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>> KATHY: Welcome to the BioBalance Healthcast.
I’m Dr. Kathy Maupin.
>> BRETT: And I’m Brett Newcomb.
And today we’re going to talk about anabolic
steroids.
Anabolic steroids are in the news a lot.
You see movies about them, you see news concerns,
you see athletes who have taken them and are
suffering from cancer and say “oh my God,
you never should have done it.”
And “please don’t do it to young children”.
And yet technically testosterone replacement
hormone is an anabolic steroid.
So it’s important to talk about the difference.
What’s safe, what’s not safe?
Because we’re talking about tools and the
safe and appropriate and skilled use of tools.
We have a thing at home that is like a welder’s
torch but it’s used for cooking and you
brown sugar and make brulees and stuff, and
my son discovered it when he was about 7 and
he thought it was a torch to set everything
on fire with.
So the tool wasn’t dangerous but my son
was dangerous because he didn’t know what
he had.
He didn’t know what he had a hold of.
That’s sort of the analogy that I want us
to look at as we talk about anabolic steroids,
because there is a huge underground market
in the United States that’s out there that
young males predominantly use as a way to
bulk up and get bigger and increase their
chances of getting a football scholarship
or make a team.
>> KATHY: There are 3 million males in America
using steroids that we know of but I think
it’s probably higher than that.
But this is kind of a request from my nurses
because my nurses are always answering the
question that testosterone that we give to
older women, older men or women who don’t
have any ovaries or men who have had their
testicles removed.
They think this is anabolic steroids.
When in fact it is replacement of a pure hormone
to just replace the hormones that they are
missing.
So it’s how you use it.
Anabolic steroids are not pure testosterone.
They are replicas of testosterone and other
androgens the body makes.
Those androgens are made in the adrenal and
in the testicles.
So when you take these fake testosterone items,
especially when you’re young and healthy
and have your own testosterone, it shuts down
your system.
You don’t make any testosterone and your
adrenal is also impaired.
Because it makes some androgens that are not
like testosterone, but you need them, they’re
not exactly like testosterone.
>> BRETT: So if you were a young male and
you started taking these things and your natural
production has shut down, if you stop taking
them can you get the natural system back?
>> KATHY: In most cases, but if you do this
over and over again.
. .
>> BRETT: Point of abuse beyond which you
can recover.
>> KATHY: Right you do it for a certain amount
of time.
And then, they have a name for it and I know
it’s using a shot of HCG, (which is what
we use for fertility to make women ovulate),
but they use a shot of HCG to recover.
It stimulates their own testicles to start
working.
If you do this over and over, and in some
men they can do it a long time and it will
continue to work and in some young men they
do it a few times and their testicles give
out.
They’re never going to respond again, they
become resistant.
I still remember a young couple [that] came
to me, when I was practicing general OBGYN,
for infertility and I had evaluated both.
And this young man had no testosterone and
no sperm.
And he then confessed that he had used steroids.
And it was a terribly difficult confession
for him because I don’t think he had ever
told his wife before that.
And she was so upset because she’s not going
to have his children and they were, it was
very emotional, I should have just sent them
to you.
It was very emotional for them to realize
that he had done that to himself.
And she was unaware of that risk.
I don’t know that it would have changed
their marriage, it probably changed it afterwards.
>> BRETT: And part of the problem is that
because of the underground nature of this,
kids who are being exposed to it, being offered
it, who are taking it, are getting their information
about it from people who are maliciously evil
or who don’t have good information.
>> KATHY: They’re pushers.
>> BRETT: Thye say ‘oh well this will help
you bulk up or this will increase your speed
of reflex and it’ll work out and it’ll
be okay’, and they don’t know or talk
about what the secondary costs are.
It’s very similar, I always reason by analogies
it helps me to conceptualize this way.
But when we’re talking about steroids and
the body and testosterone and anabolic steroids
- the chemicals that go into your body look
for and attach themselves to receptor sites.
So they’re like on-off switches that turn
the system on and make it work or turn them
off.
I think about them like locks, keyholes and
the right exact form key has to go in the
right exact receptor site.
And the anabolic steroids are artificial keys
that trick the body.
They’re not the natural keys of the body
but they resemble it so closely out to 7,
8, or 9 decimal points that the body is fooled.
And if I’m understanding what you’re saying
correctly there’s a potential for the body
then to prefer the artificial key over the
natural key and then just stop ever accepting
the natural key again.
