Stay Away from Non-medical Steroid Usage
Hormones: Peptides and Steroids
“Hormones carry messages from glands to cells to maintain chemical levels in the bloodstream that achieve homeostasis. ‘Hormone’ comes from a word that means, ‘to spur on.’ This reflects how the presence of hormones acts as a catalyst for other chemical changes at the cellular level necessary for growth, development, and energy.”
The above quote did not come out of my head. It came from wiseGeek at http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-hormones.htm?referrer=adwords_campaign=hormones_ad=023611&_search_kw=hormones&428219903.
Before you go on, did you read the article at the above URL? That will save us a lot of time and will make you very wise like the wiseGeek.
Okay! I’ll wait for you to come back.
Peptides or protein hormones control sleep and sugar concentrations. Insulin is one you know because it is a treatment for diabetes. This report is not about peptides.
Steroids are sex hormones. The control human growth and allow athletes to knock a baseball three city blocks or run the mile in 3 minutes.
Youngsters in the teenage years are full of these precious hormones. Old people are bone dry. Old people seldom sit in the back of a car to make out.
Most athletes would like to get into the Hall of Fame for their sport. Steroids can either help them jump right into their properHall of Fame or to be banned for life from such glory. If athletes can’t be good enough to get into a Hall of Fame unless they take steroids, I guess some take their chances.
Some of the current athletes who have busted records for years may have taken steroids before their particular athletic organization banned them. Some of these may have stopped taking the steroids when they were banned; others, perhaps not.
Here is my take on steroid usage. It is a drug to be taken under a doctor’s supervision. Steroids are used in medicine for different reasons daily and legally. I say that if a professional athlete needs steroids for his health, then have a doctor prescribe them and monitor their use. Making them completely illegal for athletes only endangers the athletes who need them.
I think that steroids should be banned at the college or Olympic level. I think the professional organizations are right in banning them to other than for their use described above. An athlete who takes steroids without medical surveillance is risking his health and his life. Even with medical supervision, negative results health wise may occur.
The Dangers of Steroids
So are steroids dangerous? Some athletes say they are not. I copied the following from http://www.trulyhuge.com/steroid_dangers.htm who copied it from the Physicians’s Desk Reference:
WARNINGS: Peliosis hepatis, a condition in which liver and sometimes splenic tissue is replaced with blood-filled cysts, has been reported in patients receiving androgenic anabolic steroid therapy.
These cysts are sometimes present with minimal hepatic dysfunction, but at other times they have been associated with liver failure. They are often not recognized until life-threatening liver failure or intra-abdominal hemorrhage develops.
Withdrawal of drug usually results in complete disappearance of lesions.
Liver cell tumors are also reported. Most often these are benign and androgen-dependent, but fatal malignant tumors have been reported. Withdrawal of drug often results in regression or cessation of progression of the tumor. However, hepatic tumors associated with androgens or anabolic steroids are much more vascular than other hepatic tumors and may be silent until life-threatening intra-abdominal hemorrhage develops.
Blood lipid changes that are known to be associated with increased risk of atherosclerosis are seen in patients treated with androgens and anabolic steroids. These changes include decreased high-density lipoprotein and sometimes increased low-density lipoprotein. The changes may be very marked and could have a serious impact on the risk of atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease.
It’s good I never took steroids. I got plenty of atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease without them.
Doctors who specialize in hormone therapy know the proper range of levels for hormones in the human body. Leave hormone therapy to them. Don’t go out on your own and endanger your health.
The End
John T. Jones, Ph.D. (tjbooks@hotmail.com, a retired VP of R&D for Lenox China, is author of detective & western novels, nonfiction (business, scientific, engineering, humor), poetry, etc. Former editor of Ceramic Industry Magazine. He is Executive Representative of IWS sellers of Tyler Hicks wealth-success books and kits. He also sells TopFlight flagpoles. He calls himself “Taylor Jones, the hack writer.”
More info: http://www.tjbooks.com
Business web site: http://www.aaaflagpoles.com
Tags: Athlete, baseball, Hall of Fame, hormone, medical, medicine, peptide, sports, steroid, Steroids boyberm on June 29th, 2008 Filed under Medicine | Comment now »Herbal Medication Versus Quackery
By 1930, “Dr.” John R. Brinkley of Arkansas, Kansas had transplanted over 16,000 goat testicles into men who wanted to relive their youth. At $750 per procedure, he became a wealthy man. Needless to say, we would call his practice quackery at best.
The thing most people don’t realize is that because of loopholes in the law, people can be legally duped in much the same way. You can take anything you want other than recognized poisons and illegal drugs, package it up and sell it as a food additive. The only restriction is that you cannot make claims of any medical benifit on the container itself. They can make as many claims as they want away from the container. As long as those claims are not made on the container itself, there is no regulation on the product in the United States.
One poor fellow that I saw in the emergency room had a terrible case of Rhus Dermatitis. That is the medical term for what is commonly called poison oak or poison ivy. He had started out getting a small area of rash on his arm. So, he went down to the local health food store and bought a poison ivy treatment.
After taking the ‘cure’ he proceeded to get profoundly worse. By the time I saw him he had a rash all over his body and was extremely miserable. I found the reason by carefully reading the bottle. The ‘cure’ was a naturopathic remedy that had poison ivy in it! How ridiculous is that?
The advertising that you see for some products makes it immediately obvious that the product is useless. Anyone trained in anatomy and physiology would know right away that the claims were false.
