Anabolic Steroid Blog. InfoFitness.Net

Before I go further let me say that I used steroids back in the 1980s as a bodybuilder and later as I started wrestling. In bodybuilding circles in that era …

Recently, I heard a movie critic on the radio giving his opinion of the latest Sylvester Stallone movie, Rambo. He hated the movie and said it was ridiculous watching a 61-year-old man all juiced up on steroids running around in a jungle war. Amazingly to me, as I thought about it, this was one of the first times that I’ve heard someone in the media come out and casually say the truth about a well known individual’s steroid use while doing their report.
I have to say it was very refreshing.
Before I go further let me say that I used steroids back in the 1980s as a bodybuilder and later as I started wrestling. In bodybuilding circles in that era, steroid use was just accepted as a necessity to compete, but still, nobody openly talked about it. I never really understood that because it was just something that you had to do to be competitive, or at least that was the mind set. Even though you had to buy them in back rooms of legitimate businesses or in the locker rooms at the gym, it was not illegal to possess steroids, which one can assume also means taking them.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 placed anabolic steroids into schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) as of February 27, 1991. This legislation made it clear that the possession or use of anabolic steroids without a valid prescription is illegal. Trafficking of steroids has been illegal since 1988.
So steroid use, being in sort of a gray area where you knew something wasn’t right about it, but you also knew that it was accepted in sports in order to be competitive, is now no longer gray, but very clear — it is illegal. This legislation woke some people up such as Vince McMahon of the WWF (now WWE) and they started a drug policy but it didn’t last, largely because some of the “superstars” of the WWF were becoming practically unrecognizable to the fans. Also, it became a way for McMahon to weed out or control wrestlers that he had a problem with. At least, this was the “word in the dressing room” that I heard. At any rate the drug policy was ineffective and discontinued, although they may have pretended to still implement it.
After many untimely deaths, and especially the Chris Benoit tragedy, the WWE has once again taken certain wrestlers to task and required them to get off steroids. It’s not hard to identify who is on their way off the juice, just watch their appearance gradually change. Necks will get thinner, muscles will shrink and definition will disappear. In the past few years, other sports started dealing more with the steroid issue also, but it basically was always swept under the rug by owners of sports teams, sports promoters and organizers of major sports organizations. The subject was rarely talked about by the mainstream media and the sportscasters never talked about it, as if they had a gag order not to. I personally believe they did, and still do, have a gag order.

and then, of course, possibly the most ridiculous display of ignoring the issue came in 1998 as baseball turned a blind eye to the fact that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were heavily juiced when they had their home run battle in which McGwire hit 70 home runs. It wasn’t just the home run totals but it was their appearance for crying out loud. Even the untrained eye should have been able to see the changes in their appearance over the preceding years. It seemed as though almost everyone in sports — and even the fans — were blind in both eyes not to have made this a huge issue. The Major League Baseball world let it go on to give the sport a boost. The WWE and Major League Baseball are just two examples in a long list of sports organizations which include the International Olympic Committee and the organizers of the Tour De France who have allowed the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to become an epidemic in sports.
I, for one, do not know how long steroids have been used in sports but when I look at photos of strongman/bodybuilding/wrestling athletes of the late 1800s and the early- to mid-1900s such as Eugen Sandow, George Hackenschmidt, and Stanislaus Zbyszko and many others, I can’t help but wonder if steroids played a part in the development of their famous physiques and success in their careers. My trained eye says “yes,” but that is only my opinion.
Regardless if steroid use started 150 years ago, or many centuries ago, it was in the past.
This is the present.
The governing bodies of all sports organizations need to start in the present. It’s not fair to strip medals and take away titles that were won in the past when the steroid epidemic was in large part allowed to go on in sports by those who had the most to gain from the athlete’s success, namely the owners and leaders of sports organizations. Then, when the heat comes down, they want to make examples of only a few because there is no way of going back and punishing everybody who used steroids. Steroid possession is illegal. Forget about sports organizations policing themselves. While there have been arrests over the past 20 years in the underground steroid world, you rarely see arrests of athletes themselves.
If the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 and the placement of steroids into schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act is a law, enforce it, starting now, in the present, and forget about the past.
Or, take it off of the books and leave the steroid issue and the athletes alone. Although with the latter, steroid related untimely deaths will continue.

