Introduction
Steroids are commonly known to be a preserve of men. Women are believed to be “genuine and very fair” competitors in professional sports.
Unlike their men counterparts, female athletes are believed to mainly focus on the use of legally recognized means of physical training and energy enhancement (Hamburger, 2010).
Female athletes are also believed to fully adhere to the legally stipulated rules and regulations in the sports industry. Although steroids are of significance in the medical industry, their negative effects in the lives of athletes far much surpass the little known ethical benefits (Gruber & Pope, 1999).
In professional sport, men are known to highly abuse drugs while women are assumed to enhance healthy and fair competitive strategies.
There are many incidences when women have been caught or known to have used steroids in order to gain popularity, as well as gain a sporting competitive edge over their competitors.
The use of steroids by people who engage in professional sports is no longer of a preserve of men athletes but rather a common habit among women athletes as well.
Women commonly use steroids to not only enhance their competitiveness but also maintain or achieve their ideal figures and thus be more sexually appealing to men.
Use of Steroids
Like most anabolic steroid users, female professional athletes use steroids after undertaking thorough secrete investigations on the relevance and appropriateness of the drugs (Kraemer, 2006).
According to Hamburger (2010), insecure and less competitive female athletes who believe that having bigger muscles can enhance their performance in sports highly use steroids. In such instances, the steroids are used as stimulants.
In some instances, professional sports women use steroids as a means of suppressing the social and emotional pressure that emanates from the need to enhance their competitiveness.
Among the women athletes, the use of steroids is provoked by their unwavering desire to emerge victors in sports at whatever cost. Commonly used steroids include androstenedione, Primobolan, clenbuterol, and tetrahydrogestrinone (Gruber & Pope, 1999).
Hamburger (2010) argues that body female “body builders” and ladies who participate in competitive athletics are the abuse of steroids. Their main focus is to ensure that they have adequate energy to sustain them throughout the competition.
The dangers for women’s use of steroids include problems such as fluid retention, jaundice, and uncontrollable baldness, infertility, liver tumors, abnormal enlargement of breasts, incidences of gynecomastia, and aggressive approach to people and life in general.
Such women also experience an abnormal deepening of the voice and accelerated puberty (Hamburger, 2010).
Performance augmenting steroids are prohibited in the U.S and in other parts of the world. Like Gamma-hydroxybutyrate, the use of steroids by professional women athletes is very harmful.
Besides experiencing sudden sexual excitement and high demand for popularity that is never warranted, steroids highly contribute to the demise of careers. The demise of careers due to the use of steroids is much popular among women than men (Kraemer, 2006).
Anabolic steroids that are popularly used in sports have a medical significance (Hamburger, 2010). However, it is worthwhile to acknowledge that anabolic steroids pose a lot of challenge to professional sports personalities.
Major dangers and side effects of steroids include fluid retention, jaundice, uncontrollable baldness, infertility, sudden abnormal enlargement of breasts, liver tumors and related complications, gynecomastia, and aggressive approach to people and life in general (Gruber & Pope, 1999).
The worst and most regrettable effects of steroids are the malfunctioning of the human brain and abnormal change in women’s secondary sexual features that include the enlargement of the clitoris.
While testosterone have been known to only grow among male sex organs, they equally have a lot of negative effects on women.
Among professional women athletes, tester ones stimulates female sex organs and in turn, causes itching and a lot of negative biological reactions by generating a lot of unnecessary energy in women’s bodies.
The use of steroids by both men and female sports men is often provoked by the athletes’ desire to win at whatever cost (Hamburger, 2010).
Unfortunately, most people resort to the use of steroids as a means of gaining “un-natural energy” with the belief that they would become much stronger and energetic (Stone, 1993).
Stone (1993) explains that the prevalence of women’s use of steroids in professional sports has continued to force sports federations across the globe to formulate measures of curbing the steroid menace.
Some of the measures put in place include formulating new strategies of dealing with injuries suffered by athletes when in their professional sports endeavors.
Conclusion
Steroids have caused a lot of challenges to professional sports. Previously, eradication of the drug abuse among athletes has been hindered by the unfounded belief that steroids are a preserve of men.
However, the revelation that steroids are highly abused by female professional sports persons is likely to foster the discovery of new strategies of curbing the drug abuse menace.
The impact of steroids in human life and among athletes, in particular, remains a major dilemma in modern society.
Women abuse androgenic anabolic steroids for reasons that are different from those of men. The research has revealed that most steroids are more harmful to professional sports ladies than they are to their men counterparts.
References
Gruber A. J. & Pope, H. G. (1999). Compulsive weight lifting and anabolic drug abuse among women rape victims. Comprehensive Psychiatry 40 (4):256-275.
Hamburger, C. (2010). Endocrine treatment of male and female transsexualism. In: Transsexualism and sex reassignment. Green, R. & Money, J. (eds), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Kraemer, W. J. (2006). Varying Weight Training Intensity Increases Growth Hormone In Women. American Physiology Society. Web.
Stone, M. (1993). Position Paper and Literature review: anabolic-androgenic steroid use by athletes. Position Statement. Natl Strength Conditioning Assoc, 15, 6-27.