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__//Synopsis://__ Anabolic Steroids, or better known as "roids," "juice," "hype," or "pump," is a word that is becoming more frequently used in the news of today. The word anabolic means "building body tissue," and these drugs make the user feel stronger, larger, and tougher than they otherwise would act naturally. With these kind of effects provided, unfortunately, these steroids are becoming a bigger issue in the world of sports every day. Over the past decade or so, steroids have been making an appearance in the news more frequently than in the past years. They have turned heroes into the enemy, and they have caused true greatness to almost disappear in our minds. Their magic can turn the weak and useless into the best in the game. With a little extra boost of the hormone testosterone, any male or female will become more aggressive and will lose much of their personality that they once obtained. With an ultimate result of death, other effects of using steroids are premature balding, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and a shivering tremble at times. It also causes the serious disease of high blood pressure which has caused several athletes of the past and present to succumb to a heart attack, a stroke, and cancer. They also cause aching joints when the athlete gets older with age which allows the user to become more vulnerable to injury and may even cause them to retire from the game they lived for. Though steroids will improve one's endurance, strength, and muscle mass, they do not, however, improve skill, agility, or performance. Athletes still abuse steroids during their sports season to help them win and make them appear more effective, which proves that steroids will never disappear completely from the world of sports.
 * STEROIDS STEROIDS AND MORE STEROIDS !!! ** By: Malcolm Johnson and Jared Lyle Period 3

__//The Chemistry Secrets behind Steroids://__ media type="youtube" key="GAMm8_XlsuM?rel=0" height="360" width="640" align="center"

1.- Anabolic steroids work by binding with the cytoplasmic androgen receptor. Like all steroids, the steroid-receptor complex has a strong affinity for the nucleus. The complex is translocated into the nucleus and binds to DNA. It is also possible that the steroid and receptor dissociate in the nucleus and act on DNA separately. The rate limiting factor in this process appears to be the cytoplasmic concentration of the receptor, rather than the concentration of the steroid or translocation of the complex. Testosterone also appears to inhibit the catabolic (protein degrading) pathway associated with glucocorticoids, but it is unclear whether this is related to an interaction between testosterone and glucocorticoid or the nuclear behavior of the steroid-receptor complex. Once in the nucleus, the steroid appears to enhance transcription of specific genes. The resulting mRNA is processed and sent out of the nucleus, resulting in increased protein synthesis. Catabolic inhibition may also occur in the nucleus if the complex inhibits the transcription of catabolic enzymes.The presence of the androgen receptor indicates a tissue is androgen sensitive, and it's concentration gives an indication of how sensitive. The receptor is present in a number of organs, including skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle typically contains 0.5-3 femto moles per milligram of protein, while other androgen sensitive organs, like the prostate gland, may have up to 25 times more receptors.A final observation about feedback in biological systems: in a perfect example of biological control, a byproduct of testosterone metabolism is estradiol, which enhances catabolism. Thus, overadministration of testosterone-analog steroids can feed-back and minimize results.



2.- Steroid hormones work by stimulation of receptor molecules in muscle cells, which activate specific genes to produce proteins (see Figure 1). They also affect the activation rate of enzyme systems involved in protein metabolism, thus enhancing protein synthesis and inhibiting protein degradation (called an anti-catabolic effect). Heavy resistance training seems to be necessary for anabolic steroids to exert any beneficial effect on physical performance. Most research studies that have demonstrated improved performance with anabolic steroids used experienced weight lifters who were capable of training with heavier weights and producing relatively greater muscle tension during exercise than novice subjects. The effectiveness of anabolic steroids is dependent upon unbound receptor sites in muscle. Intense strength training may increase the number of unbound receptor sites. This would increase the effectiveness of anabolic steroids.



3.- Many athletes have said that anabolic steroids help them train harder and recover faster. They also said that they had difficulty making progress (or even holding onto the gains) when they were off the drugs. This means that anabolic steroids have an anti-catabolic effect. This means that the drugs may prevent muscle catabolism that often accompanies intense exercise training. Anabolic steroids may block the effects of hormones such as cortisol involved in tissue breakdown during and after exercise. Anabolic steroids may prevent tissue from breaking down following of an intense work-out. This would speed recovery. Cortisol and related hormones, secreted by the adrenal cortex, also has receptor sites within skeletal muscle cells. Cortisol causes protein breakdown and is secreted during exercise to enhance the use of proteins for fuel and to suppress inflammation that accompanies tissue injury. Anabolic steroids may block the binding of cortisol to its receptor sites, which would prevent muscle breakdown and enhances recovery. While this is beneficial while the athlete is taking the drug, the effect backfires when he stops taking it. Hormonal adaptations occur in response to the abnormal amount of male hormone present in the athlete's body. Cortisol receptor sites and cortisol secretion from the adrenal cortex increase. Anabolic steroid use decreases testosterone secretion. People who stop taking steroids are also hampered with less male hormone than usual during the "off" periods. The catabolic effects of cortisol are enhanced when the athlete stops taking the drugs and strength and muscle size are lost at a rapid rate.