Before I go further let me say that I used steroids back in the 1980s as a bodybuilder and later as I started wrestling. In bodybuilding circles in that era …

Recently, I heard a movie critic on the radio giving his opinion of the latest Sylvester Stallone movie, Rambo. He hated the movie and said it was ridiculous watching a 61-year-old man all juiced up on steroids running around in a jungle war. Amazingly to me, as I thought about it, this was one of the first times that I’ve heard someone in the media come out and casually say the truth about a well known individual’s steroid use while doing their report.
I have to say it was very refreshing.
Before I go further let me say that I used steroids back in the 1980s as a bodybuilder and later as I started wrestling. In bodybuilding circles in that era, steroid use was just accepted as a necessity to compete, but still, nobody openly talked about it. I never really understood that because it was just something that you had to do to be competitive, or at least that was the mind set. Even though you had to buy them in back rooms of legitimate businesses or in the locker rooms at the gym, it was not illegal to possess steroids, which one can assume also means taking them.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 placed anabolic steroids into schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) as of February 27, 1991. This legislation made it clear that the possession or use of anabolic steroids without a valid prescription is illegal. Trafficking of steroids has been illegal since 1988.
So steroid use, being in sort of a gray area where you knew something wasn’t right about it, but you also knew that it was accepted in sports in order to be competitive, is now no longer gray, but very clear — it is illegal. This legislation woke some people up such as Vince McMahon of the WWF (now WWE) and they started a drug policy but it didn’t last, largely because some of the “superstars” of the WWF were becoming practically unrecognizable to the fans. Also, it became a way for McMahon to weed out or control wrestlers that he had a problem with. At least, this was the “word in the dressing room” that I heard. At any rate the drug policy was ineffective and discontinued, although they may have pretended to still implement it.
After many untimely deaths, and especially the Chris Benoit tragedy, the WWE has once again taken certain wrestlers to task and required them to get off steroids. It’s not hard to identify who is on their way off the juice, just watch their appearance gradually change. Necks will get thinner, muscles will shrink and definition will disappear. In the past few years, other sports started dealing more with the steroid issue also, but it basically was always swept under the rug by owners of sports teams, sports promoters and organizers of major sports organizations. The subject was rarely talked about by the mainstream media and the sportscasters never talked about it, as if they had a gag order not to. I personally believe they did, and still do, have a gag order.

and then, of course, possibly the most ridiculous display of ignoring the issue came in 1998 as baseball turned a blind eye to the fact that Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were heavily juiced when they had their home run battle in which McGwire hit 70 home runs. It wasn’t just the home run totals but it was their appearance for crying out loud. Even the untrained eye should have been able to see the changes in their appearance over the preceding years. It seemed as though almost everyone in sports — and even the fans — were blind in both eyes not to have made this a huge issue. The Major League Baseball world let it go on to give the sport a boost. The WWE and Major League Baseball are just two examples in a long list of sports organizations which include the International Olympic Committee and the organizers of the Tour De France who have allowed the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs to become an epidemic in sports.
I, for one, do not know how long steroids have been used in sports but when I look at photos of strongman/bodybuilding/wrestling athletes of the late 1800s and the early- to mid-1900s such as Eugen Sandow, George Hackenschmidt, and Stanislaus Zbyszko and many others, I can’t help but wonder if steroids played a part in the development of their famous physiques and success in their careers. My trained eye says “yes,” but that is only my opinion.
Regardless if steroid use started 150 years ago, or many centuries ago, it was in the past.
This is the present.
The governing bodies of all sports organizations need to start in the present. It’s not fair to strip medals and take away titles that were won in the past when the steroid epidemic was in large part allowed to go on in sports by those who had the most to gain from the athlete’s success, namely the owners and leaders of sports organizations. Then, when the heat comes down, they want to make examples of only a few because there is no way of going back and punishing everybody who used steroids. Steroid possession is illegal. Forget about sports organizations policing themselves. While there have been arrests over the past 20 years in the underground steroid world, you rarely see arrests of athletes themselves.
If the Anabolic Steroids Control Act of 1990 and the placement of steroids into schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act is a law, enforce it, starting now, in the present, and forget about the past.
Or, take it off of the books and leave the steroid issue and the athletes alone. Although with the latter, steroid related untimely deaths will continue.

Dr. Colker recently authored Extreme Muscle Enhancement, Second Edition: Bodybuilding’s Most Powerful Techniques. The book focuses on ways for bodybuilders…
This past week was a turning point in the sports world. In one day, two prominent baseball players - the St. Louis Cardinals’ Rick Ankiel and the Toronto Blue Jays’ Troy Glaus - were reported to have received performance-enhancing drugs.

If this were 2005, we would be holding congressional hearings and questioning the examples being set for young athletes. Instead, many sports fans are feeling apathy - or even acceptance.

In 2007, the question is no longer if steroids and other PEDs are a part of professional sports; the question now is how we should deal with them.

