Pumping Supplements: Bodybuilders Face New Limits As `Andro,' Other Prohormones Join Steroids As Controlled Substances
January 18, 2005
By JOHN JURGENSEN
The capsules are advertised with a warning.
"Caution: HUGE gains, BIG bodies, and ULTIMATE power may result!"
It's a claim that any weightlifter gets accustomed to. But in the case of this product - 4-androstenediol - and others like it for sale on bodybuilding.com, the results are apparently real enough to make them the most popular and controversial muscle builders this side of anabolic steroids.
Because of the reported effects (and side effects) of this family of sports supplements, Paul Carson doesn't stock them beside the energy bars and tubs of protein powder for sale at his Powerhouse Gym.
"It's not vitamin C. It's an aggressive supplement," said Carson, co-owner of the Berlin fitness center.
But he's not one to preach to his members. "It's not a product I believe in, but I'll get it for you. ... If you're 21, if you're healthy, I'll sell it to you."
Within the week, however, Carson won't have to make that judgment call. As of Thursday, the supplements he has occasionally sold on the side will be considered illegal without a prescription under federal legislation signed into law last October by President Bush. A response to the doping scandal that has enveloped professional sports in recent years, the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 widens the scope of the law passed in 1991 to list steroids as controlled substances.
The result of the new law so far has been a shopping rush on the soon-to-be-outlawed capsules, creams and sprays as proponents stock up and manufacturers unload their supplies.
The supplements in question are called prohormones. Also known as steroid precursors, they're a chemical step away from human hormones. As the body breaks down these compounds, they get converted into testosterone, which manufacturers say builds muscles.
Mainstream America's first introduction to prohormones came in 1998, when home run phenomenon Mark McGwire said he recovered from weightlifting sessions by using androstenedione. "Andro," the term that tends to stand for all prohormones, was banned by Major League Baseball last year. People who don't know a nitric oxide gel from a glutamine powder may lump andro into the same category as creatine, another supplement McGwire used. But creatine, which is said to supply energy and hasten weight gain, will remain on the shelves after this week.
"The side effects of creatine are minuscule compared to andro," said Dr. Carl Nissen, an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Connecticut Health Center who has studied the use of sports supplements among the state's high school athletes.
No clinical studies have been conducted to monitor the long-term health impact of andro. But even fans of the supplement swap information about its potential side effects, which mirror those from steroid abuse. Although doctors regularly prescribe steroids for other medical purposes, men who use them to bulk up tamper with their hormone levels, which can result in acne, enlarged breasts, premature baldness and a swollen prostate.
Nissen cites such alarming symptoms when he confronts athletes he suspects of using harmful performance enhancers. "I tell them their [testicles] are going to shrink. That usually gets them to pay attention," he said.
But Nick, 21, who occasionally incorporates andro into his workout regimen, says he hasn't experienced any such thing. "I don't use it a lot, so I don't see it as having any adverse effect," he said in a telephone interview in which he would not reveal his last name. "Sometimes I'd feel aggressive or edgy during the day, but it's not like you feel completely different."
In advance of the ban, Nick recently bought a 180-capsule supply of andro online for $80. The results, he said, can be measured in both muscle and motivation.
"You can see a better pump when you work out ... at the end of two or three weeks, I put on about 5 pounds of pretty solid muscle," he said, adding that "it's also a mental thing. Every once in a while you get bored and need something to motivate you to work harder."
For long-term lifters, this quest for the next level poses a constant challenge. It fills the pages of magazines like Flex and Muscular Development, and it fuels the $19.8 billion nutritional-supplement industry, of which sports nutrition products (including andro) account for nearly $2 billion, according to the Nutrition Business Journal.
Hence the hoarding of andro.
"We're sold out of everything right now," said Wayne Gomes, a sales manager for Dynamic Marketing, a supplement warehouse in Rhode Island. "Nobody [on the supply side] wants to get stuck with it. This is illegal to possess. We can't have it on our shelves."
There were only about a dozen prohormone products in Dynamic Marketing's catalog of 2,000 items, Gomes said, but they were some of the most popular and profitable.
"They were products that worked," said Gomes. He has tried andro and says it's silly to put it in the same league with steroids, as the new law does. "We're talking about comparing a Maserati to a Yugo."
That's one reason, said Rick Collins, an attorney who specializes in defending steroid cases, that the government is taking the wrong approach by banning andro outright. The ban will only create a black market for andro products from China, India and elsewhere, Collins said.
"I don't think those products ever should have been available to high school athletes. But I think mature adults who are informed of all risks should have the freedom to make their own choices," he said.
Tom and April Ciaffaglione eventually decided against andro. Ultimately, its costs (physical and monetary) outweighed its benefits.
"At $40 a bottle, I probably might have been better off buying more steak and chicken," said Tom, 28, who has become an apostle of a more old-fashioned approach to muscle gain, including a high-protein diet. He often consumes a dozen eggs for breakfast.
On a shelf in the Bristol apartment where the couple and their two daughters live stand a pair of muscled bronze bulldogs. These are first-place trophies the couple brought home from their first strongman competition in 2003. More concerned with power than appearance, strongman competitors can sometimes be seen on television stacking boulders, hurling tires and pulling trucks in a sort of decathlon of brute strength.
The Ciaffagliones are putting their muscle - Tom bench-presses almost 500 pounds, April 200 - into organizing Connecticut's first strongman event, an amateur contest to be held March 19 in New Haven to benefit the Connecticut Children's Medical Center.
Tom, a chemical engineer who works for a cosmetics company, has an encyclopedic knowledge of performance enhancers. He uses a kit to make capsules at home out of a white powder said to boost brain power.
But this willingness to experiment almost killed him in college after he drank a glass of water with a few grams of dinitrophenol dissolved in it. DNP, which is also used in photochemicals and explosives, had been talked up in weightlifting circles as a fat burner. It burned so much fat on Tom's body that his temperature shot up to critical levels, landing him in the hospital for a week, where he says a priest read him his last rites.
"After that I watched what I took," he said.
The Ciaffagliones experimented briefly with andro, spraying it on their bodies before workouts. They agree that it temporarily helped them pump up and served as an incentive to trudge down the stairs to their weight room in the garage.
But Tom wasn't won over by the results. And April had her own reasons for dropping the testosterone trigger.
"It would tend to cause hair to grow where I sprayed it, and I did not want to be a hairy-backed female," said April, 29. "Not knowing the long-term effects of using it scares me enough to stay away from it. People talk about the chance of kidney failure and cancer. I say, no, thank you. I have kids to take care of."
When it comes to andro - and other shortcuts to strength - the biggest concern is their use by teenagers who may not have the maturity or patience to make such rational decisions.
The drug policy at Southington High School, for example, requires counseling and a two-week suspension from sports for any athlete caught using illegal substances such as alcohol or steroids. After Thursday, presumably andro will be added to that list. But until now, coaches could only try to persuade athletes not to use it, said Jude Kelly, head coach of the football team.
"As far as some of the other [supplements], all we can do is discourage the use of things that aren't natural," said Kelly. "But there's a gray area. Where do you draw the line? At what point is it too much? That's why you have to stick to the basics."