One good example is when the claims are contradictory. Rheumatoid arthritis and allergies are good examples of problems caused by overactive immune systems. Yet I have seen products claim that they not only help with allergies but they boost the immune system. You can’t have it both ways folks.
The other thing that makes you go hmm… is when the advertising claims that the product causes specific physiologic changes in the body. Then they go on and claim that the product does not contain a drug. But, check the definition of a drug: ‘A substance used in the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of a disease’. Clearly, if you are claiming that your product can be used to treat or prevent disease, you are talking about a drug. If you say that your substance does not contain a drug, then you can’t say it is preventing or treating a disease. Here again, you can’t have it both ways.
But, you may say, what I am taking is just plant parts. When my father was in pharmacy school in the 1950’s, virtually all drugs were made by collecting plants and mixing them in certain ways to prepare drugs. Now, people do the same thing, but they are able to sell them as food aditives because they make no claims about their properties ‘on the container’.
Having said that, I have nothing against people using herbal remedies. In fact I’m all for it. But it is important to understand what that entails.
Let’s look at an example. Digoxin. This drug once was commonly prescribed for heart problems. You don’t see it as much any more because safer and more effective drugs have been found for most heart conditions.
Digitalis comes from the foxglove plant. Foxgloves are a beautiful flower found in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. My wife can remember people being paid to go out and harvest them so that drug companies could get digoxin from them.
Digoxin is rather peculiar because there is a very narrow range of the drug that can be safely taken. Take too little and it does nothing. Take too much and it can actually kill you.
Furthermore, different plants have different amounts of the drug. It depends on what type of soil the plant grew in. How much sun it got. Even if there were any insects or animals that had nibbled on it.
The part of the plant that you tested would also reveal that there were vastly different amounts of the drug in the leaves as compared to the roots.
A good example of that is rhubarb. The leaves are poisonous. The stems are good in pies.
Unfortunately, the guinea pigs I had as a kid found out the hard way. But, I did have a nice funeral for them.
It might surprise you that in a recent study, a large percentage of the herbal remedies sold did not even contain the parts of the plant that had been shown to be useful!
My advice? First of all get yourself a good reference. There is one book that should be in the library of everyone planning to use an herbal remedy and every doctor too for that matter. That is the PDR for Herbal Medicine.
This book lists every herbal medicine that is know to have a real medicinal effect. It also tells you potential side effects, what part of the plant has the active ingredient and what the medicinal effect it.
Once you know what you want to use, the next step is obtaining it. The best method is to grow your own so you know exactly what you are getting. That way you can make sure the plant is healthy and you are using the part of the plant that will help you and not harm you.
If you cannot grow your own, the next best thing is to do a bit of research and find a company that is known for its integrity and quality control. Then stick with them.
Finally, make sure your doctor knows what you are taking. There is some possibility that your herbal medicine may interact or interfere with any medication that you are being prescribed.
With the proper knowledge and a good source, you should be getting some good benifit from your herbal medication. But, beware of the claims of those other products.
Dr. Ron McCluskey is an emergency room physician with over twenty years experience treating all types of medical problems. A firm believer in natural remedies, he also hates it when people get burned by
rip-off artists. Eight Steps to Health
is your best resource for getting straight answers for your health care needs.
Hip Baths
The hip bath is one of the most useful forms of hydrotherapy. As the name suggests, this mode of treatment involves only the hips and the abdominal region below the navel. A special type of tub is used for the purpose. The tub is filled with water in such a way that it covers the hips and reaches upto the navel when the patient sits in it. Generally, four to six gallons of water are required. If the special tub is not available, a common tub may be used. A support may be placed under one edge to elevate it by two or three inches. Hip bath is given in cold, hot, neutral, or alternate temperatures.
Cold hip bath
The water temperature should be 100C to 180C. The duration of the bath is usually 10 minutes, but in specific conditions it may vary from one minute to 30 minutes. If the patient feels cold or is very weak, a hot foot immersion should be given with the cold hip bath.
The patient should rub the abdomen briskly from the navel downwards and across the body with a moderately coarse wet cloth. The legs, feet and upper part of the body should remain completely dry during and after the bath. The patient should undertake moderate exercise like yogasanas, after the cold hip bath, to warm the body.
A cold hip bath is a routine treatment in most diseases. It relieves constipation, indigestion, obesity and helps the eliminative organs to function properly. It is also helpful in uterine problems like irregular menstruation, chronic uterine infections, pelvic inflammation, piles, hepatic congestion, chronic congestion of the prostate gland, seminal weakness, impotency, sterility, uterine and ovarian displacements, dilation of the stomach and colon, diarrhoea, dysentery, hemorrhage of the bladder and so on. The cold hip bath should not be employed in acute inflammations of the pelvic and abdominal organs, ovaries and in painful contractions of the bladder, rectum or vagina.
Hot hip bath
This bath is generally taken for eight to 10 minutes at a water temperature of 400C to 450C. The bath should start at 400C. The temperature should be gradually increased to 450C. NO friction should be applied to the abdomen. Before entering the tub,the patient should drink one glass of cold water. A cold compress should be placed on the head. A hot hip bath helps to relieve painful menstruation, pain in the pelvic organs, painful urination, inflamed rectum or bladder and painful piles. It also benefits enlarged prostatic gland, painful contractions or spasm of the bladder, sciatica, neuralgia of the ovaries and bladder. A cold shower bath should be taken immediately after the hot hip bath.
Care should be taken to prevent the patient from catching a chill after the bath. The bath should be terminated if the patient feels giddy or complains of excessive pain.
To learn more about the energy principle in healing, please read:
Cost-free Miracle Asthma Cure
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