It’s like they lock you out of your motel
room because you didn’t pay the bill.
They change the key.
>> KATHY: That’s true, it also feeds back.
When you have a high level of hormone the
feedback system goes and shuts off the normal
stimulation of the production of that hormone.
So the feedback goes to your own.
>> BRETT: So they don’t have to reject it,
it just stops.
>> KATHY: No but after they use these anabolic
steroids over time they develop an immunity
to their own testosterone and even this, this
doesn’t even work anymore.
So, because it’s synthetic, it is not their
own testosterone, and over time it is different
then testosterone.
If they had high levels of testosterone, of
course they wouldn’t need this and they
would never become immune to their own testosterone
or the pure form.
But these are medicines that were made for
a whole different reason.
And they’re being abused in Eastern Europe
you can get them over the internet, I understand
from different sources that I’ve interviewed,
you can get this, I would never quote the
websites, but you can get them from websites,
you can get them from a very small percentage
of unethical physicians in this country.
You can even get them from trainers or people
who are weight lifters, they have their own
source.
>> BRETT: You remember the podcast we did
about the guy that bought the medicine from
China?
And it had this horrible set of worms that
were growing in his stool.
>> KATHY: Yeah, she bought it for weight loss
and she came out with worms.
Well she lost weight.
She had no idea.
>> BRETT: But she ingested stuff from a country
where it’s not regulated, it’s not controlled.
You don’t know what it is, the dosage isn’t
consistent.
>> KATHY: It’s in Chinese, the instructions
are in Russian, or German.
>> BRETT: Which most high school students
of my knowledge can’t read that.
>> KATHY: But the types of names that I am
talking about are: anodrol is usually used
for anemia in very sick patients to stimulate
the production of red cells; oxydron (they
probably have their own street names, I don’t
know those) is meant to promote weight gain
in frail old people to get them out of bed;
dianobol has no indications in medicine, it
exists, it hasn’t been banned yet; winstrol
is a treatment for hereditary anemia (a lot
of these, testosterone and other androgens
do stimulate the blood marrow to make red
cells); dequderbilum is treatment for anemia
from renal insufficiency; and equobose, (anything
with Equa don’t use that.
That’s for horses but they take it out of
the veterinary medicine pharmacy and use it
on people); and THG tetrahydro gestronone
has been banned so it is no longer available
anywhere in the United States but I’m sure
it’s available somewhere else.
>> BRETT: In the subculture you can still
find it.
It’s illegal and illicit.
>> KATHY: Right, it’s illegal to bring these
into the country, it’s illegal to distribute,
it’s just like if you were doing any other
illegal drug.
>> BRETT: So these are drugs that have a use
that are legitimate drugs that are prescription
and there are valid medical reasons for using
them but you have to use them under a physician’s
prescription and a physician’s guidance.
>> KATHY: And it’s never to make you a better
athlete.
That’s never the guidance.
BM: Well no that’s not what a real doctor
would do.
>> KATHY: Right and a real doctor would know
the side effects.
And usually you have to know the side effects.
These are not side effects of testosterone.
These are side effects of these anabolic steroids.
They include early heart attack even in young
men, high blood pressure, liver cancer, some
of these are oral, growth of tumors, infertility,
breast development in men, severe acne, that’s
kind of minimal compared to everything else.
Rage, they call it roid rage, mania, delusions
and an adrenal impairment.
You can shut down your adrenals.
That’s like three different main hormones
that run your water, your electrolytes, your
water, your testosterone, some if it, some
of your androgens, and it also runs your cortisol,
your epinephrines.
You can actually impair the production of
all those very vital hormones by taking these.
I mean it’s a huge deal and it is not what
we do.
When we’re giving pure testosterone it has
none of those effects.
>> BRETT: And again you do what you do as
a physician for a medically indicated reason
under supervision, your supervision.
>> KATHY: My supervision.
>> BRETT: So this isn’t subculture back
room underground - hey let’s try this and
see if we can get high, let’s try this and
see if we can get strong.
>> KATHY: No it is not that.
>> BRETT: But there is confusion about that
because of the overlap of the terminology.
>> KATHY: Right, it’s like a misnomer.
They’re talking about anabolic steroids
as testosterone.
Well they do the same things as testosterone
in some cases but they’re false keys.
So you can’t really call them that.
>> BRETT: Well testosterone in men when you
have to replace it, there are three reasons
that you do that.
And one is for muscle maintenance, maintenance
of the structure.
