Pumped

I don’t know if this picture is real or a Photoshop creation. But either way it is disturbing. (I’ll bet a dime to a dollar that faithful reader Howard Hughes believes the pic is a fake.)

I began to wonder about the tactics and idealism behind the "sport" of extreme bodybuilding. It doesn’t take many google minutes (small g) to find much more than anecdotal evidence that the mindset and ego required to obtain such huge muscle mass may be a bit compulsive. Just one of the many “black market” drugs these guys take is profiled below.

“Serostim - I was in a health food store in Venice Beach California just a few weeks ago and a young man who visibly had some weight training experience asked the rag-top clad bodybuilder behind the counter if he could buy some Serostim. Has it gone so far that those in search of muscle now believe they can walk into a store and buy drugs as simply as they'd buy protein powder? I had to find out. I asked the drug wanting customer if he had ever used Serostim. He told me he hadn't, but his buddy in New York just won a bodybuilding show and said he packed on 20 pounds of muscle using Serostim. Did he even know what this compound was? I had to ask. His response was, "well, it's legal because of the laws for AIDS patients and it's more powerful than steroids." That illustrated for me the plight of half educated consumers combing the borders of the black market to buy drugs they don't really understand.

Serostim is synthetic GH. Growth Hormone. Growth Hormone is produced by the pituitary gland and is actively involved in the endocrine chain in order to facilitate the natural process of tissue growth. At first, for therapeutic purposes, specifically to help repair the flawed endocrine systems in those who were diagnosed with dwarfism, Human Growth Hormone (HGH) was extracted from the pituitary glands of cadavers. With time, the drug companies Eli Lilly, Genetech, and Serono pharmaceuticals, developed synthetic GH compounds that act as the therapeutic equivalent of HGH. All drugs are developed with therapeutic intents, but when abuse, overuse, and risk rival the potential benefits of the drug being distributed, stringent controls are necessary. Clinics began to emerge where GH testing of adults was used as the justification for very expensive dispensing of pharmaceutical GH products under the premise of hormonal replacement, but it was only when Serostim was approved for AIDs patients that the black market went GH crazy.”