Statement of the Problem
In the past few years, there has been an increase in the popularity of performance-enhancing supplements used by athletes. Some of the most popular of these supplements are creatine and androstenedione. They are used by some very famous athletes in professional sports. There are many problems that go along with using these supplements, not only health-wise but also the message that is being sent to children involved in youth athletics.
Athletes today are not thinking of what kind of effects will happen to them in the long run. However, they are looking for easier ways of training and enhancing their performance. They are under a great deal of pressure to succeed and win all the time, and it must be easier to find a shortcut to being an elite athlete. In this paper, I will explore the risks of these supplements, the regulations placed on athletes, and whether they truly work. Additionally, I will give an overview of what both creatine and androstenedione are.
Introduction
For as long as I can remember, I have been involved in athletics of all kinds and have always loved the atmosphere that sports provide. Being involved in both high school basketball and golf and now finally playing golf for Xavier, I have been subjected to rigorous training and conditioning. Never once did I have the aid of any type of artificial supplement or performance-enhancing drug helping me condition or build muscles faster.
However, when I was in high school, I was aware of many guys who were taking these supplements, such as creatine and androstenedione, and getting very muscular extremely fast. “Creatine” and “androstenedione” were common words used around the halls of my school. Hearing these words made me curious about what exactly they were, what effects they had on athletes, and if they were illegal. I found it very interesting that these supplements were somehow all over the news and that some really famous athletes had used them.
I wondered if they were safe to use and if they had any side effects. In researching this topic of artificial supplements and performance-enhancing drugs, I had many mixed feelings about how I felt about their use by athletes. However, after my research was completed, I have a firm opinion that these supplements should be banned from athletics altogether.
Research Questions
Many questions came up during my research of these performance-enhancing supplements. Among one of my first questions was, “What exactly are creatine and androstenedione?” This and many of the other questions I had about the supplements were answered for me in a recent article from People Weekly entitled “Hazard Alert (muscle-building supplements taken by athletes),” which was an interview of correspondent Jennifer Longley by Charles Yesalis, a professor at Penn State who spent 19 years studying the use of performance-enhancing drugs by athletes.
According to this article, creatine is an amino acid in everyone’s body. It’s taken to significantly enhance reserves in your muscle fuel tank, allowing you to work out longer and more intensely. There’s no evidence to show that it’s anabolic–that is, that it’s going to build muscle in and of itself.
But it could lead to modest muscle gain because it allows you to work out harder. Androstenedione is a sex steroid hormone, which is converted in your body to testosterone. The controversy is whether it is anabolic and whether it increases testosterone when taken in large quantities. It’s legally classified as a food supplement, but I think that’s bunk. It’s a drug. (Hazard Alert 143). ”
After fully understanding the meanings of these definitions and explanations, I became more curious. Grasping the whole concept of these supplements was hard enough for the average person to handle, and how scientific everything has truly become. No longer are athletes alone in training, but now they have the aid of these supplements. It seems almost unfair to have an advantage over other athletes who are not using these artificial aids.
After thinking of these supplements as an unfair advantage, I needed proof that they worked. Longley had come to this conclusion: “There’s credible evidence that creatine does work…The gains in energy and strength are small but significant enough to be very valuable to a competitive athlete. I’m skeptical about androstenedione. I could make an argument that it does work, but I’ve heard some anecdotal evidence that it does” (Hazard Alert 143).
Also, in Longley’s answer to whether creatine works, she rates creatine on a scale from 0 to 100 of performance-enhancing abilities as about a 15, and anabolic steroids as 100. This shows that it does not have the most evident effect on the athlete, as say “steroids,” but it does have a minimum effect on performance-enhancing.
Then, after discovering if these supplements work, the next question that arose was, “What are the side effects?” From Longley’s research: “To date, side effects reported from taking creatine are gastrointestinal – gas and muscle cramping. But that doesn’t mean we won’t discover something serious in five to ten years. The risks of androstenedione haven’t been thoroughly studied. If you really load this up in the body, this drug may impact hormones and organs in ways that I couldn’t even imagine.
If it is converted to testosterone, then you’d have the traditional effects that you see with testosterone, including liver damage and increased risk of stroke. In young kids, a large level of the hormone may falsely signal the body into shutting down their growth plates. If God had scheduled them to be 6’3″, they may end up being 5’10”. For girls or women, it could permanently masculinize them, causing a 5 o’clock shadow or a deep voice” (Hazard Alert 143).
For the most part, these side effects are not extremely dangerous, but they can lead to hazardous health problems down the road. Also, considering the fact that for the most part, these supplements are fairly new on the market, there hasn’t been enough extensive research done to show how much damage can be done to an athlete. After all, taking excessive amounts of any of these two supplements can lead to extreme problems that could be fatal. Like the research shows, excessive use of testosterone and androstenedione increases one’s risk of having liver damage or even more deadly, a stroke.
