How steroids affect muscle growth and performance

What is the most difficult thing to do in sports? Many fans and journalists say it’s hitting a home run in baseball. It isn’t so hard for everyone though- Barry Bonds racked up 762 of them across his MLB career, setting the record for the most home runs ever hit. But what fans also remember are the allegations that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs to gain a step on the competition. But how much of his success should really be attributed to steroids?

The type of steroids taken by Bonds and other athletes are known as anabolic androgenic steroids, which are drugs derived from testosterone. Testosterone, a natural hormone produced in our bodies, is one of the main contributors to human growth development, and more specifically, the growth and reduction of biological tissues. While users of anabolic steroids have long preached the muscle-enhancing effects of these drugs, their effectiveness had previously been doubted due to a lack of concrete evidence and understanding of how they did so.

Many early studies were deemed inconclusive, in large part due to experimental design flaws such as non-regimented diets and exercise plans. These errors were eventually fixed, and with the rise of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, which allowed for more precise measurements of changes in muscle composition, studies have been done that more conclusively observe a connection between muscle growth/strength and anabolic steroids.