>> KATHY: In older people.
>> BRETT: In older people.
One is for mood stability, and one if for
libido.
>> KATHY: E.D.
>> BRETT: Erectile Dysfunction, absolutely,
four.
So there are medically indicated reasons that
men, grown men, not young kids, might need
and benefit from having testosterone replaced.
>> KATHY: Yes and there are few and very few
reasons that young men might need them.
>> BRETT: You’ve treated a couple of really
young men who had some unusual circumstances.
>> KATHY: Young men that have genetic defects,
Kynfelters syndrome is the most common, where
they have the wrong xxy chromosomes.
They can’t make testosterone, they make
plenty of estrone but not testosterone.
So their testosterone is less then a female’s.
So those poor kids feel terrible and old and
they have accelerated aging and they are sick.
They don’t look like healthy young men either.
So I’ve replaced those men.
But they were never going to make testosterone
ever.
>> BRETT: Well that’s not actually a replacement,
that’s a supplement that gives them what
they should have had that their body wasn’t
producing.
>> KATHY: Yea I’m just bringing them back
up to normal 18 or 19 years old.
But I’m using pure testosterone.
I’m not using an anabolic steroid.
So it’s not going to have those other side
effects.
And there are some men who have burned their
testicles out.
And their adrenals are impaired and I do replace
them but I don’t replace them up to, (that’s
the other thing, dose is big), I don’t replace
them up to huge.
>> BRETT: So I’ve got to ask you, what do
men do to burn their testicles out?
>> KATHY: They take anabolic steroids.
>> BRETT: So it’s not from overuse or anything.
>> KATHY: No it’s not.
>> BRETT: I don’t know.
So what you’re saying is they abuse their
body and the consequence of that is that this
part of their system no longer works.
>> KATHY: Right, I replace the testosterone,
but I can never make them fertile again.
That’s gone.
>> BRETT: So they can have libido and they
can have sex lives but they’ll never have
fertility.
So this couple that came to see you the best
you could to for them was to help them have
a functioning sex live that satisfied them
but you couldn’t give them children that
would be his children.
>> KATHY: Right, that’s true and so those
are the things that young people don’t think
about.
There’s something missing in teenagers’
brains.
One of my psychiatry friends told me that
and they don’t really mature until at least
21.
I think they may have moved it up to 25.
And all of the synapses aren’t meeting and
so they take big risks.
And this is one of those big risks that you
don’t want your kid to take.
>> BRETT: Yes, it has to do with the development
of the pre-frontal cortex where all of that
calculation takes place.
>> KATHY: Oh you told me that.
>> BRETT: Probably.
>> KATHY: So it’s not really complete, which
is one of the reasons they take so many chances.
>> BRETT: So if you’re a parent and you
have a teenager that you are worried about
especially ones that are heavily involved
in sports, working out at the gym, those sorts
of things.
What kind of things would you look for to
make you consider hey is my kid abusing anabolic
steroids?
>> KATHY: The most obvious thing is that their
testicles get really small.
But most parents don’t see that.
>> BRETT: Aren’t going to know that.
What about the rage?
>> KATHY: And they have unusual rage and unusual
irritability and anger.
But you know teenagers can have that periodically.
>> BRETT: But again the question becomes is
that normal 15 year old behavior?
>> KATHY: That’s the problem.
It’s hard to sort that out.
But they also usually have really greasy faces,
lots of acne.
They may be getting breast development, because
they won’t be getting that from just normal
growth.
>> BRETT: And if there’s an abnormal jump
in their size.
If in two months time they put three inches
on their chest, that isn’t normal.
>> KATHY: And if they’re working out a lot
because they’re told to take this and work
out like crazy.
I mean if they’re working out an inordinate
amount of time and they’re getting really
big, you’ll see that.
>> BRETT: So the end of the day the point
is there are cluster symptoms, it could be
a lot of things.
What you do when you see your child behaving
in ways you don’t understand is you take
them to a doctor, take them to a counselor.
>> KATHY: Search their room.
(I’m kidding.)
>> BRETT: You say I don’t understand this
and I want to check it out.
If you have questions about this, or comments
you would like to make.
You can reach us directly with those questions
and comments.
>> KATHY: At www.biobalanceheatlh.com or you
can send us an email at podcast@biobalancehealth.com.
Or you can call my office at 314.993.0963.
>> BRETT: And you can reach me directly at
my blog which is www.brettnewcomb.com.
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