The relation between sports and steroids is well known. Be it baseball, cycling, athletics or some other sport, reading news about players using performance enhancing drugs is not new for many of us. We will be bringing out a three part article on steroids, what they exactly are, their legal and not so legal uses.

So what are steroids exactly ?

Wikipedia defines a steroid as a terpenoid lipid.

A lipid is a substance soluble in fat. Terpenoids are organic compounds caused by oxidation or rearranging of the carbon skeletons of terpenes ( chemical modification). Terpenoids are also known as isoprenoids, for terpenes are obtained by combination of several isoprene units (Molecular structure of isoprene is C5 H8).

Since I doubt that plants,fungii and insects are reading this article :P, I’ll ignore ecdysterone, phytosterols and ergosterols.

When the teenager on the street says he wants to use steroids, chances are that nine out of ten times, he is talking about anabolic steroids.

The word anabolic is Greek in origin, meaning ” to build up” . Anabolic steroids are used to build up muscle. They increase protein synthesis in cells. They were first developed in the late 1930’s to treat hypogonadism. Hypogonadism is a condition where the body does not produce sufficient testesterone. Anabolic steroids can be used to treat delayed puberty and other problems caused by lack of testesterone. They have androgenic properties.

The main reason for people wanting to buy steroids is the desire for a body described as “perfect “. When models get bodies to die for, people are willing to take steroids if it can do the same for them. Men, for reasons pretty obvious, tend to use them more than women.

In the next article, we will look at the medical and non medical uses of steroids.