Carlon M. Colker, MD, FACN, has competed as a bodybuilder and now provides medical advice for athletes. The Chief Executive officer and Medical Director of Peak Wellness, Inc. in Greenwich, Connecticut has worked with the New York Yankees and New York Giants, and recently appeared on ABC’s “Shaq’s Big Challenge”. Dr. Colker said that the use of PEDs by today’s athletes is “extremely prevalent, far more prevalent than anyone thinks.”

Dr. Colker recently authored Extreme Muscle Enhancement, Second Edition: Bodybuilding’s Most Powerful Techniques. The book focuses on ways for body builders to build their bodies without the use of anabolic drugs. He argues that in addition to the health risks, the use of steroids and other PEDs is also sending the wrong message to younger athletes.

“I think anytime you have athletes that abuse steroids to improve athletic performance, that is the wrong message,” Dr. Colker said.

While he admits there is no one person or group that can be blamed for the increased use of PEDs, Dr. Colker said that professional team owners have the greatest ability to stop the abuse of these drugs. He also points out that the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa home run chase of 1998 - now widely assumed to have been chemically enhanced - brought many fans back to Major League Baseball after the 1994 strike.

So, the men with the most power to stop the use of PEDs are the same men who benefited financially from it less than ten years ago.

“I’m not saying that players were told by owners to take steroids, but they are pressured to perform well,” Dr. Colker said.

Major League Baseball is not the only league that has done a poor job policing itself. San Diego Chargers linebacker Shawn Merriman was suspended four games last year after testing positive for steroids yet was still allowed to play in the NFL’s Pro Bowl and finished third in Defensive Player of the Year voting. The NFL has since banned players who served a suspension during that season from the Pro Bowl.

But Dr. Colker has an idea on how to control PED abuse among athletes, and it has nothing to do with asterisks or George Mitchell investigations. His idea is not even a foolproof testing policy for professional sports.

Dr. Colker said that while the different professional sports organizations all have some positive things about their testing policies, they all use different standards. What’s cheating in the eyes of the International Olympic Committee or the World Anti-Doping Agency may not be cheating in the eyes of MLB or the NFL.

“If we’re really concerned with helping young people - and as a society I don’t think we’re as concerned with what adults are putting in their bodies - we should test the kids,” he said.

“We should test high school and college athletes. Colleges, especially the larger schools, make enough money to pay for the tests. I can understand how a high school might not have enough money, but that’s where professional sports should step in and help out.”

Dr. Colker said that today’s athletes are taking a cue from body builders, calling pro bodybuilding the “cradle of PED abuse.” He said that oftentimes high school or college athletes are seduced into taking PEDs without any education about them.

“What you need to take from bodybuilding is the diet, the hard work and the skill,” he said. “It’s all about education in the end. Testing pro athletes is fine, but at the end of the day let’s save the kids.”
As simple as it sounds, that is the basis of Dr. Colker’s argument. If we really want to do something about PEDs in our country, let’s get the right messages to athletes as early as possible. Let’s focus on college and high school athletes instead of an asterisk for the 43-year-old Barry Bonds.

Helping colleges and high schools with PEDs will ultimately help the pro games. If we can stop PED use by athletes when they are still amateurs, then they are less likely to use them when they are professionals.

and maybe one day we can even get back to the point where we are appalled by revelations of drug abuse in sports.

