What Are Steroids And How Do They Work To Help Building Muscle Mass

Imagine if you could get a super power to pump more and build your muscle mass easily.

We will examine here if anabolic steroids are the answers to your prayers. You will learn how steroids work and what benefits they can provide.

As you probably already know anabolic steroids have many nasty side effects, that’s why I will present you some alternative options so you can decide how you can get your desired results.

Look around your peer group and it’s highly likely that one of your friends would be taking steroids for his/her asthma condition.

Or perhaps you’d have a relative who denies using them, but his quickly-achieved ripped physique and frequent flare-ups tell all!

Newspapers regularly feature stories of famous athletes getting caught using them or denying having used them at all!

It wasn’t too long ago that Lance Armstrong was stripped of all his titles because of steroids use. So, what exactly are steroids and how do they work?

Check these Safe and Legal Steroids Alternatives:

Table of Contents

What are Steroids?

Steroids are essentially synthetic hormones designed with the purpose of treating medical ailments. They are available in two major varieties:

Anabolic steroids

Anabolic steroids are synthetically derived from the human hormone called testosterone. These are the steroid-type we hear about the most.

Anabolic steroids function like the male sex hormones and you can see doctors prescribing them pretty commonly to patients suffering from problems like delayed puberty, muscle-loss due to AIDS and cancer etc.

However, these steroids are often used illegally by athletes to gain an undue advantage on the field.

By constantly increasing the testosterone levels inside your body, you create an efficient and feasible environment for continuous muscle-growth.

All this extra testosterone also improves the muscles’ recovery period, implying that you can break down and rebuild muscles (through training) more frequently and efficiently.

Corticosteroids

These are synthetic (man-made) drugs which are quite like cortisol, a hormone naturally produced by our adrenal glands.

Corticosteroids are comparatively less controversial steroids as they don’t contribute to muscle building.

You’d find them being used in the treatment of autoimmune diseases and allergic reactions.

Cortisone is the most commonly seen example of corticosteroids; it’s used regularly by doctors in the treatment of swelling and pain resulting from skin conditions such as poison oak and insect bites.

Prednisone is another popular example of corticosteroids and is used everywhere in the treatment of autoimmune diseases, including arthritis and lupus.

Both corticosteroids and anabolic steroids can be consumed by rubbing them on the skin, muscular injections or oral consumption.

How Anabolic Steroids Work in The Human Body?

Consumption of anabolic steroids leads to hormonal changes which contribute to improved strength, stronger bones, and quick muscle-growth.

Before delving further into how anabolic steroids work in the human body, we must first understand how testosterone affects the body.

Testosterone or anabolic steroids derived from testosterone can have two kinds of effects on the human body:

Androgenic effects

The androgenic (derived from the Greek prefix ‘andro’, which means masculine, man or male) effects of testosterone are linked to the male sexual characteristics.

These effects are primarily characterized by deepening of the voice, development of male genitals and growth of hair on the body and face.

Anabolic effects

The anabolic effects of testosterone include the increase in the bone and muscle mass. These effects are related to the cell-growth inside the body, pertaining to processes like muscle-development or increased protein production.

Hence, anabolic effects can be said to improve protein synthesis in the body, which then leads to cellular tissue growth, a highly beneficial effect when medicinally used in ‘wasting conditions’.

It should be noted that the anabolic effects of testosterone also automatically lead to increasing androgenic effects.

Please keep in mind that all such steroids have a certain degree of both androgenic and anabolic effects, but some are developed specifically to deliver minimum androgenic effects.

Learn also what are Prohormones and what is a difference between them and anabolic steroids.

How Exactly do Anabolic Steroids Help in Building Muscles?

Well, whenever people talk about muscle building and bodybuilders, they generally think about illegal steroids and their harmful effects.

Before talking about all of that, let’s clarify one thing – increased muscle mass is actually a very good thing for the body.

Not only does it help in improving the definition and shape of your body, it can be invaluable in sports activities.

After all, it’s the muscles that produce force and aid body movement. Just one pound of muscle mass can be the difference between a world-record holder and a sprinter who finishes last.

The physiological process responsible for lean muscle mass development is quite complex, however, we’d keep it as basic as possible for the purpose of this article.

When you work out, you are essentially causing several micro-tears in your muscles, by constantly pushing them beyond their limit. This is exactly what happens when you do several repetitive movements like bicep curls or squats.

These tiny muscle rips (which cause a certain amount of pain for one or two days after workout) must be repaired. Hence, the body naturally gets into action and repairs all such damage through the creation of new muscle fibers.

Such continuous cycle of muscle breakdown and repair eventually leads to an increase in the size of the muscles. It’s a process referred to as muscular hypertrophy.

Please note, this muscle repair and growth doesn’t happen overnight and occurs away from the gymnasium while you are resting.

And for it to work it’s important that your body’s rate of MPS (muscle protein synthesis) is higher than the rate of MPB (muscle protein breakdown).

How anabolic steroids help in this muscle-building process is that since most of them are testosterone-based, they contribute significantly to muscle protein synthesis, and simultaneously reduce the muscle protein breakdown.

In addition, they activate the satellite cells that are critical for post-workout muscle repair.

This means that anabolic steroids stimulate the body’s anabolic effects by plugging into protein receptors situated inside or on the cells, which aid creation of new proteins inside the cells. This causes a boost in the RNA activity.

With the constant production of new proteins, you start seeing an increase in the size and strength of your muscles.

Although this happens naturally inside the body, anabolic steroids stimulate or work as catalysts for this natural process (through their binding to the receptor sites of the protein cells).

As far as bodybuilding is concerned, steroids help by increasing the retention of nitrogen in the body.

As you must be aware, nitrogen is present in proteins and plays a critical role in construction and maintenance of tissues.

Bodybuilders who use steroids on a regular basis have a positive nitrogen balance in their bodies. This is what helps bodybuilders in development of bulk and muscle.