Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin.
Would you take a performance-enhancing drug
that could help you become an Olympic champion?
What if that drug had some serious negative
side effects?
These drugs are banned in sports, but that
doesn’t stop some athletes from taking them.
So what do they do and how do they work?
Let’s start off with the most famous of
these drugs: anabolic steroids.
When these are taken, the body breaks them
down into smaller molecules that can enter
cells and bind to a structure called an androgen
receptor.
Normally, testosterone binds to this, but
anabolic steroids can too.
And from here, the real magic begins.
See, once the androgen receptor is activated,
your body starts to produce more proteins
during the process of anabolism.
The cells in your skeletal muscles start to
replicate, and this means that your muscles
will start to grow and you’ll become stronger.
In fact, in men, exercise and steroids could
lead to a 38% increase in strength, and potentially
even more for women.
And not only that, but anabolic steroids can
also help athletes train harder and recover
faster by shortening catabolism -- the process
in which proteins are broken down into amino
acids.
But, of course, not all the effects of anabolic
steroids are positive.
It can cause acne, high blood pressure, and
male-pattern baldness in both men and women.
They can cause men’s testicles to shrink,
decrease sperm count, and increase your risk
for prostate cancer.
And women using these steroids can develop
facial hair, a deepened voice, and their periods
may change or even completely stop.
So, seriously, don’t use these.
But what if an athlete isn’t really concerned
with muscle strength, but rather wants to
improve their endurance?
This is where blood doping comes in handy,
but again, this is a bad move.
So bad, in fact, that Lance Armstrong was
stripped of all seven of his Tour de France
victories and was banned from the sport for
life.
The goal of blood doping is to increase the
amount of the oxygen-carrying red blood cells
in the blood.
And this is usually done with either blood
transfusions, using your own blood, or by
injecting yourself with erythropoietin, a
molecule that stimulates the production of
more red blood cells.
And the basic idea is that the more oxygen
that can get to your body’s muscles, the
more endurance you will have.
So does it work?
Well, in one study, blood doping increased
an athlete’s endurance by 34%, and in another,
an athlete was able to run 8 kilometers on
a treadmill 44 seconds faster than before.
That might not sound like a lot, but when
these athletes are competing with the best
of the best, every second counts.
Now, these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Other performance-enhancing drugs include
human growth hormone, which helps increase
athletes’ sprinting capacity by up to 4%
and increases muscle growth as well.
But trust me when I say that, if you are an
athlete, it’s probably better to just train
the old-fashioned way -- with a lot of hard
work and sweat.
Excluding any of the negative health effects,
using these drugs means that you’re cheating,
and in the professional world, that is definitely
not taken lightly.
Do you think the Olympics should allow doping?
Will it push the human limit forward?
Our good friend Vanessa from BrainCraft discusses
it here.
Make sure you come back every Monday for a
brand new video.
As always, I’m Blocko and this has been
Life Noggin.
Don’t forget to keep on thinking!
