According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (2018), Synthetic, or human-made, variations of the masculine sex hormone testosterone are anabolic steroids. Anabolic-androgenic steroids are the appropriate name for such substances. "Anabolic" refers to body building, and "androgenic" refers to male sex traits that are intensified. Gear, Juice, Roids, and Stackers are some known names for anabolic steroids. To treat hormone disorders, such as delayed puberty, health care professionals may administer steroids. Steroids can also cure illnesses such as cancer and AIDS that cause muscle weakness. Yet in an effort to increase performance or enhance their physical image, some athletes and bodybuilders abuse these medications.
When I was watching in some social experiments, I noticed and remembered one thing that most of the teen agers usually men using steroids because they want to have a nice body composition. But in reality it has a lot of bad side effects may occur in our body. Also, some athletes misuse this drug because they want to have a better performance when they are in the game. Most of them didn’t have the knowledge on what are the risks that they will face in the future. Taking of these drugs in long term intake may experience a lot of health-related diseases. Thankfully that steroid had been ban in the field of sports as performance enhancement.
In the cardiac muscles, based on Fishbein (2016) Hypertension caused by anabolic steroids is likely to lead to the most frequently associated morphological cardiac abnormality, called hypertrophy. These steroids also have an adverse effect on serum lipids and enhance blood coagulability. Thusly, mycocardial inarction has been reported with the use of anabolic steroids. As the cause of the ischemic case, coronary spasm, coronary thrombus, and coronary atherosclerosis were both involved. Whether sudden deaths are due to an ischaemic occurrence and/or heart hypertrophy is not evident. Systolic and diastolic dysfunction after abuse of anabolic steroids can continue for years.
In the first discussion we tackled about hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is an increase and growth of muscle cells. In my understanding, hypertrophy caused by anabolic-androgenic steroids can cause hypertension and enlarging of the heart. So taking of steroids in the long term may cause serious diseases. In my opinion, steroids can be toxic agents that our heart may fail to pump in the normal way. I think this drug will affect the homeostasis of the cardiac muscles function as well as the skeletal muscles too.
In the skeletal muscles, according to The Conversation (2019), the largest cells in the human body are skeletal muscle cells (fibres) which contain thousands of individual nuclei to sustain their large number. These nuclei are the control centres of each cell and organize a variety of cell activities, including their growth, as well as housing DNA. In skeletal muscles, this means that nuclei must be transferred to the fibre from the stem cell pool located outside the fibre during cycles of development, such as daily weight lifting. This definition tends to hold truth in total. For instance, after weight lifting, people who have the greatest muscle growth often have the greatest increase in the amount of nuclei in their fibres. This increased nuclear content makes it possible for muscle fibers to continue working and optimally expand.
As we all know from experiments in mice that they also develop nuclei as muscles expand in response to steroid use, which are maintained as muscles revert to their normal size following steroid withdrawal (muscle memory). The extra nuclei help muscles grow faster and much bigger than muscles in normal mice when the muscles of these mice are then loaded to mimic weight training. This means that without the fear of detection, athletes can benefit from using steroids to grow their muscles, and therefore might do so. In addition, hypertrophy still occurs in the skeletal muscles, so the skeletal muscles increase in size and girth as the effects of the anabolic-androgenic steroids in the body.
In my analysis, the effects of the anabolic-androgenic steroids to skeletal and cardiac muscles are different to one another. I noticed that the bad side effects are mostly happen in the cardiac muscles that can cause hypertension, but in the skeletal muscles I noticed that the muscle was increased in size and strength so skeletal muscles received good effects while cardiac muscles received the bad one. So when you are taking this kind of drug, you will notice more of the bad side effects on your heart than in your muscles in the arms or legs because skeletal muscles just accepting the steroids with no bad effects.
In conclusion, Hypertrophy is an adaptive reaction of the cell to increase force and contractile function of both the skeletal and cardiac muscle. While partially beneficial, the prolonged stimulation of muscle cells by hypertrophic stimuli may cause adverse effects. In comparison, skeletal muscle cell hypertrophy is a reversible phenomenon in the cardiac muscle. Anabolic-Androgenic steroids can increase skeletal muscle mass and induce cardiac hypertrophy. It means that the bad side effects related to use of anabolic-androgenic steroids are focused especially on the cardiac muscles rather than the skeletal muscles.