September 25th, 2008 → 6:10 pm @ Seth Mnookin // No Comments
A fascinating new study on steroid use found that…
…even years after steroid withdrawal—and with little or no current strength training—muscle fiber density and increased number of cell nuclei were comparable to drug-free athletes currently doing high-intensity strength-training. The additional cell nuclei could give a big advantage to former dopers—more nuclei means more protein synthesis, which means more muscle. So steroid use can still offer a competitive advantage years later. Which means that a clean ballplayer can still hit a dirty home run.
The implications of this are profound. There’s already very little incentive for an on-the-cusp player not to use: either he goes natural and doesn’t have an MLB career, juices and gets caught and doesn’t have a MLB career, or juices and doesn’t get caught and gets some time in the bigs. Now it looks like a worst case scenario for someone who decides to ‘roid up is getting caught, serving a suspension…and still benefiting for years to come.
Post Categories: Steroids
