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Nutrition Tips:

- Your body weight increases and decreases according to the difference between calorie intake minus expenditure.

- Carbohydrates are a good energy source. Take in carbohydrates before exercise. Carbohydrates also are easily turned to and stored as fat. If you are trying to lose weight avoid high carbohydrate diets.

- Proteins are best taken in with in twenty minutes after your workout for maximum absorption.

- Eating many small meals instead of a few big meals a day naturally increases your metabolism and promotes fat metabolism.

- Make sure that you take in recommended amounts of water, vitamins & minerals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Steroid Use:

Fact:

- Currently, the most effective and most dangerous method of increasing skeletal muscle mass is steroid use.

Myth:

- If you take steroids and you stop working out the muscle will turn to fat.

- This is not true.  First of all, muscle never turns to fat.  Secondly, if muscle is continually stimulated after steroid use has ceased, the muscle mass gained through steroid use will remain.

 

 

 

How Do Steroids Work?

        Steroids are a synthetic version of the human hormone testosterone.   Testosterone is naturally produced within the body in male gonads (testicles).

In its synthetic form testosterone is taken into the body by either injection or pill form.  Steroids enter the blood stream as a complete form of testosterone by passing the bodies natural testosterone regulators (the gonads or testicles).  Once in the blood stream the steroid (or testosterone) interacts with the bodies cells producing a variety of effects.  These effects can be put in to two general categories.

        Anabolic effects are the desirable effects of increased muscular hypertrophy (muscle size).  If these were the only effects produced by steroids, there would be little risk in taking them and there use would be more common.  The problem with steroids is that along with Anabolic effects comes a variety of negative Androgenic effects.  See Fig 1. 

        Another problem with steroid use is that genetically everyone has a different number of testosterone receptors within their muscles.  People who lack testosterone receptors are more likely to see the negative androgenic effects immediately because the testosterone is in the blood stream looking to do something. If it is not being used to produce muscle it is likely being used to produce negative androgenic effects.  People with many testosterone receptors in their muscles are less likely to see short term side effects but, more likely to see long term side effects such as heart and liver problems due to continual use.

 

 

 

 

Fig. 1  Androgenic Effects Produced By Steroid Use

-         a peliosis hepatis (blood-filled cavities in the liver tissue, cysts)or liver cancer.

-         dysfunctions of the liver such as cholastasis (bile obstruction in  the liver)

-         inhibition of the gonad cycle

-         water and salt retention

-         feminization (gynocomastia)

-         changes in skin

-          psychological changes

-          gastrointestinal symptoms

-          baldness

-         cardiovascular defects

-         virilization

-         growth deficit

-         prostate hypertrophy

-          high blood pressure

-         cardiac hypertrophy

-         kidney damage

 

Supplement Use:

-         Protein supplements are no better than dietary proteins.  A  $0.80 can of tuna often contains as much protein as a $6.00 protein bar.

-         Amino acids are what make up protein.

-         Glutamine is a non-essential amino acid.  Inconclusive research on helping muscles heal.  The jury is still out.

-          All meats are complete proteins.

-         Weight loss supplements and drugs are usually designed to increase your metabolism.  Often times this also produces the negative effects of increased heart rate as these supplements are a mild stimulant. (no matter if they are herbal or synthetic).

-         Weight loss drugs are also usually diuretics this will effect your bodies ability to absorb water, vitamins and minerals. It may be necessary to increase vitamin and water intake if taking these supplements.

-         Long term taking of weight loss drugs produces no effect as your body soon adapts to the extra stimulus.  (This is why body builders don’t use them until a little while before their shows).

 

 

-         Weight Gainer supplements are very diverse in nature, some are pre-cursors to steroids while others just contain high amounts of calories or a combination of the two.  If they are a steroid pre-cursor and they actually produce higher testosterone levels in the body, it can be expected that the same negative side effects that steroids produce will be produced by these supplements.

-         Creatine is one of the few supplements that actually has been proven to produce desirable effects in the short term when used properly.  Long term studies are still unavailable as creatine has not been around long enough.

-         Other problems with the abuse of supplementation are the increased demands put on your liver and kidneys due to extremely high un natural levels of substances that your body is not used to taking.