4.- In order for the athlete to accumulate extra muscle mass, his or her body must temporarily be in a state of positive nitrogen balance: More nitrogen, as muscle mass, must come into the body than is lost. During strenuous exercise, the release of glucocorticoids throws the body into a negative nitrogen balance. After exercise, the body experiences a temporary state of positive nitrogen balance, during which new proteins are added to muscle tissue. Unless there is further exercise, the nitrogen balance returns to zero. Without the use of anabolic steroids, muscle mass is built up very slowly after long periods of rigorous training. Anabolic steroids can reverse the short-term catabolic effect, leading to positive nitrogen balance and faster gains in muscle mass. However, maintenance of a positive nitrogen balance is short lived (1 - 2 months) unless the steroid dose is continually increased. Rapid tolerance, tachyphylaxis, to steroids occurs in muscle tissue as the body attempts to maintain homeostasis. One homeostatic mechanism may be a rise in serum cortisol during steroid treatment. This may counteract the anabolic effect while potentiating the catabolic. The risk of serious side effects is increased as the athlete takes higher and higher doses of anabolics to maintain a positive nitrogen balance.



5.- All anabolic steroids are chemical derivatives of the male sex hormone, testosterone. Due to testosterone's short biological half-life, pharmacological use requires the steroid be modified to slow metabolism by the liver. Typically, oral steroids are modified primarily by alkylation, replacing an H with a CH3 group, while injectable steroids are modified by esterification of the hydroxyl group.



__//Summation://__ The use of steroids in today's society is inevitable because they are everywhere. Their presence in sports, especially football and baseball, are unstoppable. Punish as many athletes as you want, try to make examples of childhood heroes, but nothing is going to stop. Athletes will always strive to enhance their game, and steroids will continue to be harder and harder to detect.Short-term solutions exist to quickly save people's health who abuse steroids. Some possible solutions are to regulate the rules of sports that are notorious for its player's use of steroids, such that the game requires more skill instead of brute power. This will immediately lessen the need for and appeal for steroids and become a thing of the past. This would prevent androgenic and vitalizing effects that influence masculine characteristics such growth of vocal cords and hair.Long-term solutions exist to gradually save people's health who abuse steroids. Some are for the media to stop reporting in terms of celeb athletes juicing themselves with every outing the league provides. This would allow younger kids to strive to be like the players they look up to without thinking about steroids and coaches wouldn't see a need to encourage the use of drugs but rather work harder on fundamentals as the game changes. Also, to eventually eliminate the steroid black market form the face of the United States. This would decrease the rate of synthesis within cells and the noticeable buildup of cellular tissues in muscles that affect bone development.

//__Comments: __// **Jeff Powell and Amber Ruiz: **What many people do not realize is that taking steroids (especially in teens) is extremely dangerous. The Chemicals in Steroids can actually hurt your liver and led to srious diseases including the growth of tumors, malignant cancers, and formation of blood filled sac known as Pelosis hepatitis. Oral Steroids (Pills) are more preferred by teens due to how much more convenient it is, however these are the worst possible since its harder for the liver to metabalize. Taking Steroids while at a teen age can cause permanent chemical changes to the teens brain. Some things that have greater tendency or permanence are increased acne, male patter baldness, and prostate enlargement which is all caused by excessive testosterone being converted to other hormones such as DHT. The ironic thing about it is that if you take to much steroids in your teens it actually stunts your vertical growth instead of enhancing. Too much testosterone makes your body sense false maturity messages causing your growth plates to fuse and therefore stopping height growth completely, forever. []

**Jordan Truitt:** Testing for steriod use in athletics at a high school and professional level used to involve a seven step process. Researches now believe they have found a quicker method that takes a matter of seconds. It invovles the two techniques of desorption electrospray ionization and tandem mass spectrometry. In this test, the form of mass spectrometry used allows for the test subject (a few drops of urine) to remain at atmospheric pressure, not in a vacuum. Drops of urine are put onto a piece of filter paper. A gas jet emits charged particles onto the paper. The urine dissolves into charged droplets. These ions are then ejected into an ion transfer tube of a standard mass spectrometer and then are analyzed. If the analysis shows the presence of metabolites, steroid use is confirmed.[][] **Dan Blackmar and Sam Miller:** Steroids are a type of drug that act as hormones and mess with the human brain and testosterone levels. They are commonly used by athletes in an attempt to gain weight, muscle, power and quickness. Though they appear to work, their effectiveness is questionable. Most people gain from their expected results but some people get the opposite and the results backfire. Steroids have two effects, anabolic and androgenic. They damage the androgenic such as growth of facial hair, change of voice,growth of genitals, and increase aggressiveness but on the other hand they also enhance anabolics which include bone growth, muscle growth and production of red blood cells. []

Morgan Poczekaj: Steroids have a variety of uses in the human body, including, but not limited to: controlling meiosis, carbohydrate metabolism, fat storage, muscle growth, immune function and nerve cell membrane chemistry. Steroids can be separated into three main groups: gonadal compounds, glucocorticoids and mineralcorticoids. This distinction depends on the site of synthesis of the steroid.

Tatum Bires and Sam Gentle: The first class of hormones is the mineralocorticoids which are synthesized in the adrenal cortex, it regulates the bodies ion balance by promoting the reabsorption of inorganic ions such as Na+, Cl-, and HCO3-, in the kidney. They are also involved in the regulation of blood pressure.
 * Brandon Napierala: ** Steroids can be used for more practical things other than muscle building and increasing athletic abilities and these steroids bind to the receptor cells in a cell's nuclei. A newer class of steroids are now binding to the receptors of neurotransmitters' membranes opening new options for synthetic chemists in the field of medicine.

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**Taylor Lumm**: Steroids can be very dangerous to the human body, resulting in many negative side effects.The National Institute of Drug Abuse shows in recent studies that 325,000 teenage boys and 175,000 teenage girls are using steroids.This means that thousands and thousands of young people are ruining their bodies and are at risk for many future health problems. []

__//Works Cited://__

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