It is said that the use of steroids is the best solution to combat the devastating disease called lung cancer. Based on research the drug can reduce a person’s chance of acquiring the disease up to 61 percent. This fact can even be attested to by patients who actually get cured and by the doctors who administered the treatment. Over the years, the significant benefits of steroids has been proven so some medical practitioner’s take advantage of it by studying and conducting series of test to access it effectiveness with premature and pre-term babies.

Usually, a full-term pregnancy takes 40 weeks and for twins 38 weeks. Most doctors specializing in maternal-fetal medicine who joined the survey about the effectiveness of steroids to preterm babies are continuing the administration of the drug to pregnant women who are on their 34th week of gestation. Through this, the maturation of the lungs of the unborn will speed-up. The substance called surfactant can be stimulated by steroids to allow rapid synthesis to avoid respiratory distress, as well as to improve the baby’s capability to breathe on his own. As an addition, steroid can also make advance progress on the baby’s blood circulation. It can enhance the flow of oxygen-rich blood to the tissues and to the brain. The use of this drug can assure mothers to have a healthy baby after completing the 40 or 38 weeks of pregnancy.

Steroids has long been used to cure other types of diseases other than this. It is no longer a mystery that the proper use of the drug can and will cure multiple illnesses due to its immune system enhancing properties. However, this would be the first time that the drug has been documented to be able to do a feat such as help in normalizing and preserving a child’s respiratory system. All this gained while the said infant was a mere fetus inside the mother’s womb. By consulting a local physician, it is not impossible to learn how and when to use this method should the need for it arise. News regarding the Preterm Baby’s Lung Saved by the Multiple Use of Steroids started to circulate and since then has been considered a means to ensure no negative complications occur within the 40 week period of pregnancy. Of course proper use is needed that is why it is always advised to consult a doctor first to know the condition of the child and mother and to be able to deduce what would be the right amount of the drug to take.

The discovery of this medicine to save preterm baby’s lungs started during 1970’s in New Zealand. Using sheep as guinea pigs, scientists were able to discover its miraculous healing powers provided the drug was utilized the right way. Results indicated that the offspring of the animals that were actually treated with steroids were diagnosed to have healthier and stronger respiratory system. This paved the way for human testing and since then has been a tremendous success.

The use that steroids have to save the lungs even of preterm babies cannot be doubted. The facts speak for themselves and, as more and more mothers become witness to the wonders this drug can do for the health, more people will come to trust in its healing qualities.

The discovery of the tetrahydrogestrinone or THG in 2003 opened the door to the biggest doping scandal in the world of sports as yet. THG, designed to be undetectable, have gone around the sports industry for years before the authorities were able to learn about it, and only with the help of an anonymous phone call pulling the plug on the illegal manufacture and distribution. The names of some of the best in sports were involved in the steroid scam, including Barry Bonds and Marion Jones, some of whom had already served time in prison and others with pending trials.
Victor Conte, one of the people behind the convicted distributor of the THG, which is the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative or BALCO, commented on record that the THG is just a beginning of more designer drugs to come. Whether or not he was trying to take away the title of being a malevolent in the sports industry or was actually giving authorities a clue about what else is there to find is a question settled upon the discovery of yet another undetectable designer steroid.

Again with the help of an anonymous tip, the authorities found that a new steroid named desoxymethyltestosterone or DMT, was indeed being manufactured. The World Anti-Doping Agency and the Canada Border Services teamed up in December of 2003 to seize a bottle of the steroid at Coutts, Alberta, discovered that this too was created with such sophistication as the earlier steroid as to lie undetected. Studied under the microscope, officials were even amazed at how such drug was designed. According to them, the DMT was manufactured with more advanced concepts and technology than the THG. Having been able to reproduce the drug, the scientists are awed at the complexity f its structure. It was also an implication that brilliant chemists have lent their expertise for such illegitimate endeavors – a great threat to the ends of the law.

While this poses a new danger to the sports industry and the world in general, there is reason to believe that it has not reached the level of distribution yet, according to one of WADA’s director Olivier Rabin. Unlike IN the case of THG, DMT has not yet reached the hands of the athletes, which they believe to be the main target of the drug. Upon the findings of Christiane Ayotte of the WADA-accredited drug testing laboratory in Montreal, urine samples of athletes in recent months showed no traces of this steroid, a sign saying that at least in recent months, none had the chance to try the drug yet.

However, the extent to which steroid manufacturers have gone at least to the point of developing such complex substance as the DMT and with the purpose of tricking the law, alerts the authorities. Just as with THG, whose manufacture the FBI had discovered to originate in China, the DMT may very well have its source laboratories in foreign countries such as either India or China where raw materials are easily obtained.

Another laboratory in UCLA and the Doping Control Laboratory of Athens found out that the steroid is a madol or methylandrostenol, a drug noted for its effective muscle-building, which at the time of its initial patent in 1961, lacked sufficient study to determine its full effects. One of the emphasized effects of DMT is its capacity to increase heart mass; and being a designer drug, which implies the lack of proper testing that legitimate drug-manufacturing clinics have their drugs undergo, the DMT carries with it additional risks of harm to the user.