Norman “Rocky” Rauch, a onetime champion weightlifter and bodybuilder, is living proof. Or, perhaps more accurately, barely living proof. …
Anabolic steroids work as advertised. They enhance athletic performance.
Norman “Rocky” Rauch, a onetime champion weightlifter and bodybuilder, is living proof. Or, perhaps more accurately, barely living proof. Rauch abused steroids for years and got the results he desired and a whole lot for which he did not bargain.
He is still an imposing figure at 63, a 6-foot-3, 240-pound man.
But when Rauch limps into Rocky’s Gym, the small health club he owns with his wife, Trudy, he looks nothing like the figure in the faded photos on the wall, the ones that depict him as a younger man, bronzed and ripped.
Steroids did that for Rauch, turned him into a Greek god. Like Icarus, however, he flew too close to the sun. and, boy, did he get burned.
There’s the cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It first reared its ugly head in 1986 and came back in ‘89 and again, with a vengeance, in ‘90. Rauch has been in remission since his bone marrow transplant, 15 years, knock on wood.
There’s the deterioration of his joints. Left shoulder, replaced. Left hip, replaced. Right knee, bone on bone; he wears a brace and doesn’t even want to think about another replacement surgery.
There are the staph infections, one of which shut down Rauch’s kidneys two years ago. Three days a week, he goes to the Zablocki Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Milwaukee for dialysis.
There are the basil cell carcinomas, the arthritis, the heart murmur, the bouts with depression.
Steroids, he is convinced, did all that, too.
On the plus side of the ledger, Rauch once won the over-40 division in the Mr. America bodybuilding contest and owns a roomful of dust-gathering trophies.
“I think about all I went through since I took that stuff,” Rauch says, spitting out the last word. “I have boxes of trophies, over 200 of them. I look at that and say, ‘Was it really all worth it?’ Would I take all of that and melt it down and cash out a clean bill of health, swap it out?
“I mean, if I could I would. But I can’t.”
Rauch worries that the message isn’t getting out about the danger of steroid abuse. He worries that children see performance-enhancing drugs as the ticket to buffed bodies and improved self-esteem.
Steroids are easily available, Rauch says, in high schools and health clubs, in small towns and big cities.
Rauch lost his career in sales because of his health problems. Trudy Rauch lost her job because she took so much time off to care for her husband. They’ve downsized from their five-bedroom home, with its huge lot and swimming pool, because Trudy was overwhelmed trying to maintain it alone.
The Rauchs live on Rocky’s Social Security disability and the modest income they make at their fledgling gym, which has fewer than 25 members.
“It’s been hard,” Trudy says. “It’s not been an easy road because you start resenting. Sometimes I feel like his caretaker instead of his wife, and why do I have to go through all this?
“We’ve had our ups and downs in our marriage. If I had to do it all over again, I can’t tell you that I would. I really can’t.”
Rauch first started using steroids in the late 1960s, when he was in the U.S. Air Force and training to try to make the 1968 U.S. Olympic weightlifting team. The team physician handed out pills and told the lifters to take two a day for eight weeks.
“We didn’t know what they were,” Rauch says. “They were little blue pills; dianabol. Oh, yeah, they worked. I got stronger. My best clean-and-jerk was 365 pounds, and within four weeks, I did 400. All my lifts came up.”
Rauch cycled on and off dianabol for three years. He got stronger and stronger. But in 1971 he broke out in boils all over his body. He went to his family doctor, who lanced the boils and sent him to a specialist in Madison.
“They took blood tests and found out my liver was severely deteriorated and my immune system was low,” Rauch says. “I had a staph infection, and they put me on antibiotics. The doctor said, ‘You must drink a lot.’ I said I didn’t and he said, ‘Well, why is your liver damaged?’
“I told him I was taking this little blue pill, dianabol, two a day. He didn’t know what it was. He got out his medical journal and looked it up. Oh, anabolic steroid. Side effects: liver damage, heart damage, immune system, causes cancer. I mean, it went on and on.”
All the other lifters were taking dianabol. Rauch felt he couldn’t compete without it, and no one was tested for steroids.
“I asked the doctor what my choice was,” he says. “He said, ‘Quit and live or take them and die.’”
Rauch quit and tried to make the 1976 Olympic team without the help of steroids. He never was able to duplicate his best lifts when he was on dianabol, however, and a torn quadriceps muscle effectively ended his days as a competitive weightlifter.
Rauch turned to bodybuilding and by 1980 was having success at the local level. Eventually, he won a Mr. Wisconsin title.
“I was going into a national meet in Chicago, and the guys in the gym were telling me I had to get on the sauce,” Rauch says. “I said, ‘What’s that?’ They said the sauce is orals and injectables. Testosterone, dianabol, anavar.”
Rauch began the extremely risky practice of “stacking,” or combining two or more drugs.
He eventually increased his dosage to 20 pills a day and “five or six” shots a week. He packed on 10 more pounds of muscle. To support his habit, he sold vitamins and supplements, telling customers that’s how he got so big.
“Then I turned around and used the money to buy my junk,” he says. “If that ain’t a hypocrite, I don’t know what is.”
While he was using, he became irritable and moody and developed a hair-trigger temper. He had three episodes of “roid rage,” taking out his aggression, thankfully, on inanimate objects. He dented the roof of his car and put his hand through a garage door.
But when Rauch stepped onto the stage at the 1983 Mr. America competition in Los Angeles, the other contestants in the over-40 division didn’t have a chance. All seven judges, he says, gave him first-place votes.
Rauch had achieved his goal but was racked by guilt. When he found Trudy in the crowd after the competition, he confessed that he had been using steroids and promised he was through with them.
Three years later, he started using again.
One night, Trudy walked in on Rocky shooting up.
One week later, Rauch says, he awoke with a lump in his neck “the size of a golf ball.” A biopsy confirmed his worst fear: It was a malignant lymph node.
Over the next few years, Rauch would become very familiar with hospitals. He was in and out for cancer treatments and eventually had a bone-marrow transplant. His joints deteriorated and after shoulder surgery in 2003, he developed a staph infection that damaged his kidneys.
“My kidneys failed in September of 2003,” he says. “I went on dialysis in April of ‘04. I’m on a (transplant) waiting list.”
The Rauchs opened their new gym a few weeks ago. Trudy runs the business, and Rocky helps out on days he feels up to it. A new client asked if he was licensed as a personal trainer, and he pointed to his trophies. That’s my license, he told her. Forty-six years in the business.
and what if a man walked into his gym someday with a bag full of goodies?
“I’d say, ‘There’s the door. Please exit fast or I’m going to call the police,’ ” Rauch says. “I really don’t want to see anyone else go through what I did. I could have avoided all that. It’s unbelievable.”
He doesn’t want people to feel sorry for him. He chose to use steroids to get where he wanted to go. He knew the risks. As Trudy says, “if you play you’re going to pay, somewhere down the road.”
Rauch is paying, with interest.
“You just take it one day at a time,” he says. “I just thank God I’m still here.”

