Bottom line - specifically what damage is done to
1) Kidneys
2) Heart/circulatory
3) Brain
From the use of oil and/or test?
And, which (if any) is Derek using? OR, is he just holding all that lumpy mass from kidneys not working?
I wish the guy the best with recovery, it's a seriously scary medical condition.
I'll take a shot at this...
Heart/Circulatory/Kidneys:
The use of certain steroids can lead to high blood pressure. The postulation behind this is that many steroids like that of Testosterone have a high tendency to convert to Estrogen. As a result, you have chronic increases in estrogen, which leads to sodium retention by your kidneys, which furthermore causes fluid retention (water is attracted to sodium). As a result of both sodium & fluid retention, your blood pressure increases as you have a fluid surplus (you're not necessarily hypervolemic).
Proof of this can be found in these studies:
http://ajpregu.physiology.org/content/early/2011/03/11/ajpregu.00020.2011http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16965722Now, how does high blood pressure effect the heart, brain and kidneys?
The straight forward answer is that with increased blood pressure, it becomes exponentially difficult for the heart to pump out blood at its normal pace. As a result, many patient develop what's called Left Ventricular Hypertrophy, which is when the heart muscles found the left lower portion of your heart (Left ventricle) increase in size. This leads to an increase in the size of the heart's muscle, but a decrease in the size of the left ventricle's chamber where blood is normally found prior to pumping out through the aorta to the rest of your body. Prolonged left ventricular hypertrophy can lead to heart failure. So, increased BP leads to Left ventricular Hypertrophy, which leads to heart failure.
How does elevated BP effect the brain (I will mention one simple way that also happens to be a dramatic one)?
Elevated Blood Pressure causes blood to be forced out of your heart and through your circulatory system at an elevated rate which places much stress on your arterial and venous circulation. Many times, we have plaque that has formed on various parts of your circulatory system (many times in the limbs). If the Blood Pressure is high enough and the force placed on those small pieces of plaque along the way is strong enough, then the plaque will often times become displaced and that little floating piece of plaque (or emboli), now can travel up to your brain, where it can become stuck within one of the blood vessels of the brain, causing an occlusion, which then leads to a
STROKE.
Bringing it back to the heart for a second... If and when the emboli doesn't get to the brain, but instead gets to the heart and causes an occlusion in the coronary arteries, that is when you will potentially have what is known as a myocardial infarct (or heart attack).
Lastly, how does it affect the kidneys?
Well, considering that steroids are known to cause elevated blood pressure, now you can rationally see that added stress on the blood vessels within the kidneys can cause chronic stress on the kidneys, which makes them work harder and over time leads to renal failure.
As a matter of fact, elevated blood pressure is one of the leading causes of both Kidney Failure and End Stage Renal Disease.
Proof of that can be found here:
United States Renal Data System. USRDS 2007 Annual Data Report. Bethesda, MD: National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2007.Let me know if you want me to expand on any of this 240. Except for the references used, everything else was off the top of my head..
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P.S. I wanted to show one way in which steroids can compromise the heart, brain and kidneys by way of elevated Blood Pressure, but there are also other studies that suggest that steroid use increases cholesterol levels. Increased cholesterol can lead to elevated blood pressure. Increased cholesterol can also lead to plaque formation throughout the body, which can subsequently lead to strokes and heart attacks. Increased cholesterol can also lead to other problems with the liver, but you get the idea.