There are a number of reasons why women take steroids. First, there are the female bodybuilders that want an edge over other competitors by bulking themselves up. The intention here is purely aesthetic; women want to look and feel as strong and beautiful as they deem it necessary. Taking steroids becomes especially necessary when the woman’s body is not genetically advantaged and working out and dieting doesn’t give her the body she wants. Instead of accepting natural limitations, these women choose to turn to the use of steroids. Another reason is self-defense. Being the generally weaker sex when it comes to physical qualities, women tend to be the prey of physical or sexual assaults that simply could have been avoided had they been able to protect themselves, at least as they see it. Some women who use steroids are in fact previous victims of rape, and in response have decided not to allow physical vulnerability have them preyed on again. Either for making themselves looks unfeminine or by adding power to their muscles, they use steroids to keep attackers away. On the other hand, there are also women who have muscle dysmorphia, a psychological disorder characterized mainly by obsessing over being not muscular enough and thus doing and overdoing efforts to gain such muscularity. Judging themselves to not look good enough, they resort to using steroids to build their bodies in addition to undergoing workouts and special diets. Women in this category are in great danger because they have no objective perspective of their bodies.

What makes women’s steroid intake of special concern is how these body enhancing drugs affect the female system in different degrees and levels. Designed to enhance masculinity as basically characterized by muscularity, men and women take steroids for such purpose. Once these drugs get into the body, however, there’s no stopping them from affecting it in many other ways. Female users in this respect are more disadvantaged. First are the physical side effects. In what seems like turning a woman into a man, female users develop excessive body hair growth, a reduction in the size of breasts, a deepening of the voice, a thinning of scalp hair, an enlargement of facial pores and an enlargement of the clitoris. More than physical changes, however, these will affect the woman in her social endeavors as well as private ones. It is one thing to be masculine, but to slowly turn male is another. Behavioral effects also abound. Coined as ‘roid rage,’ women who take steroids notably become more aggressive and irritable. Some are observed to want to pick fights, become more verbally abusive, and simply become angrier. Matched with women’s natural sensitivity to emotions and situations, she also becomes more restless, depressed, distracted and anxious, to name a few. Equally alarming are the effects of steroids inside the body. For one, the immune system is affected, thus making the woman more likely to acquire illnesses and be unable to recover quickly from them. Complications involving the heart, the liver, kidneys and gallbladder may also result not only because of the weakened immune system but the incompatibility of the drug with the female system as well. With testosterone or male hormone taking over the estrogen or female hormone levels, the reproductive system is similarly affected. The basic risk of contracting or acquiring infections with the needles used in injecting steroids is also a very real and immediate effect. These are the negative effects of steroids if used without any medical supervision.

Once women stop the use of steroids, the female body may not regained its original physique. Although there are steroids with either permanent or temporary effectiveness, all steroids pose lasting effects.

Over the years, steroids and steroids use have grabbed public attention and kept it to see the issue in the negative. There are reports of how sports athletes, bodybuilders, and even actors abuse steroids to improve their performance and competitive edge in their fields. There is also news about individuals dying out of the complications of using steroids. The side effects both to women and men who use steroids in different parts of their lives are also too familiar. These are not unfounded, of course. But steroids have more to offer users than to confuse genders or quicken death. Steroids are drugs, after all, and they were originally, and still are, intended to help people with certain medical conditions.

The basic function of steroids is to help the body to grow and develop as well as improve its strength and endurance. It is for these reasons that athletes and bodybuilders use them. It is for these general effects that steroids are used to treat such conditions as impotence, the degeneration of the body of AIDS patients, anemia, certain types of brain injuries and breast cancer and delayed puberty. The key idea here, however, is that the use is prescribed by the doctor. Being powerful substances, steroids are meant to be taken precisely and under regulation in order to avoid the negative effects the public is informed about. These same functions lie behind the abuse. Athletes and bodybuilders, for example, would take large doses of these steroids in order to gain the body size and form they want. But unregulated, these pose great risks and side-effects most of which hare irreversible.

Studies, however, continue to prove the importance of steroids. In 2000, for example, a study in Montreal concluded that steroids reduce the risks of dying from asthma. Led by Dr. Samy Suisa, a Professor of Epidemiology at McGill University, 30,569 asthma patients were observed and analyzed by a group of doctors and colleagues from the University. They found out that the regular use of corticosteroids decreased the risk of death while discontinued, inconsistent or irregular use seemed to increase it. Asthma patients who inhaled said steroids for more than six canisters every year and regularly, reached 50% reduced risk at death, while those that stopped taking the steroids added to the risk. The researchers thus emphasize the regularity of steroid use, for if the patient begins inhaling corticosteroids and yet discontinues it, it backfires to speed up the risk. Dr. Suissa further states that what such study also proved aside form the effectiveness of steroids at saving lives is the need for appropriate use.
The benefits of steroids are not limited to people with illnesses. Taking a second look at those who have used steroids for reasons other than their medical conditions, steroids can indeed improve the appearance, condition and performance of the body. Steroids use also generally causes one’s muscle mass to increase and be more defined, for the body to increase its strength, endurance, and sex drive. Users also generally become more motivated and confident, an offshoot of the physical effects. But these can turn ugly when the body cannot handle or does not need the steroids in the first place. – a fact knowable only when proper and legitimate medical advise is sought and heeded. The point is always to use steroids legally and with the proper prescription. Since these substances interfere with the body in and out, there is not gauging the particular effects its use may cause to a particular body, in addition to the general side effects that steroids users experience.