All potential steroid users should first understand the positive and navigate effects associated with steroid use. If it’s your first time, you should probably use only one steroid. The most popular is nandrolone deconate, commonly known as Deca-Durabolin.
It is considered to have the best result to side effect ratio. Because it is an anabolic steroid and has no significant androgenic properties, it does not convert to estrogen or DHT. When using a steroid that has high androgenic effects, it is imperative to use an anti-estrogen toward the end of the cycle to prevent side effects associated with extremely high estrogen levels such as gynecomastia. The biggest factors leading to negative side effects is the use of a fake steroid, improper use of a steroid, or not being able to recognize the side effect when it is in its early stages. Please read over the side effects area before using any type of steroid.
There are some studies that show a shorter steroid cycle is better than a longer one. A short steroid cycle is anywhere from 1.5 to 2 months in length. When the steroid cycle is longer than 2 months, the receptor sites in the body become over stimulated and will stop responding in a positive way during that steroid cycle and into the next cycle. This means that you’ll be using larger and larger amount of steroids without any results, causing your body to become unstable and unsafe as you use more and more steroids in each dose.
There are many different types of steroid cycles that you can use to see the results that you’re looking for. Some of these cycles include:
Three week blitz. During this steroid cycle each drug is taken for three weeks.
Double mini cycle. During this steroid cycle two or three steroids are taken in combination for six weeks. At the end of the six weeks there is a two week “off” cycle, followed by yet another six week cycle of the same steroids. At the end of the second six week cycle there is a two month “off” cycle.
Inverted pyramid steroid cycle. This steroid cycle begins with a maximum dose of steroids and slows down from that time. This means that at the end of the steroid cycle very little steroids are actually used. This cycle is often used in athletes that will be undergoing drug testing.
Diamond steroid cycle. In this steroid cycle a minimum dose of steroids are used at the beginning of the cycle, increasing over time towards the end of the cycle.
Pyramiding cycle. Another steroid cycle is known as “pyramiding.” This steroid cycle differs from cycling or stacking. The person taking steroids steadily increases the amount of steroids injected or consumed until mid-cycle, when they gradually begin decreasing it again. This might be followed by a second cycle, when the abuser trains without using any steroids at all. The perceived benefit of this steroid cycle is that it gives the body time to adjust to the higher dosages of steroids. Like stacking, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim of benefits in steroid cycles or pyramiding.
The Safest and Most Effective Cycles
The safest cycles would include, of course, the safest steroids, for a short period of time. The most effective cycle, on the other hand, is generally going to include the most risks. Such is the nature of steroids; the most effective stuff is also the most “dangerous,” so to speak. Also keep in mind that there’s no perfectly “safe” or risk-free steroid. One particular steroid may not give you gyno, but may be tough on the liver. Another may not be tough on the liver, but may increase the risk of your hair falling out. See what I mean? This is the “give and take” of the steroid game.
Below is an abbreviated list of the safest and most effective steroids in my opinion. “Gains” is basically defined by how much muscle mass you’ll put on. Side effects include the risk of liver damage, gynecomastia, water retention (edema), and possible hair loss.
Each of these steroid cycles have proven effective but will have different results on the body.

Steroid Portal.com Steroid Cycles http://www.steroidportal.com/pc-Anabolic-Steroids-An-Introduction-.html
Steroid Cycles http://www.4-men.org/steroids/steroid-cycles.html
Steroid Cycles http://www.nutrifit.org/steroidcycles.html