Another question that Longley addressed in her interview was that of “Why is androstenedione banned in some sports but not in others?” I found her response to this question very interesting. Her answer was very opinionated and the reasons that she gave were very comical. She stated:
“I think the National Basketball Association, pro baseball, and the National Hockey League have had the luxury of keeping their hands in the sand when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs because the public has not perceived them as having been a problem in those sports, unlike in the NFL. Baseball doesn’t even have the pretense of drug testing. But there are estimates that 10 to 30 percent of pro baseball players and 50 to 80 percent of football linemen have used steroids at some point. There’s a conspiracy of silence. The attitude is, do what you have to do to win, but keep your mouth shut.” (Hazard Alert 143).
I think that this answer to the question of why androstenedione is not banned from some sports but banned from others is very accurate. It is true that people involved in sports would rather look the other way when it comes to athletes taking supplements that enhance their performance. Fans don’t care as long as they are entertained and are having fun at games, and coaches just want their teams to be successful, which sometimes includes doing other forms of training or aids to help the athletes.
It is ridiculous that such a high percentage of athletes are using performance-enhancing drugs or steroids to help them get bigger. I always learned that in order to be a successful athlete, a person would have to work endlessly. This is still true, but only to a certain extent because now an athlete can take pills to help them work out more. I think that is why it was so puzzling to me when I discovered that many newsworthy athletes had been using performance-enhancing supplements. I always had the mindset that athletes could never buy their abilities, and now that seems to be wrong because of these supplements.
Review of Literature The first article I found about creatine and androstenedione was from People Weekly entitled “Hazard Alert.” This article was excellent because it provided answers to almost all the questions that I had about these supplements. It had a very interesting interview with people who have been researching these supplements for years.
Also, in this article, I found out about Mark McGwire’s use of both creatine and androstenedione. It said that he had been using both supplements, but never did he make any attempt to cover this up or hide this from the media. In this article, it also said that sales of these supplements are going to skyrocket simply because of McGwire’s use of them. According to this article, “. . . sales of the steroid (androstenedione) are expected to top $100 million this year, up from $5 million in 1997.” (Hazard Alert 143).
Another interesting fact that I learned was that “The national chain General Nutrition Centers has sent a memo to its 3,700 outlets telling them not to stock androstenedione, precisely because of safety concern.” (Hazard Alert 143). Among the other articles I found was Jack McCallum’s article from Sports Illustrated called “Swallow the Pill. ”
This article mainly focuses on the Mark McGwire fairy tale story of him breaking the most highly recognized record in baseball, Roger Maris’s single-season home run record. I found it to be very defensive of McGwire in that the author said, “Get this straight: McGwire’s use of androstenedione, which he may not have advertised but didn’t try to hide, should not taint his achievement if he breaks Roger Maris’s home run record” (McCallum 17).
Also, in this article, there were a number of different examples of others taking performance-enhancing supplements in baseball. For example, “Houston Astros star Jeff Bagwell told The Houston Chronicle, two weeks before the McGwire storm erupted, that he had taken it (androstenedione)” (McCallum 17). In this article, McGwire is reported as saying that he is not alone and that at least nine or ten of his St. Louis teammates use androstenedione.
This article, too, like the People Weekly article, touches upon the idea of children thinking that they “should not try to buy a baseball career in a bottle” (McCallum 17). I think that this is a very important idea to continue to drive into the minds of young people who want to be involved in athletics.
The article “Shadow of Doubt: Did Drug Use Kill Florence Griffith Joyner?” is another fascinating article that touches on the risks of performance-enhancing supplements. In this article, the suspicions of Flo-Jo taking “banned substances” are addressed. According to Dr. Albert Fraser, a clinical-forensic toxicologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, “The chances are nil that there are any traces of those drugs left in her body tissue” (“Shadow of Doubt” 62).
So even if she did use illegal supplements during the Olympics, there would be no way of ever being able to trace the substances in her body. Also, in this article, Darrell Robinson reported to Stern, a German magazine, that he had bought human growth hormones for Flo-Jo prior to the Seoul Olympics. Her response to this report was, “Darrell, you are a compulsive, crazy, lying lunatic” (“Shadow of Doubt” 62). This is another case that was very surprising to me because in this case she died of heart seizures which could have quite possibly have been brought upon by performance-enhancing supplements.
Dr. Jean-Pierre de Mondenard, a French sports physician and drug expert, is quoted as saying that “It is probable that she used drugs, but others, notably in East Germany, did the same. Other famous athletes are going to die, and we will know it” (“Shadow of Doubt” 62). The doctors today are devoting a lot of effort to finding out more information about these supplements and how they are going to affect athletes in the long run.
