When the average person hears the word steroids, the first association besides Arnold Schwarzenegger and Barry Bonds is death. For some reason, the media have convinced people that steroids are actually super deadly and can kill you in a heartbeat.
Steroids can indeed cause death. They can severely damage your heart, liver, kidneys and other organs that we need to exist. Many bodybuilders have passed away due to kidney failure and heart attacks.
However, most of the individuals who suffer from those lethal consequences are professional bodybuilders who take grams of gear for decades in order to compete in the most prestigious bodybuilding competitions such as Mr.Olympia and Arnold Classic.
Last year, the popular bodybuilder Nasser El Sonbaty died from kidney failure. He was one of the biggest bodybuilders weighing about 280lbs. Even after his retirement, he decided to keep a lot of his size and continued to take large doses of steroids.
And yet steroids have a good side too. After all, they were designed to improve the quality of life of those who need them. Steroids have almost miraculous properties and can reverse a lot of harmful processes.
For example, many muscular guys who have already closed the younger part of their lives take steroids to maintain their looks and keep drinking from the fountain of youth. A good example would be Dave Goodin and YouTube’s favorite fitness guru Scooby Werkstatt. Both are old men who rely on anabolic steroids to remain young.
Many studies have shown that steroids are on the lower part of the list when it comes to causes of death. That’s not unexpected because besides bodybuilders and strength athletes very few people actually take dangerous doses.
Ultimately, steroids are nothing more than drugs which can be both helpful and harmful depending on how you use them. In general, people should stay away from steroids unless they need them for medical reasons. Looking good for the beach may be seductive, but destroying your health seems like a high price to pay.
In brief, steroids can kill you or damage your health when used improperly.
Anabolic steroids were more deadly in the ’80s. The World’s Strongest Man competition was shown on TV, and I remember one year at the end, after the credits, they had an obituary for 2 or 3 of the actual competitors LOL! Not sure why – I guess the ’80s was the era that really pushed the doses up to the max, and subsequent eras have learnt from it, and have better drugs.
Flo Jo died aged 38, just 9 years after her premature retirement, aged 29, and her 1988 100M record will never be broken – although that’s largely due to her fat husband standing in front of the anemometer to give a 0 m/s wind reading during a gale which blew her down the track.