Steroids & Heart Attacks

First off, I am all for steroid use.

I do have a question though, if its been proven that HRT programs and controlled steriod use (even lots of cases of abuse) are healthy and benefitial… why is it that a greater percentage of BBR’s have heart attacks and kidney failure.

Is there a “line” that they cross at some point?
Is it the massive amount of weight fluxuations, cutting/bulking/contest depletion?

Just throwing this out there, I am genuinely interested in the responses.

Regards,
mp

i dont know if this is helpfull with your question but i do know that several years ago when i first started takin test. enanthate. about 6 months afterwards my blood pressure went sky high. i went to a doctor and told him the truth, he gave me medicine to lower my blood pressure and i took it for about 4 months straight. i quit takin it and was fine so now i just take it when my blood pressure goes up. usually ill get a headache or my eyes will hurt and i can tell that its up.

Are you sure that BB’s have higher heart attack ratios than others? For example, heart disease runs in my family and I am the first BB in the family. My mother, grandfather, and his father all had heart attacks. I’m not entirely sold on the argument that BB’s will have higher chances of heart disease just because.

[quote]TrainerinDC wrote:
Are you sure that BB’s have higher heart attack ratios than others? For example, heart disease runs in my family and I am the first BB in the family. My mother, grandfather, and his father all had heart attacks. I’m not entirely sold on the argument that BB’s will have higher chances of heart disease just because. [/quote]

I am not entirely sure on the ratio, i am going purely by my perception based on my observations.
Of course, media, internet and the like always blow stats out. Im going mostly by the amount of statements I see on boards like, “So and so was HUGE, too bad he died at 39 from a heart attack” and I do see this on a considerable amount of posts.

The kidney stuff is a given, I believe its the synthetics that give kidney problems, again, looking for more info from those vets who know.

Regards,
mp

case in point paul demayo died at age 39 i think. maybe younger not to long ago. the thing you have to remember is alot of these elites are taking more then steroids e.g. coke,heroin,pot,pain killers, x to name a few. and they take them in great amounts. i dont believe roids are anywhere near 100% safe but some people can manage if they take care of their livers( and not over stress them by combining agents like excessive drinking while on juice)and know how or what to take. one thing to remember is the hearts a muscle also and its going to grow while on a cycle/ an enlarged hart is also known as a defect in some people it most often is the cause of early death.

I will answer this for you.

Steroids do not cause heart disease.

Steroids can cause elevated ldl (bad cholestorol) which can lead to artheriosclerosis, and heart disease.

This by itself is a risk factor, but the is culminated by gentically inherited risks, i.e. did your father have heart disease? did he die of an MI before 65 y.o.?

Now most BB these days do not eat good food, year round. Bodybuilders these days typically have weight shifts of up to 80 lbs in the off season. - that is a lot of food, and all that stored fat, when it is burned off, has to be reabsorbed back from the fat cell, into the blood stream, then utilized as energy.

Now if you can imagine that some of this ends up lining the blood vessels twice over, and going through the kidneys, e.t.c, this isn’t a very healthy thing to be doing on a regular basis!

The other unhealthy practice of BB is the binging post contest - where rapid weight gain occurs.

Most of this is water weight, that is sucked interstitially due to negative oncotic pressure in the blood (that is to say the body has become used to a certain body mass and has adjusted the amount of protein in the blood to achieve a balance in simple diffusion) the influx of calories increase solute interstitially well over solute intervascularly thereby pulling water with it.

This ends up spilling back ward a bit into the intervascular space further complicating things by increasing myocardial stretching of the right side of the heart - which can damage the elastisity of the heart (starlings rule) decreasing ejection fractions by as much as 20%!

Basically this practice isn’t healthy!

Now of course the additions of GH, and insulin, igf-1 e.t.c. don’t help matters by further increasing the cardiac problems, as an overly large heart loses it’s ability to properly contract the left ventrical fully, further decreasing ejection fraction, yet, because the heart is larger, demand for oxygen is greater, yet supply is less due to the decrease in cardiac output and ejection fraction.

Now add to this the arteriosclerosis, (narrowing of the coronary arteries that supply the heart with blood) and you see we have a big problem just waiting to happen!

As for kidney damage, well the overuse of diuretics in the sport can’t have helped things, I know Flex Wheeler probably injured his kidneys way worse from his automobile accident, as trama causes the release of myoglobin from the musculature, which ends up clogging the tubules, and nephrons in the kidneys, causing permament damage.

This probably was the beggining of his problems, which were made worse by his abuse of diuretics, and other drugs.

Kidneys are also tied directly to cardiac health as well.

So the moral of the story, is, watch your cholestorol levels closely, eat clean, don’t binge - especially after a contest, -no large shifts in weight in the off season, avoid 17-AA steroids which are the worst effectors of lipid levels, and GH and insulin.

Get a stress test by the time you turn 35, and then every 5 years thereafter.

Now this is something the mr HOOKER wouldn’t tell you :slight_smile: