What Separates Illegal Steroid Usage from Testosterone Replacement Therapy? The 1970s is considered by many to be the golden era of bodybuilding, and the birth of the modern-day weight lifter and with that came to the rise of performance-enhancing drugs (PED’s). In short, with advances in the field of exercise and PED’s, we went from this guy in the 1950s…
…to this guy in the 1970s.
Now we are moving into an era where some in the medical community is realizing testosterone replacement may not be unhealthy. An even smaller minority in the same community realizes it may in fact be truly healthy (we include ourselves in the latter group). However, what is the difference between illegal steroid use and testosterone replacement therapy?
When the average person thinks of using testosterone, they immediately conjure up images of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou Ferrigno (the Hulk) or men and women so bulked up they almost look cartoon-like. This is not the average person’s goal with testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) and there are huge differences between illegal steroid use and testosterone replacement therapy.
First, normal testosterone levels in men are approximately between 300 and 800 and in women between 20 and 70. As we age, our testosterone levels decline. Testosterone replacement therapy is meant to boost your testosterone level to what it was when you were in your 20’s or early 30’s and admittedly, we will get men and women higher than what lab values would call “normal.” Our sole purpose is to optimize hormones to a level that is safe and improves quality of life. However, we never get testosterone levels as high as those who abuse it. The highest testosterone level I have ever recorded on myself is probably 2,000. Weight lifters go up to 6,000 or even higher.
Next, and probably one of the most important differences is when we do TRT we only use bioidentical hormones that are biochemically exactly what your own body produces. Those who abuse anabolic steroids will occasionally employ testosterone, but along with other steroids that are not only foreign to humans, some were produced for use in horses and animals. Winstrol, for example, is a commonly discussed steroid among the body-building community but is only approved for use in veterinary medicine and currently used as a performance-enhancing drug in racehorses. If the famous study entitled, The Women’s Health Initiative (I’ll be writing an article dedicated specifically to the Women’s Health Initiative in the near future) taught us anything, it taught us foreign non-bioidentical substances can be harmful.
Illegal steroid users also manage estrogen differently. They will often use medications like Arimidex in an attempt to drive their testosterone levels even higher. In the human body, an enzyme called aromatase will charge a percentage of testosterone to estrogen. Arimidex blocks the aromatase enzyme preventing testosterone from being changed to estrogen. From a pure health standpoint, this is never a good idea. Estrogen is your friend when it comes to cardiac protection and has favorable effects on cholesterol. If estrogen is allowed to slowly creep up in men, it has incredible beneficial cardiac effects and no, they won’t make you grow man boobs. Like most hormones, if changes occur too fast then symptoms may occur so we try to limit a rapid rise of estrogen but never block it permanently. There are other differences but for the sake of brevity, I’ll stop here. I think you get the point though. My hope is we continue to shift into an era where men and women live healthier into their 60’s while maintain physiques looking decades younger.
As always, email me with questions or comments info@liveyoungspa.com or message me on FB. My next article will be geared toward endurance athletes and specifically, I’ll be discussing hematocrit and hemoglobin levels and how your blood level can beneficially or negatively affect performance.
NB – In the interest of not getting pummeled by men who are bigger than me, please let it be known, I am big fans of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lou Ferrigno and have no idea whether either of them ever used PED’s. I still refer to Schwarzenegger’s book on weight lifting occasionally.
