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Steroid Side Effects /
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Ignoring the risks of steroids
Ignoring the risks of steroids, By: Alan Gustafson
High-schoolers jeopardize long-term and immediate health for a chance to bulk up, succeed on field
November 18, 2006
Creatine to bulk up.
Herbal stimulants to boost energy.
Steroids and "testosterone boosters" to gain a competitive edge.
Driven by a desire to get bigger, stronger and better, high school athletes here and across the country gamble their health on unproven pills, powders and elixirs.
Some athletes roll the dice on illegal anabolic steroids, risking severe side effects, from shrunken testicles to aching joints and cancer.
Steroid abuse by local athletes is rare, said Rick Lacey, a longtime strength and conditioning coach at South Salem High School. Far more commonly, teen athletes take legal performance-enhancing supplements such as creatine, widely available in drug stores and on the Internet.
Creatine is marketed as a safe and effective way to build muscles and speed up workout recovery times. Some athletes take it by the scoopful and swear by the results. But they are going against doctors and sports governing officials who say teen athletes shouldn't use the supplement because the long-term effects of its use are unknown.
Today's report, the first in a three-day series, focuses on warnings issued by doctors and sports governing officials -- all too often unheard or unheeded -- about steroids and dietary supplements.
In 2005, nearly 5 percent of U.S. high school students acknowledged using steroids without a doctor's prescription, according to the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By extension, hundreds of thousands of American high school students are taking "the juice."
Tom Welter, the executive director of the Oregon School Activities Association, worries about teen athletes being tempted to use steroids, creatine and other supplements that purport to boost energy, increase muscle, add or cut weight, and provide a winning edge.
"There is an immediate effect that kids may see as positive, but nobody knows what the long-term negative side effects are because they haven't been around long enough and they haven't been tested," he said. "Consequently, it's like you're playing Russian roulette."
The OSAA, representing about 290 schools throughout the state, discourages the use of "performance-enhancing supplements" by high school athletes.
"Creatine is the one that gets the headlines, but I think the concern is any food supplement," Welter said. "Unfortunately, food supplements are not regulated in this country. Everybody thinks the Food and Drug Administration regulates them, but they don't. They don't have to be approved by anybody."
Creatine and other over-the-counter sports supplements are part of a fast-growing, lucrative industry, ringing up.
more than $2 billion in annual sales in the United States, according to the Nutrition Business Journal, a research, publishing and consulting firm for the dietary supplements industry.
Medical warnings
Before buying, doctors say, young athletes and their parents should know this: These products receive little government oversight, they haven't been tested on children, and no one knows whether they cause harmful long-term health effects.
"Using sports supplements is sort of the fool's gold for many athletes," said Dr. Linn Goldberg, an OHSU professor of medicine recognized as a national expert on steroid and supplement use by high school athletes.
"They eat poorly, they're not instructed on the right nutrition, so they turn to something that's unproven and potentially dangerous."
Unlike prescription drugs, which must be proved safe before being allowed on the market, dietary supplements are not required to undergo testing. They flood into an unregulated marketplace at a rate of about 1,000 new products per year, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
Marketers can sell them without approval from the FDA or any other government agency. Without clinical testing or strict controls on product quality, consumers can't be sure what they're buying, whether the dosage makes sense, and, most importantly, whether the substance is safe and effective, doctors said.
"Kids can buy a whole big bucket of it, and you don't know what they're taking. It's really a problem," said Dr. Thad Stanford, a Salem orthopedist who heads the OSAA's sports medicine committee.
Frank Uryasz, president of the Kansas City, Mo., based National Center for Drug Free Sport, the official drug tester for the National Collegiate Athletic Association, rattled off a litany of reasons why prep athletes shouldn't use creatine and other dietary supplements.
"They're expensive. Most of them don't work. Some of them are tainted with banned substances. The medical organizations have come out against the use of supplements for kids under the age of 18. There's just no reason for a high school athlete to be taking dietary supplements. They can get everything they need from food."
Worrisome trend
The desire to gain an edge by using performance-enhancing drugs and supplements has spilled into the high school sports culture in recent years, said Steven Ungerleider, a Eugene sports psychologist who has worked with elite athletes in the U.S. and written about steroid abuse in East German Olympic programs.
"The sad, tragic news is our high school kids are seeing this at the elite level and saying, 'I guess this stuff works, maybe I should try it,'" said Ungerleider. He wrote the 2001 book "Faust's Gold," about East German Olympians who were systematically drugged with steroids as teenagers in the 1970s and '80s to win medals and break records.
For young athletes in Oregon and elsewhere, legal sports-related supplements can be the first stop on a dangerous slope, Ungerleider said.
"They're starting out with creatine and nutritional supplements," he said, "but we've also got kids who experiment with various testosterone derivatives, pro hormones and hGH (human growth hormone)."
Responding to a Statesman Journal survey, strength and conditioning coaches at Salem-Keizer high schools said they do their best to steer athletes away from illegal steroids and risky supplements.
The newspaper e-mailed questions to coaches at all six Salem-Keizer School District high schools. Five coaches responded; McNary coach Tye Wilson was the lone coach who did not.
Among the questions put to the coaches: How prevalent is creatine use by football players at your school? Does your school or athletic program hold any educational sessions (led either by doctors or other officials) for team players and/or their parents to provide information about creatine and other athletic supplements? What are your views on testing high school athletes for anabolic steroids?
Creatine use estimates given by coaches ranged from 20 percent at West Salem to 2 to 5 percent at Sprague to less than 1 percent at South Salem.
Rather than hold formal education sessions for teams about performance-enhancing supplements, coaches said they informally answer questions put to them by players.
"We don't have a 'supplement education night' if you will, but we never let an athlete go into something blind," wrote Sprague coach Soren Sorensen. "As the strength coach, I keep my eye on every football player and their gains to see if they are safe and legal."
Coaches have mixed opinions about steroids testing.
Lacey said he's against it. The South Salem coach cited the "low percentage" of students who use steroids, plus "cost of such a program, legal issues of student privacy and a host of enforcement issues/problems."
Shawn Stanley, the head football coach and strength coach at West Salem, said he favors testing athletes for steroids and other drugs.
"I would be all for drug testing for all substances," he wrote. "If they are clean, they have nothing to worry about."
Mike Baker, a senior football player and wrestler at West Salem, said he can't imagine any teammates using illegal steroids.
"I'd be very surprised," he said. "It's not talked about at all. Whenever it comes up in conversation, it's laughed about. We never think anyone on our team would do that."
Baker described creatine use as "more of an off-season thing" employed by some athletes to supplement weight training. His coaches take a neutral stance on creatine, he said, exerting no pressure on players to use it.
"They help people make their own decision. They show both sides, they look things up on the Internet and print them out. They help people see it both ways."
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