Quote[/b] (lcars @ Nov. 22 2005,8:59)]
No offense too, but I'm pretty sure it's not really the steriods itself that killed him.
He could have taken loads of that and not died young. Like Arnold.
arnie had a heart bypass right?
Arnold had a genetic defect with his heart, something with one of the valves I believe. His father had the same thing. To date there isn't one single long term study on steroid use. The short term studies that show health risks usually involve extremely hgih doses on a mg per kg of body weight basis, and usually involved kids as well. Studies where the doses are kept sane and that use healthy adult males as a sample show few if any signs of health risks. There has also been a study trying to link deaths with steroids, done by the army if I remember right, and I believe the results were only 12 or 13 deaths that might
possibly be linked to steroid use with nothing definitive. Simply put, steroids do have risks but they are no where near the level most people think, and they can be used safely by healthy adult males.
Not to mention most of the health risks associated with steroids are associated with oral steroids, and it's the methylation attached to the steroid molecule that causes liver stress, not the hormone itself. Transdermal, injectable, sublingual and intranasal are all alternative delivery methods that don't require methylation of the hormone and significantly reduce this risk.
The cardiac effects are harder to pin down. Basically it's 4-5 weeks of higher than normal blood pressure and, especially with oral steroids, an imbalance in your blood lipid levels. These effects vary a lot between users and substances and are very easy to nullify for the most part. The addition of even a mild statin to a steroid cycle helps keep lipids in line and helps them recover quicker after the cycle is done. BP is also pretty easy to keep in line.
In total I'd say a typical American diet does more long and short term damage to people than a few steroid cycles a year would ever do.