Brief exposure to anabolic steroids may have long-lasting, possibly permanent, performance-enhancing effects, according to a new study. New research suggests that athletes who use steroids for a short period may benefit throughout their career. Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are a synthetic form of testosterone used to increase muscle mass and strength. The body normally produces steroids on its own, since they are needed to be healthy.
When you take oral steroids for a few weeks or longer, your body may reduce or stop producing its own steroids. If you then suddenly stop taking oral steroids, your body doesn't have steroids. This can cause several withdrawal symptoms until your body starts producing more natural steroids within a few weeks. Withdrawal symptoms can be severe and even life-threatening.
If you have been taking steroids in high doses or for the long term and your dose is gradually reduced, your body gradually begins its natural production of steroids and you don't have withdrawal symptoms. Even a small dose of steroids allows you to gain muscle and strength two or three times faster than you naturally could, and it raises your absolute limit of muscle growth far above what your genes would otherwise allow. In a review of the literature on steroids by scientists at Maastricht University, researchers found that over periods of ten weeks or less, the average muscle gains in people doing resistance training while taking anabolic steroids ranged between 4 and 11 pounds. As long as you take enough steroids to be effective, they'll also be enough to stop your body's natural testosterone production.
For example, if you were a competitive bodybuilder and wanted to add 20 pounds of muscle in the off-season, your steroid cycle would be very different from when you're working out for a show. The bottom line is that any substance that is potent enough to produce steroid-like results will also produce similar side effects. More importantly, the number of cores per muscle fiber is still comparable to that of lifters who currently train and use steroids, and significantly higher than that of lifters who are currently training and have never used steroids. People who use anabolic steroids illegally often do so to increase lean muscle mass, reduce fat, and accelerate recovery from injury.
Evidence now shows that, in addition to increasing levels of the anabolic hormone (which promotes growth) in the body, anabolic steroids fundamentally change muscle fibers, so that their potential for size and strength increases permanently. Therefore, the changes induced by anabolic steroids in the dopamine and serotonin systems of the central nervous system appear to recover, but it takes a considerably long time compared to the length of the administration period. To understand the big difference steroids can make, let's take a brief look at the potency of these drugs. Many then assume that they simply don't have the genetics to have a good physique, and either they give up, relegate themselves to mediocrity, or, ironically, they turn to steroids.
Because there is a correlation between height and potential musculature, and since organ weight doesn't vary much from person to person, you can expect to see a higher average FFMI among steroid users than among non-users, as well as FFMI among steroid users who simply can't be obtained from natural way. When it comes to strength sports, including bodybuilding, weightlifting, and Olympic weightlifting, anabolic steroids are widely used to increase muscle mass, strength, and production power (. It may take up to 4 months to restore natural testosterone levels after taking anabolic steroids for a long time. .
