This is how many years steroids cut off your life

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

00:44 Do steroid users live longer than the general population?

01:33 Former Sweedish athletes from 1960-1979 period

03:42 Lower mortality rates after the period of usage

04:48 Conclusion

Transcript:

Steroids, or to be precise, anabolic androgenic steroids are bad for you. Nobody disputes that. However, how bad are they exactly? Are we talking one steroid cycle is going to cut your life short by ten years or are we talking after a couple of years of using, maybe there will be permanent damage? There are, of course, big differences between those things. But it’s hard to get objective, unbiased information about this because if you listen to mainstream channels, they’re basically going to say that if you don’t die next week, you are certainly going to hell and other people, bodybuilders, they just rather not really think about it. By looking at scientific data, what are we talking about here? How many years of your life will you lose?

A new scientific review argues that steroid users actually still live longer than non steroid users. That’s because when you look at the top athletes, it seems that the exercise and the better nutrition compensate for the health risks from using steroids. Specifically Morrison found that elite athletes that are most likely doping live longer than the general population and they live longer than their siblings. The last part is particularly interesting because it controls in significant part for genetic influences. Morrison goes as far as to argue that most early deaths from steroid use are due to the abuse of steroids and the use of black market compounds, which often do not contain exactly what’s on the label, to put it mildly. Now, these data are fraught with limitations because we don’t know exactly who used steroids and for how long did they used it, what did they use, etc..

However, one particularly interesting study that he looks at is by Lindqvist et al. from Sweden, I’m probably butchering that name… These researchers looked at the mortality rates of elite athletes in Sweden. Specifically they looked at former Swedish male elite athletes in wrestling, powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting and track and field throwing, so mostly strength athletes and power athletes, in the period of 1960 to 1979. During this period steroid use was absolutely rampant in power and strength sports. In the 1950s, early 1950s, Germans and the Soviets kind of discovered the magic of steroids for especially Olympic weightlifting, which was an extremely popular sport at the time compared to, say, powerlifting bodybuilding and the like. And since then it was very normal, like kind of like supplement uses today to use steroids.

Dangers were not so well known, it was legal in Sweden, it I think they were the first country actually in most developed countries or even the world that criminalized the recreational usage of steroids. So this was way, way before that. And it was only in 1975 that steroid use was banned at the Olympics that it became well known that it was a medical problem and that it was also considered problem for the sport. So in this period, again, 1960-1979, especially up until 1975, we can assume that most of these guys were probably using a little something. So how did these guys fare in life? In the following graph, you can see the yearly incidence of death according to age among the athletes and the general Swedish male population. Basically comparing the elite athletes with just gen pop. You can see that from about 20 to 50, the mortality rate was a little bit higher in the elite athletes. Interestingly, the study did clarify that a significant part of this was due to suicides.

The competitive pressures from competing were actually so high that the rate of suicides was remarkably higher in the athletes than in the general population. However, the most prominent cause of death was cardiovascular disease, which we know is strongly influenced by androgenic anabolic steroids. Steroids that increase your blood pressure, they mess up your cholesterol profile, they can enlarge the heart. There are numerous ways in which steroids can have negative cardiovascular consequences. So it makes sense that the mortality rate is indeed higher when they are using them. Interestingly, though, after the period of usage, or we can assume that most of those guys retire to this point after age 50, you can see that the mortality rate was actually lower in the elite athletes, and than in the general population. So it would seem that, yes, there is an increased risk while you’re using the steroids, but afterwards in life, the presumably healthier lifestyle of these athletes was enough to offset these negative effects in the long term. And even make them still live longer than the general population.

However, it’s worth keeping in mind that even though steroid usage was very popular at this time, the dosages used were not remotely comparable to to today’s bodybuilders and elite athletes. It was relatively benign, short term cycling, not full blown blasting for years on end. So another way of looking at these results is to say that even recreational sporadic use for some ten years of your life while you’re competing in elite sports and living a generally very healthy lifestyle is enough to pretty much offset all of the health benefits you’re getting from having a healthier lifestyle, better nutrition, better exercise for almost the rest of your life.

So in that sense, how bad exactly is steroid use? Well, I suppose that’s up to you. My goal in this video is simply to provide you with unbiased, objective information about exactly what kind of health repercussions you could expect from a level of steroid usage that these guys at least were using. then it’s up to you what you do with that knowledge. If you’re interested in more of this evidence based, unbiased fitness content I’d be honored if you like and subscribe.