Also, Werner Franke, a German molecular biologist and expert in drugs and sports, said that “This death (of Florence Griffith Joyner) was foreseeable” (“Shadow of Doubt” 62). Finally, some doctors and scientists are paying more attention to the substances that athletes take in order to prevent more deaths among athletes that could have been prevented.
Drugs and Darwin fuel athletes” contains similar information about the athletes that I had already read about, but in every article I found, there were differences about the same athletes. For example, in this article, I learned that “Mark McGwire is the first athlete in history to break a record while publicly admitting his use of performance-enhancing drugs” (Barnard 48). In this very opinionated article, it touches upon some of the myths behind “the moral crusade against the use of drugs in sport.”
One myth is that “fans won’t pay to see drug-aided athletes perform” (Barnard 48). The other myth is that “using drugs means that athletes don’t have to work for their achievements” (Barnard 48). In a way, I agree with this myth simply because if an athlete is using performance-enhancing supplements, then they have more energy to work out, and these supplements also help build up muscles faster than without the aid of a supplement at all.
So, I don’t see how athletes are totally working for their accomplishments entirely all by themselves because, without the aid of artificial supplements, they would have to work a lot harder to build themselves up. Even though I disagree with some comments in this article, the one quote that I really did agree with was that of Nicholas Pierce. He says that “Athletes will always be pushing themselves to the limit; if you could help push them further, they will go further.” This is very true because I know that I am willing to do almost anything to improve my golf game, and if someone is willing to show me another way to do something, I am all for learning new ideas and pushing myself to do better.
Another sport Illustrated article called “Throwing in the towel: beating a hasty retreat in the war on drugs” caught my attention because of the information it had on the International Olympic Committee. It seems as though lately there have been a number of cases involving Olympic athletes that have tested positive or have been suspended for drug violations.
The IOC appears to be one of the most strict when it comes to drugs that are in violation of policy, and that is why the statement of IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch was so shocking to the rest of the committee. He said, “The list of drugs banned from the Olympics ought to be drastically reduced to exclude performance-enhancing drugs that don’t have dangerous side effects” (Rushin 17). Coming from the president, this is probably not the reaction that one wants to hear in fighting the war on banning performance-enhancing supplements from athletics.
According to this article, in the last month, U.S. shot-putter Randy Barnes and sprinter Dennis Mitchell have been suspended by the International Amateur Athletics Federation for positive drug tests. Also, four Chinese swimmers received bans for drug violations (Rushin 17). Additionally, the Irish swimmer Michelle Smith de Bruin could possibly be banned from competition for life because of tampering with her urine sample in a drug test. This article is another controversial one that shows how many different opinions there are surrounding athletes’ use of performance-enhancing supplements.
After finding out about Michelle Smith de Bruin, I was curious to learn more about the story that enveloped her. I found the Time article “With a Splash” to give a more in-depth interpretation of what really happened. De Bruin won three gold medals at the Atlanta Olympics where she was an older competitor at the age of 26.
However, in her recent urine test, there were, “. . . no steroids, but did detect unequivocal signs of adulteration” that would mask the drugs by means of an after-the-fact addition of alcohol, probably whiskey. (“With a Splash” 86). Even with this startling discovery, De Bruin says, “I’m not going to crawl under a stone,” and she plans on suing the international governing organization for swimmers and appealing their decision.
Their decision was to ban her completely from ever competing again or at least for four years which would inevitably end her career because she would be too old. Finally, the article closes with a quote from five-time U.S. Olympic coach Mark Schubert, “Experienced people know the telltale signs of doing illegal things to get fast.” So basically, it is not worth the consequences of getting caught because somehow and some way everyone gets caught.
Conclusion:
For the most part, the rest of my resources reiterated all of my most informative articles that I used as major references when writing this research paper. Throughout my research, it was very interesting to find many different opinions on the position of performance-enhancing supplements in athletics. There is one side that is saying they should be banned totally, and another that wants them to be allowed in competition as long as they’re not too much of an aid to the athletes that would make it unfair to other competitors.
Personally, I am on the side that says they should be banned totally in all sporting events. My opinion is this way because being an athlete really isn’t necessary for a person to take something to enhance their performance even more, and that the drive should come from within and not a pill or powder. These supplements are also potentially dangerous, and I think that they come with a very negative image to children getting involved in athletics and witnessing professional athletes use them.
I find it hard to believe that professional athletes need the assistance of creatine or androstenedione to help them train for their sport or event. Athletic ability doesn’t come in an over-the-counter bottle, and it never will. So I feel that it is pointless to use these supplements simply for the reason of “getting big.” In conclusion, these performance-enhancing supplements should be made less accessible and banned from athletic events.
