Performance Enhancing Drugs Podcast

Performance enhancing drugs and their effects on the next generation are discussed in this podcast. The speakers, Brian and Jason Arndt, share their personal encounters with these drugs and the harmful side effects they can cause. They also mention the steps taken by organizations like the NCAA to reduce PED use, but note that the overall usage in the United States is still high. They emphasize the need for education about the side effects among coaches, parents, and students. They also highlight the issue of drug use in the bodybuilding profession and advocate for achieving desired physiques through natural and healthy means. Welcome everyone, thank you for being with us here today as we'll be discussing performance enhancing drugs and the effects they can have on the next generation. I'm joined today by my older brother and current teammate Jason Arndt. Hey Brian, it's great to be here, I really appreciate the invitation to come and be a part of this podcast. Of course. So as baseball players for UNCW we have first hand experiences with these drugs over the years and we have a fair share of advice to adolescent athletes, parents and coaches to help protect the next generation. First I'd like to talk about encounters that I have personally with performance enhancing drugs. My first encounter with these drugs was when I was in 8th grade after a middle school football practice. A teammate's older brother came to pick us up, he was a football player at our local high school and he convinced us that to get stronger we needed to go on a trend cycle. He explained how most of the high school players use these drugs to build muscle quicker. After some research I found from the Daily Collagen that Trenbolone is an anabolic steroid that was designed to be used on cattle to beat them up for market sales. I've also been introduced to some drugs more recently, I played baseball at a community college in North Carolina the last couple of years and through those two years I've met a lot of kids in junior college baseball they don't test for steroid use throughout the association and that allows a lot of student athletes to use them and so throughout my time I've played against and played with a lot of guys who decided it was smart for them to use it and I've learned the effects and I've learned a lot of the benefits that they give as well. We have both witnessed in recent months at our local gym some athletes that have grown in the past year in a way that could not be achieved naturally. These amateur bodybuilders have gained nearly 60 pounds of pure muscle in under nine months. It seems enticing but most people don't see the harmful side effects that it can cause. Exactly, most people overlook or are uneducated about the side effects that these drugs have. Dr. Jonathan Finoff and Dr. McKenna Thurston in the Sports Med Today Journal lay out the harmful and long-lasting side effects of regular heart rhythm, elevated blood pressure, heart attack, insomnia, depression, aggressive behavior, suicide, addiction, stroke, infertility, low sex drive and cancer that can come from taking these drugs, it's a lot. So since we mentioned the NCAA let's talk about that. The NCAA takes drug testing very seriously in the past few years and I personally believe that the NCAA has taken the necessary steps to reduce the amount of PED use in D1 and D2 sports. Professional sports organizations have also taken steps to reduce the usage of PEDs, however there's still a rising number of suspected users and abusers in professional sports. Recent studies from the Journal of Addictive Diseases have shown that these steps have not knocked down the overall use of these drugs in the entire population of the United States. Part of what I've noticed is a lot of these cycles that people take are allowed to be out of your system in a shorter amount of time than they used to, so kids are more enticed to take them and have that cycle be cleared out of their system before their drug test. Exactly, what needs to be done is the side effects of these drugs need to be taught a high school coaches, parents, and adolescent students in physical education classes. I remember for personal experience in my physical education class in high school that these were taught but they weren't really frowned upon and they weren't covered in depth. The main issue that needs to be addressed is in the bodybuilding profession. Weightlifters and bodybuilders make up the majority of the users in the U.S. and this trend needs to change. The trend of cheating to achieve a certain physique needs to be frowned upon. Working for a desired physique the natural and healthy way should be the moral and correct way to go about weightlifting. Well thank you again Jason for being with us here today and helping the next generation for making unhealthy and dangerous decisions. Of course, it was great to be a part of this podcast. Well that'll do it for this episode, I hope each of you have a fantastic rest of your day. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next time.