Your Steroid Resource

Steroids equal bad — so spins the common thread, linking anabolic steroids to drug abuse, cheating, “’roid rage” and other ills such as testicular shrinkage. A new documentary aims to reveal that a number of common conceptions about steroids are misinformed.

Director Chris Bell was the runt of three boys, all obsessed with wrestling, Arnold Schwarzenegger and getting as big as possible. Bell, a bodybuilder and filmmaker as well as the only brother not to consistently engage in anabolic steroid use, decided to make a film about anabolic steroid use and the issues surrounding it.

“I think a lot of people thought athletes were achieving greatness on their own,” Bell said. “And they weren’t.”

The film encompasses controversies such as the 2005 Congressional hearings about steroid use, in which such athletes as Mark McGuire were grilled by Congress, and current VP hopeful Sen. Joe Biden’s work to outlaw certain performance-enhancing anabolic steroids. Bell said it was Biden’s declaration that anabolic steroid use was “un-American” that drove his documentary.

“There’s nothing un-American about it,” Bell said. “In my mind steroids aren’t a problem, they’re a side affect of being American. The problem can be defined more globally as a problem with society, this expectation that we need to be the best.”

The producers of the film — the same who financed Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 — convinced Bell to include his own family story, which serves as the heart of a film that is really about achieving the American ideal of being the best through whatever means necessary. The film poses such specific questions as why it is deemed acceptable for Tiger Woods to get LASIK surgery, giving him better-than-20/20 vision, or why training at high altitudes is fine, but performance enhancements such as steroids and blood doping are illegal.

It also dispels such myths as “’roid rage,” or heightened aggressiveness due to a higher testosterone level while using steroids — studies have proved inconclusive on the matter. Perhaps no argument the film makes is more compelling than that of deaths associated with anabolic steroids (a handful) versus those associated with alcohol and tobacco (hundreds of thousands).

The DVD’s deleted scenes also shed light on Olympic drug testing.

“We kind of define how the whole system is flawed, and we actually interview people who are involved,” Bell said. “I think people are naïve to think people are 100% drug free.”

Through controversial, Bigger, Stronger, Faster* was released to widespread acclaim, appearing at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival and as a Grand Jury Prize nominee for best documentary at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

“Some people do say it’s almost like a pro-steroid movie,” Bell said. “If people perceive it that way, that’s fine, but I look at it this way: I told the truth. Maybe steroids aren’t the demon people thought they were.

“Maybe it’s just that [after watching the film], you now have changed your mind. That’s the most powerful thing you can do with a film, is change somebody’s mind.”

Or could it be that steroids have a lasting effect?

New York Yankee Jason Giambi was a great power slugger while he was using steroids. After his admission, Giambi slumped for several years, before introducing a Burt-Reynolds-style, apparently all-powerful ’stache. But research presented at the American Physiological Society suggests Giambi, and others from the steroid era, could still be benefiting from their abuse years after their last dose.

Researchers from Sweden looked at power weightlifters that had stopped using anabolic steroids years before. The study found that while the drugs could no longer be detected, a physiological difference still existed that could benefit the athletes.

The study analyzed three groups of lifters: previous users who hadn’t used in years, current lifters who had never used, and current lifters who were still using. Muscle fiber distribution, fiber area, and a handful of other biological indicators were tested in the vastus lateralis muscle (quadriceps) and the trapezius muscle.

Despite ditching the needles and no longer lifting, the previous users had similar fiber area intensity and nuclei per fiber as that of the other groups.

According to the lead researcher, Dr. Eriksson, “It is possible that the high number of nuclei we found in the muscle might be beneficial for an athlete who continues or resumes strength training, because increased myonuclei opens up the possibility of increasing protein synthesis, which can lead to muscle mass.” He added, “Based on the characteristics between doped and non-doped power lifters, we conclude that a period of anabolic steroid usage is an advantage for a power lifter in competition, even several years after they stop taking a doping drug.”

Uh, but what about the mustache?

We previously noted that the San Diego Union-Tribune has assembled a comprehensive list of current and former NFL players who have been tied to performance-enhancing drugs.

Many of the players on the full list are well known for their exploits on the gridiron, but one name will be more familiar to fans of mixed martial arts than to fans of football: Bob Sapp, who as an offensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings in 1998 was suspended for four games for violating the NFL’s policy on steroids and related substances.

Sapp quit football and went into kickboxing and MMA in Japan, where he became one of the biggest stars in a country that celebrates fights that American fans would view as freak shows. (A picture from one such freak show is above.)

The presence of Sapp on the list of athletes tied to performance-enhancing drugs is a reminder that while the UFC and other MMA promotions in the United States have worked with state athletic commissions to implement drug testing, Japanese MMA doesn’t have the same standards.

The Arizona Department of Racing is investigating claims that trainers at Tucson Greyhound Park have been injecting racing dogs with steroids.

Meanwhile, the track’s management has questioned the timing of the complaint filed by Susan Via, who organized a dog protection initiative for the November ballot in South Tucson.

Steroids are used to keep female dogs from going into heat.

Only veterinarians are supposed to inject steroids into the dogs, but Via says she believes trainers have been supplying the steroids to all the dogs, male and female.

Via says that’s not only illegal, but it would also compromise the integrity of the sport.

The complaint was not filed against Tucson Greyhound Park, which neither owns the dogs nor is responsible for their care.

But the management there believes it is designed to draw negative attention to track at a time when it is facing the ballot initiative.

Now that the odious Barry Bonds is out of baseball, most likely for good (in every sense of the word), the bonds record of note these days are being set in the Treasury market. With virtually no fanfare, the 30-year “long bond” traded under a yield of 4% — a “3 handle,” in market parlance — for the first time since that maturity started to be offered regularly in 1977. The current long bond touched 3.91% at midmorning in New York as investors fled the stock market and latched onto the rally in Treasuries, but ticked up to 4.02% as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJI) moved into positive territory at midday. Grizzled market veterans who lived through the dark days of the early 1980s, when bonds were considered “certificates of confiscation” and the 30-year yield touched 15%, find such yield levels hard to believe. But yields on 20-year Treasuries hovered around 4% in the fall of 1961, when Roger Maris hit 61 homers, breaking Babe Ruth’s single-season home-run record of 60, and a mark that would stand until the steroid era of the 1990s. The low yield for 20-year Treasury bonds was touched in July, 1954, at 2.57%, baseball’s golden era when Willie, Mickey and the Duke patrolled center field in New York.