How can you detect primobolan in the body?
Using a urine test, you can take a look at the ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone in the body, which should be one-to-one in a normal male. If someone is taking exogenous (external) testosterone, the ratio will be skewed in favor of testosterone. Also, you can use chromatography, an elaborate lab technique (involving mixture separation) to detect the specific chemical fingerprint for primobolan.
Rodriguez also supposedly tested positive for testosterone. What does that mean?
The hormone is often used as another injectable steroid that together with primobolan dispenses androgenic metabolic properties. When most athletes take anabolic steroids, they use what’s called a “stacking dose,” where they take several steroids to exacerbate the substances’ effects.
What are the short-term benefits of taking these steroids?
You can have a relatively quick enhancement of muscle strength and size, even if you take steroids and don’t lift weights. But the biggest benefit from using anabolic steroids is that they allow an athlete to train harder and have a quicker recovery. An athlete trains on Monday, then he comes back Tuesday and can have just as good a workout through the end of the week. The workouts for most individuals get less intense as the week goes on because they haven’t recovered completely from their earlier workouts.
Why didn’t Rodriguez’s batting average improve during the years he took steroids?
There’s limited research indicating that he could actually enhance his batting average with steroids. A batting average is more indicative of performance ability such as hand-eye coordination. However, research with frogs has shown that anabolic steroids can enhance androgen receptors on nerve endings, so there’s some potential for increased reactions. Hitting in baseball is all about reaction time, whether it’s a curveball or a fastball.
The key benefit with anabolic steroids is that they can help you be consistent over an entire baseball season. That’s the reason you’re seeing those higher statistics for Rodriguez from 2001 to 2003. If you take a look at good power hitters in April and May (early in the baseball season that runs from April to September, excluding the playoffs), their numbers are going to be pretty good. But these guys aren’t able to maintain that in August and September. Take the New York Mets: If that team was on anabolic steroids the way they were in 2000, they probably would have made the playoffs the past two years instead of running out of gas late in the season. It makes a big difference when having that little extra.
Now a guy like A-Rod – he trains really hard. With the steroids, he is maximizing his potential. Would he be a great player without them? Without a doubt. Would he be as consistent? The answer to that is probably no.
What are the side effects of taking steroids?
It’s all dependent upon the concentration, how much you’re taking, how long you’re on them, and also on an individual’s particular reaction. One common side effect is acne on the back – it’s one of the tell-tale signs that someone is using. In addition, you may get elevations in blood pressure and in your lipid (fat) profile – your cholesterol goes up, for example. Over time, the testicles begin to shrink, because the body is no longer producing its own testosterone. There’s a chance that the sperm count will get lower, too. But in some ways, taking steroids is like a second puberty – there is increased hair growth and aggressive behavior. In particular, women who take steroids can get hirsutism, an abnormal growth of body hair, and develop beards.
Steroids can also potentially increase body size, though we haven’t really seen that with Alex. If you look at Barry Bonds, his very noticeable change in head size is actually due to human growth hormone, which is not a steroid and has different mechanisms in the body. Bonds’ increase in hat size is called acromegalia, and it’s not reversible.
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16 Comments
Add CommentHe's lying.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA-Rod wasn't "stupid about it", he did a smart thing that got him millions of income.
The problem is that the rules have changed. A few years back professional sports was very cavalier about doping, so doping was the economically right thing to do. On the other hand, lying about it in front of a jury or a senate commission, under oath, isn't exactly the right thing.
It's time we got clear rules. Either there is 100% surprise blood/urine sampling with samples frozen for X years (so that new drugs that aren't detected today can be found later) or doping is OK. You can't have anything in between. What I'd like to see are "pro" and "natural" divisions like in bodybuilding.
