Whether it’s energy drinks, supplements or steroids, there are all sorts of things available to tempt kids who want to enhance their performance and reach their goals. It’s important to encourage kids to be the best that they can be, and to support them to be physically active. But there are risks associated with energy drinks, supplements and steroids, particularly for developing bodies and minds. Boys’ high rates of use, propensity for risk taking, and their competitive nature place them particularly at risk.
Energy drinks
The high sugar content of energy drinks has the usual negative effects of high sugar, including tooth decay, weight gain and risk of metabolic and cardiovascular disease. The high caffeine levels of energy drinks have been associated with irregular heart rhythms and palpitations, headache, reduced sleep quality and time, hyperactivity and inattention, anxiety and depression, risk-taking behaviours, suicidal thinking, use of alcohol and other drugs, poor academic performance, poor diet, stress and emotional difficulties. There is no good quality evidence showing that these drinks actually improve physical performance in children and adolescents.
Supplements
When it comes to supplements – whether they’re pills, powders or drinks to build muscle, reduce fat or increase endurance – there’s limited evidence showing that they are effective. For the most part, supplements are unnecessary for children and adolescents. A healthy diet can provide most kids with all the vitamins, minerals and nutrients they need.
One of the major concerns about supplements is what they contain in addition to the ingredients that they’re being taken for. Supplements used for bulking up have high energy content, which can cause accumulation of body fat. Other bodybuilding supplements may contain harmful contaminants (e.g. heavy metals, amphetamines and other drugs) that have negative impacts on health.
A worrying aspect of supplement use is its association with adolescent males’ positive attitudes towards the use of anabolic-androgenic steroids, like testosterone (the main male sex hormone) and synthetic derivatives (e.g. nandrolone, stanozolol, trenbolone), with the goals of increasing physical performance and/or achieving desirable changes to the appearance of their bodies. Teen boys who use supplements have positive attitudes towards the use of anabolic androgenic steroids, and are more likely than their non-using peers to begin using them.
Steroids
Using steroids for performance enhancement or to achieve desirable changes in appearance is dangerous. That’s why the supply or possession of testosterone and similar drugs without a prescription for a valid medical reason is illegal.
Teenage boys’ use of steroids is influenced by their peers, a desire for improved physical performance and body image concerns.
We have known for decades about serious health problems caused by high-dose steroid use, including:
When teenage boys use steroids, they can interrupt normal development and maturation processes that are usually regulated by normal testosterone levels. There are very few studies of the long-term effects of steroid use by teenage boys, but the limited evidence we have, what we know about biology, and results from animal experiments suggest permanent effects on brain development that result in greater impulsive behaviour and decreased attention. It’s reasonable to expect similar long-term effects on the reproductive and musculoskeletal systems.
New generations of synthetic drugs are designed to mimic the muscle-building effects of testosterone without some of the unwanted side effects, like peptides and SARMs. These are unproven, unapproved, illegal and can introduce a whole new set of complications, like person-to-person transfer through sweat or sexual activity.
So how do we protect our kids from the dangerous effects of all these supposed performance enhancers and shortcuts to achieving body image ideals? To begin with, remember that a healthy diet can provide all the nutrients needed for you and your family. When it comes to training, puberty is like a superpower already. A healthy body is already primed to take advantage of the developmental potential of this stage of life. Childhood and adolescence are stages of profound growth, development and maturation that can be derailed by substances that interfere with cellular processes. Our kids — especially boys — need to be taught about the complications and potential dangers of energy drinks, supplements and steroids.
If you’re worried about your child’s body image, visit butterfly.org.au
Tim Moss
Healthy Male Health Content Manager
Dr Tim Moss has PhD in physiology and more than 20 years’ experience as a biomedical research scientist. Tim stepped away from his successful academic career at the end of 2019, to apply his skills in turning complicated scientific and medical knowledge into information that all people can use to improve their health and wellbeing. Tim has written for crikey.com and Scientific American’s Observations blog, which is far more interesting than his authorship of over 150 academic publications. He has studied science communication at the Alan Alda Centre for Communicating Science in New York, and at the Department of Biological Engineering Communication Lab at MIT in Boston.
