If you have an opinion on performance enhancements (i.e., dietary supplements) be sure to watch Bigger, Stronger, Faster — a new documentary that is a bit more entertaining and informational than the classic Pumping Iron (heretical, I know).
It is well-edited and does a pretty good job tackling “both” sides of the issues. At the same time it unravels a lot of the misconceptions and falsehoods surrounding the evil that is “steroids.”
For instance, for all of the hype surrounding steroid-induced deaths, there really isn’t much tangible evidence that many people die from it at all. The documentary notes that (according to the CDC) tobacco kills 435,000 people each year, alcohol kills 75,000 and the mass murderer that is known as anabolic steroids claims 3 lives each year.
As far as emergency room visits go, it ranks near the bottom:
1) Alcohol
2) Cocaine
3) Marijuana
4) Heroin
25) Aspirin
97) Pepcid
142) Anabolic steroids
It’s the silent killer, right?
For all of graduate school, this was an important topic that I dealt with on a daily basis. The masters program that I finished was Sport Management — filled primarily with former or even current athletes. And as you can imagine, anytime there was a new professional player “outed” in the news for using banned substances, we usually would talk about it with our professors (many of whom used to play collegiate sports as well).
The main research project (what could be called my thesis) was titled: “Usage of Sport Dietary Supplements in the Collegiate Arena.” I coauthored it along with another grad student. Our primary data was taken from about 550 self-reporting surveys that we passed out to undergraduate students we taught.
Yea, one of the jobs I had was as a college instructor, teaching kinesiology classes such as weight training.
Over the course of several semesters I invited a number of physical trainers and health nutritionists into the class to discuss performance supplements.
And during this time I also trained, along with a number of my friends, in various weight lifting programs and utilized — horror of horrors — performance supplements. Not steroids. Nothing illegal (at least then).
At my peak, in the fall of 2004 I was playing rugby and doing some intense weight training twice a day. In addition to protein, the only supplements I took on a regular basis was an andro-based product called P6, a creatine-based product called M5 and a now-discontinued ephedrine-based product. All of them were produced by Cellucor, a company that was based in the same town as the college I went to and whose product I still endorse (because they paid me a million dollars). [I even had the fortune of meeting a number of the people that tested the new developmental stuff and the owner himself (who as a bit portly). Good guys.]
But I digress.
Another one of the issues that is tackled in the BSF documentary is the hypocritical double-standard when it comes to speed-drugs, go-pills. These are legal in a number of different settings, including for students that need to focus on their work and even fighter pilots. The last point is interesting in part because War Nerd discussed this at length a few months ago: This is your war on drugs.
Another sacred cow discussed in BSF was the death of Taylor Hooton. While I never met Taylor, we both grew up in the same part of town (North Dallas) and competed in the same sport (baseball). Taylor’s death received national attention (NYT) after it was revealed that he had been using steroids.
His dad is interviewed and unfortunately for him, admits on camera that irrespective of the medical evidence suggesting that anti-depressants may have been the catalyst for his death, the father will continue to blame steroids.
This reminded me to the death of Steve Bechler, a pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles. It was his death that motivated Congress to ban ephedrine for a year. This was done despite the fact that the medical community disagreed with the conclusion, pointing to a slew of known physiological problems that Bechler was known to have. See the extensive report from the nutrition medical team at Baylor University.
Which brings me to the $64,000 question, should you use them?
When I taught classes one of the questions that I continually received was that of performance enhancements. I never sold my students anything but rather told them that if they were concerned about it, to investigate it as much as possible. I helped provide a number of them resources discussing both sides of the issues.
I also brought in independent physical trainers from the outside community. One of them was Cliff Latham, who had been a track coach at Kansas State. Another was Ryan Kobermann. Both have back grounds as athletes (Cliff played Field Hockey on the East Coast and Ryan played on the college football team at A&M) as well as serious students in human physiology.
One of the things that I liked most about these guys was that they really wanted to help change someones lifestyle through education. Not only would they help you get on a program specific to weight-loss or mass-gain, but they would try to help explain exactly how the body breaks down specific substances.
Neither advocated the use of steroids, in fact, both frowned upon its use (especially since we all knew people juicing). And if you’re interested in learning more about any performance supplement, I heartily recommend contacting either gentleman.
For those interested in the grad study I did, the results were fairly predictable — a large portion of students that had been athletes in high school had used some kind of supplement (like protein or creatine). Guys used them more than girls. Very profound.
Be sure to also check out Steroids and Science, the Case for Clemens, “Steroids, Home Runs, and the Law of Genius” (pdf) and the most popular post ever on this blog, Steroids do not make you a better baseball player.
I just finished watching