they were talking not about the batting averages and biceps of professional ballplayers, but the waistlines and weight of teenage girls.

It was an attempt to explore the growing concern nationwide about steroid abuse among young women. Yet in the process, it also laid bare perhaps a deeper and more overlooked trend in steroid abuse - one that goes beyond sport or sex. Many steroid users - both men and women - take the drug not to run faster, jump higher, or throw harder, but simply to look better.

Among boys, it has been called the "Adonis Complex" - a desire for the perfect body, as old as ancient Greece, now abetted by chemical means. Among girls, it is seen as part of a disorder akin to anorexia - a pathological desire to get the fit, toned figure of modern fashion. Indeed, to a growing number of scientists, steroids are no longer linked only to sports, but to a society fixated by the shape and size of the human body.

"There is a consensus that the problem is real," says Gary Wadler, a doctor of sports medicine and a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency. " is not just about making the team, ...It goes significantly beyond that."


http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0616/p01s01-ussc.html

[hippiechick]

1. For slimming ?

Don't tell HippieDog Hank that !! He's been on and off Prednisone - a steroid - for the past few months and has been eating everything he can get his paws on !

Ole' boy looks like a Thanksgiving turkey !!! :wow:

[BattyDem]

2. Slimming? How is that possible?

Sometimes I have to take steroids when my asthma gets really bad. I end up eating everything in sight!

[Zerex71]

3. Maybe your nads would get slim

but I doubt much else will. Your chances of growing up to be a Groping Austrian Governator, however, increase.

[NawlinsNed]

4. Because some athletes have pretty strict diets...

the more muscle mass you have, the easier it is to burn fat. I'd imagine that steroids + creatine could do a great deal to help someone slim down quicker.