Cheaters Do Prosper

Saturday, April 5th, 2008

Reed Albergotti, of the Wall Street Journal, is stunned — stunned! — to find out that the benefits of steroids last long after athletes quit taking them. Cheaters Do Prosper:

In the study, which was completed in October 2006 by the Department of Integrative Medical Biology at Sweden’s Umea University, researchers took muscle biopsies from 26 elite powerlifters who have competed at the sport’s highest levels. Ten of the volunteers said they were not steroid users, but the other 16 had either admitted using these drugs in the past or said they were currently using them. Not only is it unusual for scientists to study elite athletes of any kind, it’s almost impossible to study top athletes who are using steroids in competition.

When the researchers looked at the subjects’ muscles through a microscope, they made a surprising discovery: Rather than returning to their original proportions, the muscles of the steroid users who’d stopped taking the drug looked remarkably similar to those of the subjects who were still using. They also had larger muscle fibers and more growth-inducing “myonuclei” in their muscle cells than the nonsteroid users.

This is not news at all to strength athletes:

The idea that steroids may have lasting benefits comes as no surprise to Larry Maile, president of USA Powerlifting. He says former steroid-using competitors who rehabilitate themselves often become top performers. “They’re still bigger and stronger than they ever would have been,” he says. There is no way to prove that they’re still benefiting from their years of steroid use, he adds, but the question remains, “would they really have been that good had they never used?”

Charles Yesalis, a former strength coach and professor emeritus of health policy and administration at Pennsylvania State University, says athletes who continue to train can retain as much as 85% of their gains from using drugs. This isn’t based on muscle biopsies or peer-reviewed research, he says, but on 30 years of experience with athletes. He says he has talked privately with hundreds of dopers, some of them champions, and has seen the permanent benefits of performance-enhancing drugs. “These things are like rocket fuel,” he says.

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