Taking IPEDs and AASs can have a significant impact on your health as well as your hormone balance. Making sure that you are monitoring your health and hormones, and taking action if you can see that your results are becoming unhealthy is an important part of reducing the harmful effects of AAS use.
Our Sports Performance range of blood tests was designed with athletes and IPED users in mind - we offer them with the aim of keeping you safe. They all check for important markers of health that can be negatively impacted by IPED use.
Important health measures include:
Red blood cells: taking anabolic steroids can cause you to produce more red blood cells making your blood thicker and more prone to clotting. This raises your risk of heart attack and stroke.
Liver function: liver inflammation is commonly seen, especially if steroids are taken orally. Inflammation causes liver enzymes to leak into the blood where they can be measured. Please be aware that steroid use can be causing liver damage even before your enzymes are elevated.
Kidney function: although there may be no direct effect on the kidneys, elevated blood pressure (which is commonly seen with IPED use) can cause kidney damage. The combination of steroid use and high protein intake can also put pressure on kidney function.
Cholesterol: taking steroids can increase your LDL (bad) cholesterol and markedly reduce your HDL (protective) cholesterol. This increases your risk of cardiovascular disease.
Hormones: depending on whether you are on or off cycle, your testosterone levels can fluctuate wildly. It is extremely common for steroid users to have supra-normal levels of testosterone, even above the range that many laboratories will test for. All our sports hormone checks will dilute any testosterone result over 52 nmol/L to get an accurate reading. Other hormones which are also affected by IPED use include oestradiol, prolactin, FSH and LH. Your hormones can affect not only your physical appearance but also your mood, libido and your fertility.
Please give our doctors as much information as you can so that they can offer the best advice. You will be given the opportunity to do this in "supporting information" in the results portal before you take your test. Please note that we will not offer any advice about protocol - our tests are intended to highlight when you are causing harm to yourself.
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