Performance enhancing drugs: long-term damage for short-term gain?
Some anabolic steroids are produced naturally by the body and often stimulate the production of new tissues. Synthetic anabolic steroids are used by some athletes to increase their athletic performance decrease their recovery time and to enable them to train harder and faster. Besides the performance-boosting potential of these drugs there are also many potential health risks associated with the use of such drugs and as a result the use of many anabolic steroids to enhance an athletes performance is banned by many professional sporting bodies. Your essay should consider
a) How taking anabolic steroids can be beneficial to some groups of people e.g. how do they work? What effects do they produce?
b) The short-term and long-term health effects of taking anabolic steroids with particular focus on two of the following:
Androstenedione
Erythropoietin
Human growth hormone
c) Following your research for part b) discuss whether the increase in performance gained from using anabolic steroids outweighs the potential health risks associated with their use.
Hint: make sure that any sources you use for your research are reliable. Consider the size of the sample studied and whether the source may be biased. Is there conflicting evidence out there?
