NEW YORK (Reuters) -- High school athletes looking to bulk up and improve performance often use illegal steroids, heedless of their damaging side effects. But, a new study reveals education can be effective in keeping kids off the drugs.
"Anabolic steroids are all related to the male hormone testosterone," explained Dr. Linn Goldberg, professor of medicine at the University of Oregon, and co-author of the study. "They are responsible for the secondary sex characteristics of men. Along with muscle mass, they control balding, facial hair, sex drive."
He says that while steroids in low levels are essential to normal growth, "some athletes use up to 50 or 100 times the usual amounts, and there are many associated problems." These problems include acne, hair loss, enlarged breasts, liver disease (including tumors), stunted height, and the increased cholesterol levels and blood pressure associated with heart disease.
While it's hard to pinpoint whether the sudden deaths of some young athletes are connected with steroid use, Goldberg said, "We certainly know there have been drug-related deaths, whether from anabolic steroids or other drugs that promote athletic capacity."
Steroids affect psychology as well. Aggressive behavior and increased violence are common because the drugs affect the ability to control feelings of rage.
Steroids are illegal and are most often purchased through older weightlifters in a black-market system centered in gyms.
The study focused on 31 Oregon high school football teams and their coaches. The researchers tried to uncover how much the study participants understood about steroids, and attempted to determine if education would help keep kids off the drugs.
Surprisingly, "we found that coaches didn't know any more than the 16-year-old kids they worked with," when it came to the perils of steroid use.
After educating coaches, Goldberg and his colleagues used a hands-on approach to get the message through to kids. For example, he had student players "take a typical weightlifting magazine and look at the bodybuilders pictured in it, looking for the acne, the hair loss... the obvious side effects of steroid use." He said these exercises brought the reality of steroid use home to kids in a powerful way.
Researchers found that after the information sessions, adolescent athletes expressed reduced intent to try steroids, greater fear of the drugs' side effects, more negative feelings about those who used steroids, higher self-esteem, and increased focus on nutrition and exercise behaviors aimed at increasing strength and ability.
Goldberg also offered young athletes alternatives to drug use. "You can achieve many of the effects you want, especially in adolescence, by healthier means, such as a sports-nutrition diet and state-of-the-art weightlifting," he explained.
Parents should be alert to increased aggressiveness and rapid weight gain as possible signs of anabolic steroid use, Goldberg said.
One of the most striking side effects of adolescent use of the drugs is that kids may simply stop growing taller.
"We interviewed one high school football coach. He was about 5'10", his daughter was 5'6", but his son was about 5'4". At the same time the son was winning all these power-lifting championships," Goldberg said. "His father was blind to the fact that his kid was abusing steroids... It wasn't until his son left for college -- still 5'4" -- that he found vials of anabolic steroids underneath his mattress."
Goldberg explained that heightened steroids fool the body into thinking it has already fully matured -- and growth is shut down. The lost height can never be recovered. "That alone can certainly shut down the remainder of most people's athletic careers," he said.
SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association (1996;276(19):1555-1562)
