14 DAY TRIAL // You cannot play with the hormones. Some powder can change your behavior completely. And even if the aim is just improving sport performances, the results can be nasty, especially when women play with male sexual hormones.
A team led by Dr. Diane Elliot from the Division of Health Promotion & Sports Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University has discovered that amongst teen girls, not only the athletes use steroids, and steroids use was often accompanied by other unhealthy types of behavior, likesmoking and taking diet pills.
The research team investigated data from the Center for Disease Control's Youth Risk Behavior Survey of 7,544 ninth- through 12th-grade girls from whole US. The girls were questioned about sports activity, anabolic steroid and drug use and also other illegal or unhealthy behaviors. About 5 % of subjects reported prior or ongoing steroid use.
Beside drug consume, girls consuming steroids were more predisposed to have had sexual intercourse before age 13, to have been pregnant, to have been drunk and driven a car or have ridden with a drinking driver, to have carried a weapon, to have fought on school property, to have experienced severe depression (feelings of sadness or hopelessness almost every day for at least two weeks and have attempted suicide).
The girls that consumed steroids usually did not practice team sports. About 70 % of all girls had tried to lose weight, but the steroid consumers appealed to the most extreme methods, like vomiting and laxative use.
"Adolescent girls reporting anabolic steroid use had significantly more other health-harming behaviors. They were much more likely to use other unhealthy substances, including cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana and cocaine," explained Elliot.
"Across all grades, these seem to be troubled adolescents with co-occurring health-compromising activities in the domains of substance use, sexual behavior, violence and mental health. Anabolic steroid use is a marker for high-risk girls. High-risk young women have received less attention than young men, perhaps reflecting that their actions are less socially, albeit more personally, destructive. Further study is needed to develop effective interventions for these young women."