Working out and being healthy is an important goal that we should all have. When people are doing their best to look and feel great they can approach the project in many ways. While working out in the gym, exercising constantly and caring for your health makes you strong and healthy sometimes taking things like steroids to help you build muscle fast can be detrimental to your hair health. Most steroids are analogs or direct copies of sex hormones that we naturally produce within our own bodies. These hormones play critical roles in things like muscle building, endurance and bone health. They also play key roles in maintaining hair growth and hair health. If you have been working out hoping to look and feel your best you may have come across advertisement of people selling these substances or know of people who use them. Many of them are illegal when used without medical supervision but because they provide such a significant benefit in strength training many people use them even without a good medical reason, and nearly 100% of these users suffer some significant side effect from the drug (Parkinson, 2006). Weather you yourself use these substances legally or not is not my place to judge. What I am here to do is to make clear that anabolic steroids may cause of baldness and hair loss. Anabolic steroids work within the body by interacting with steroid receptors within the cells they act on. These receptors are usually controlled by natural hormones that circulate in the body in times of stress or growth, when more energy is required within a person’s body. This happens naturally during puberty and when people stresses their body through increased exercise. It can be artificially induced by taking steroids via injection (or orally), which is where anabolic steroids come into play. They fool the body’s natural receptors into going into a high growth/high stress mode. Increasing strength, endurance and muscle growth more than you could get naturally. The same receptors that are targets of these steroids in muscle and bone are also targets in the cells that grow hair. But in hair follicles they respond in a very different manner. Instead of helping hair grow they cause male pattern baldness. They induce hair loss and diminish new hair growth (Wu, 1997). Many people have been trying to produce a perfect anabolic steroid, that will build the body but won’t have side effects but unfortunately no one has perfected one. Any and all anabolic steroids have been associated with hair loss. Do not fool yourself into thinking that these side effects are minor or that they will not impact you. Still, hair loss from anabolic steroids is not permanent, if you stop taking the steroids shortly after you notice the side effect of using it is hair loss, and before the follicles are damaged. There is no pill or medicine that can otherwise counteract the baldness associated with anabolic steroids although people have tried different topical creams like minoxidil and therapies like low level light therapy, the truth of the matter is that if you continue to flood your system with artificial hormones you will be fighting an uphill battle against baldness †and lose. Now, you may ask yourself how come Arnold Schwarzenegger and other body builders who used steroids didn’t lose hair †the answer is that these people has very low or no genetic sensitivity to DHT are are not exposed to pattern baldness in the first place. The thing is, that if you are sensitive in some low level †such usage may be a trigger to male patten baldness that would have been avoided or delayed in years rather then starting now. Unlike some other causes of baldness, hair loss from anabolic steroids is reversible if recognized early. In fact dermatologists are encouraged to consider anabolic steroid abuse in athletes with early or unexplained hair loss because this side effect is so common that it can be a quick, easy and reversible diagnostic cause of baldness (Scott, 1989). You can do yourself and your hair a favor by recognizing a bad thing early and stopping its use. Then you can take pro-active steps for your health and your good looks in an effort to regrow your hair. There are excellent treatments and products that have been shown to help regrow hair. Your hair needs your help, anabolic steroids can be poisonous to you body&hair, so be careful what you use in your quest to be the best you can be.
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