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please, explan more about your idea
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHoffman did an interesting study on whether teenagers use steroids because their role models like A-Rod use them. Check out the results here: http://sportsanddrugs.procon.org/viewanswers.asp?questionID=1240
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOver time I'm seeing less overall improvement in a person taking steroids. By comparing nearly forty years of progression of track athletes, specificially the dash events, look at the lowering of times and look at the number of total athletes being tested positive. Then, check back with tested positive athletes and clean athletes and the times are still lowering. So maybe there are steroid athletes who are benefitting on the short term from the drug due to repetitive injury. But overall, the steroids aren't giving a benefit. There are so many testings now being done on the high performance athletes that getting caught is too easy. Recently, femaleUS tennis star was complaining about the total number of testings being done in a calender year. But records are still being broken by clean athletes, and lowering standards that were being won by "steroid" athletes such as a Ben Johnson. So did the steroids really benefit a Ben Johnson during his time, compared to the last summer Olympics won by the Jamiacan who was clean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd say that better training methods, combined with improved understanding of sports science is improving sports records in physical events like dash events.
Maybe its time we dropped this steroids war, and let those that do use the drug die from cancer and all the other associated problems associated with the long term use of the drug.
What an insipid article. A-Rod's numbers were marginally higher in 2001-2003. Of course, that must be steroids. Let's just ignore that those were his peak age years and he was hitting in a Texas bandbox. And how does he know the Mets weren't taking steroids? Have all the teams in history that have surged in September been on the juice? Is there any historical evidence that power hitters fade over the season (no)?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not saying steroids don't make players perform better. But you have to look at the evidence as Baseball Between the Numbers did. This is just someone talking off his hip about something he knows little about, despite his admitted use. Scientific American should be ashamed for running it.
Do you know what you're talking about? Hal_10000 raises the point I was going to bring up in his "Let's just ignore..." sentence. You CAN'T ignore that. He moved to the best home run hitting park in the American League and played there for three PRIME years. Those were the years you would have expected him to have career highs in home runs, in a park that only added to his total. You have to know a little bit about baseball if you want to have credibility in the discussion. You whiffed on this one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRalf123, he didn't get the millions by using steroids. If you're a baseball fan, you know the timeline. You are ignorant or dishonest.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo you say the fact that he was able to train harder and stay injury free early in his career didn't have anything to do with him becoming a superstar?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd you assume that he's saying the truth about not taking anything while with the Yankees? What exactly does "clean" mean? Not taking anything that's currently illegal I guess - he didn't say anything about other performance enhancing drugs. Which he better didn't because every professional athlete takes them.
A point of contention: a person who artificially enhances performance with drugs is not 'maximizing their potential', they are exceeding their potential. I don't care about drugs, or morality, or role models or any of that b.s. Just don't try to pass this off as someone doing the best they can with what they have. It's artificial. It's fake. It's a lie. It makes great ad copy and fits into a rousing locker room speech, but there is no such thing as 110%.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe naivete--putting it charitably--expressed in this essay is astonishing. To pick just one grain of sand off the beach, while most effects of steroid use normally do reverse on discontinuation, gynecomastia often does not, and may even require corrective surgery of a nontrivial nature.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut that greater errors are in unvalidated (and falsifiable) presumptions about steroidal effects. The web site steroids-and-baseball.com documents at some length the scientific literature on the key points, from medical effects to adolescent use to actual baseball statistical analyses. But the belief in the "eveil empire" of steroidal "cheaters" in baseball has now become not a science but a religion, and thus data and reasoning have correspondingly become irrelevant.
Does anyone know the volume #, issue #, and pages of the article?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHelp Please?!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat is the volume #, issue #, and pages of the article?
There's been a research said that abusing anabolic steroids can carry numerous health risks. In a new study of bodybuilders who abused the substance, a link may have been found between that misuse and serious kidney problems.
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There's been a research said that abusing anabolic steroids can carry numerous health risks. In a new study of bodybuilders who abused the substance, a link may have been found between that misuse and serious kidney problems.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<b><a href="http://www.sheeparcade.com">Free Games</a></b>
www.sheeparcade.com