STEROIDS

No longer confined to professional sports arenas, steroids are just as likely to be found in your local gym.

An Inside Out investigation has exposed one drug dealing gang in Sheffield who have been pushing a prescription only testosterone drug around city gyms. This dangerous cocktail of drugs are having a devastating effect on male fertility.

Since their development in the 1950s to treat medical conditions such as thrombosis and endometriosis, steroids have been misused to enhance physical performance.

Initial users were largely professional weight lifters and bodybuilders, competitors who relied heavily on strength and muscle bulk, but their use soon spread.

Quick fix

Steroids are a synthetic version of testosterone

Anabolic steroids, some of which contain massive doses of testosterone, are now the drugs of choice for some bodybuilders who are looking for a quick fix to increase their size and bulk.

Combined with exercise, steroids help build up muscle, allow for harder training and reduce recovery time, but these effects come with a price.

Infertility

One of the country’s leading fertility experts has a stark warning after seeing a steady flow of men with fertility problems caused by taking anabolic steroids.

Professor Bill Ledger from the Jessop Maternity Hospital in Sheffield says:

"We’ve have had couples who come to us having tried for a baby for two or three years without success - we run simple tests and find that the man has poor sperm quality - or maybe no sperm at all and then he will talk about the drugs he’s using as part of his bodybuilding programme. Sometimes guys don’t know the two are linked."

'Roid Rage'

The drugs found in Sheffield's gyms called Sustanon 250 are a testosterone replacement used to treat cancer patients.

The drugs have been tested by Inside Out and are 98 per cent pure and were made in Pakistan - but are being sold on without any health advice or warnings.

Further side effects include irritability and aggressiveness, dubbed as ‘roid rage’. Users may experience hair loss, acne, erection problems and possible sterility.

Black market

Steroids are smuggled in from overseas

Until recently, most steroids that were abused, were obtained through fraudulent prescriptions, ending up on the black market.

Now they are either smuggled in from overseas, or made in the UK in illegal laboratories, presenting even greater risks to the user, who has no guarantee as to their ingredients.

Exposed

Inside Out exposed Zack and Imran, two West Yorkshire men who claim they could supply upto 20,000 of these drugs which would have a street value of around one hundred thousand pounds.

Inside Out goes undercover to expose the sellers

On two occasions Sustanon 250 has been passed onto an undercover reporter posing as someone looking to get into the steroids market.

Although it is not illegal to possess steroids in the UK at present, it is an offence to supply them to others. Penalties for supply are the same as those supplying class B drugs.

It is only now that the full extent of the damage anabolic steroids can have is being realised by the medical profession.

"Men use cocktails of drugs which ....... come with five or six different products. Whereas we might understand what one drug does, in combination with all the others, it’s an impossible conundrum to unpick." Prof. Bill Ledger

A high price to pay for a toned physique.