With over three million Americans having used steroids, the desire to bulk up is strong.
But what even happens to your body when you take steroids and are there major risks to performance-enhancing drugs?
Every time you pump a weight at the gym, your muscles experience damage, but the body recovers by forming new muscle protein strands to repair the muscle fibers.
Over time these strands increase in thickness and number and ultimately if muscle protein synthesis is greater than muscle protein breakdown your muscles will grow.
The degree of growth is largely regulated by testosterone, which increases protein synthesis.
It's why, generally, men have larger muscle mass than women as they have higher levels of testosterone.
Now steroids are any compound with a specific 4-carbon ring structure, so the term steroid actually includes some chemicals that can be used to treat fever and headaches and even sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone.
But the type of steroid we'll be looking at actually mimic natural testosterone with the intention to enhance performance and are used by more than 15% of gym-goers.
Within a single day of taking steroids, the expression of your genes will begin to change.
Steroids easily enter your cells and bind to the androgen receptor.
