Performance Enhancing Risks

Discusses the effects of illegal performance enhancing drugs, including steroids.

This BMA report discusses the current situation regarding performance enhancing drugs as well as the effects of prescribed medication on sports people's performance. Written with expert advice, and rigorously reviewed by specialists, the report addresses the physician's role and responsibilities in this highly sensitive area. It will prove an invaluable guide for all doctors who are involved with the well being of sports people.

Anabolic steroids are powerful drugs that can increase strength and body weight quickly. They are illegal without a doctor's prescription and are banned from athletics. Steroid use puts athletes at risk of being thrown out of competition, and it can cause a multitude of health problems -- even death. Despite the dangers, many people -- both men and women -- use steroids to achieve an ideal body or success in sports. In Steroids, Sports, and Body Image: The Risks of Performance-Enhancing Drugs, author Judy Monroe describes what steroids are, how they work, and why people misuse them. She highlights the disastrous effects of steroid use and steps that have been taken to curb it. And she offers an alternative for young people -- drug-free training tips to help them achieve athletic success in a healthy way. Book jacket.

Doping, Performance-Enhancing Drugs, and Hormones in Sport: Mechanisms of Action and Methods of Detection examines the biochemistry and bioanalytical aspects of performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) and other questionable procedures used by athletes to enhance performance. The book informs the specialist of emerging knowledge and techniques and allows the non-specialist to grasp the underlying science and current practice of the discipline. With clear and compelling language appropriate for a broad spectrum of readers, this book provides background on prevalence, types of agents, their actual or supposed benefits, and their negative effects on health. The technical aspects of detection are discussed, followed by a discussion of why detection is a problematic and still-evolving science. To facilitate comprehension, each chapter is organized in a uniform way with six sections: (1) standard medical uses, (2) why the drugs are used by athletes, (3) biological mechanism of action, (4) what research says about efficacy in improving performance, (5) major health side effects from use and abuse in sport, and 6) concluding key points. Presents the scientific concepts of how performance enhancers work, how they are used, and how they are detected and masked from detection Features language that is neither simplistic to scientists nor too sophisticated for a large, diverse global audience Provides a short “close-up” in each chapter to illustrate key topics that engage, entertain, and create a novel synthesis of thought

This book presents a collection of works written by military researchers on the human performance research being carried out in the military. Human Performance Enhancement in High-Risk Environments: Insights, Developments, and Future Directions from Military Research takes the breakthrough work being done by the military on human performance issues and presents it in a way that is applicable to a wider audience of high-risk professions and industries, including police forces, fire fighters, the security industry, military contracting, and more. Human Performance Enhancement in High-Risk Environments focuses on selection, training, safety, and interface design—essential steps in the process of putting the right people in the right positions with the right equipment to handle dangerous work. The book's 16 chapters are each written by military experts, emphasizing lessons learned from their own experiences and research, while highlighting the relevance of their findings to other domains in which highly trained personnel operate complex machinery with high consequences of error.

This book is about gym culture, the pursuit of fit, muscular bodies and the use of drugs as a means to get there. Building on the international research literature and in-depth interviews with men who have experience of image and performance enhancing drugs (IPEDs), the book explores the fascination with muscles, motivations for using drugs to enhance them, assessments of risks, and experience of side effects. The book examines what the altered body does to the men’s identity, self-image and relationships with peers and partners. Taking an evolutionary psychological approach, it also investigates the biological and psychological foundations of the fascination with the muscular body and discusses the notion of precarious manhood. Building on these analyses the book considers the political and regulatory initiatives in place to prevent the use of IPEDs and assesses those strategies’ potential to reach their aims. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the issue of drugs in sport, the ethics of sport, sociology of sport, sociology of the body, masculinity or public health.

The book provides an in-depth discussion on the human nature concept from different perspectives and from different disciplines, analyzing its use in the doping debate and researching its normative overtones. The relation between natural talent and enhanced abilities is scrutinized within a proper conceptual and theoretical framework: is doping to be seen as a factor of the athlete’s dehumanization or is it a tool to fulfill his/her aspirations to go faster, higher and stronger? Which characteristics make sports such a peculiar subject of ethical discussion and what are the, both intrinsic and extrinsic, moral dangers and opportunities involved in athletic enhancement? This volume combines fundamental philosophical anthropological reflection with applied ethics and socio-cultural and empirical approaches. Furthermore guidelines will be presented to decision- and policy-makers on local, national and international levels. Zooming in on the intrinsic issue of what is valuable about our homo sapiens biological condition, this volume devotes only scant attention to the specific issue of natural talent and why such talent is appreciated so differently than biotechnological origins of ability. In addition, specific aspects of sports such as its competitive nature and its direct display of bodily prowess provide good reason to single out the issue of natural athletic talent for sustained ethical scrutiny.​

Over the past decade, the use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs by professional and amateur athletes at elite levels has made headlines in newspapers across the country--and beyond. Through objective discussion, numerous direct quotes, and full-color illustrations this title examines What Are the Origins of the Performance-Enhancing Drugs Controversy? Do Performance-Enhancing Drugs Put One's Health at Risk? Do Performance-Enhancing Drugs Harm the Integrity of Sports? Should Sports Organizations Take Stronger Measures To Stop Performance-Enhancing Drugs? How Can the Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs Be Prevented?