Ep 162 – Steroids: Are They Healthier?

Giacomo:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels radio. My name is Giacomo.

Dani:

And I’m Dani.

Giacomo:

And this is episode 161.

Dani:

Crazy 161. Wild.

Giacomo:

I don’t even. We’ve been putting out these episodes closer, recording closer to when we put them out. But I. A little foggy right now. And when this episode’s coming out, is it coming out while we’re on the cruise?

Dani:

I don’t know. It’s coming out early in March sometime.

Giacomo:

So maybe all that I know is cool.

Dani:

We’re gonna put out one of our more controversial episodes and just like, peace out and be on the ocean and not answer anybody.

Giacomo:

My favorite thing in the world is to say something like triggering or something controversial or something that I know someone just gonna attack me for and then just watch everyone attack each other and attack me while I just, like, disappear, just back away being like. Whereas I think for you, I feel like it’s the kind of opposite. You worry about the fact that it’s gonna happen.

You regret that you did it, but confidently and bravely do it. And then you find, like, one or two comments that are triggering you and you research them to the death. And either you respond like crazy or you kind of research like crazy without responding. I kind of feel like that’s your thing when.

Dani:

No, I don’t think so.

Giacomo:

That’s my perspective.

Dani:

I don’t think so. I just. I hesitate. I hold myself back to put out certain topics or certain conversations because I know they’re gonna rub some people the wrong way. And I’m just coming to realize as I get older, like, I have these opinions for a reason. I formed these opinions for a reason, and a lot of people might not know about them. It’s probably in people’s best interest for me to put it out, even if some people don’t like it. That’s tough, though. The Internet is a cruel place.

Giacomo:

Exactly. And you can take pretty much anything and just. It can devolve into absolute ridiculousness. And that’s just the social media world as it is. So we might as well make light out of it. What you gonna do? I don’t know. I am also, between the both of us, with our cutting and our body’s core temperature being hard to regulate because we’re dying down and getting leaner and it’s cold, I would like to think that I could speak for both of us. I’m ready for it to be warmer.

Dani:

Oh, yes. Very much. I’m actually. So when we go down to Florida, I have a scuba certification that I’m doing there. And I’m actually scared of how cold the water is going to be. Cause it’s gonna be, like, 73, 75 degrees outside. That water is gonna be cold.

Giacomo:

I couldn’t tell if it was my fear or the fact that I was cold when it was 78 degrees on there. I think it was a combination of the two. But I will tell you this. Once my fear went away, I felt pretty comfortable down there, but just, like, a little cold at 78 degrees. But in Cozumel, there is no wetsuit or dry suit. Whatever you wear down there.

Dani:

Wetsuit. See? How do you not know this? Okay, so he went down to Mexico, and some dude just, like, took him out on the water and did some stuff with him and was like, you’re certified. And I am doing this, like, separate course that has a 16 chapter book that I have to read and pass all the tests. Like, you don’t even know what a wetsuit and a dry suit is.

Giacomo:

It’s a thing that you put on. It’s made out of neoprene that insulates you.

Dani:

Holy moly.

Giacomo:

I’m certified. I’ll be your diver for today.

Dani:

And this. Oh, my God. I’m already so nervous about this. Like, I understand that if I am able to successfully do this, I’ll love it, because I like being underwater. I like seeing the underwater scenes. But, like, I’m not a gear person. I’m not a tech person. Like, if there’s.

If there’s hobbies that require a lot of equipment, it’s almost like my brain just shuts down. Even this. Even the podcasting and the youtubing and the recording and all of that. There’s a lot of equipment involved in this, and I’m not great at any of it.

Giacomo:

You’re so much better at learning how to use it than I am and understanding what it’s supposed to do, as far as usual.

Dani:

And I went to college, and this was one of the classes I had to take, take as a music major was, like, how to do stuff like this, and I still suck at it. But other thing, like, you know, I like hiking. I like camping. But, like, the people that really like hiking and camping and all the gear they have, like, I’m out.

Giacomo:

I’m here for all of it.

Dani:

Snowboarding, skiing.

Giacomo:

Love it.

Dani:

And now scuba diving, which, you know, this equipment, your life depends on knowing how to use it, probably.

Giacomo:

Even if you’re not the one handling it, you should probably know how it functions and operates in case it malfunctions.

Dani:

Or whatever, just reading the chapters. You know, when you, like, read a page and, you know, you read the page, but you’re like, what did that page say? I don’t remember one word. I just read. And you have to go back and read it again. It’s like that, but it’s like, oh, this is the equipment that keeps you alive. So I’m like, I’m like, pretty nervous about it.

Giacomo:

But you’re with a dive master when you go down and they keep you well within the safety zone and they’re watching you and they, a lot of this is much more regular.

Dani:

Are you always with a divemaster?

Giacomo:

Yeah, they keep tabs on where you are constantly. And if they don’t, they slow everything down and they, like, watch you and they ask you if you’re okay and they look at you and your stuff and, yes.

Dani:

Like, legally, do you have to always be with a dive master?

Giacomo:

I mean, probably not. When I was in Cozumel, some dude in my hostel was like, yo, we’re just gonna like, start walking off the shore with some gear and you can take some gear with us and you can just go down. There’s some cool sightings down there. And I wasn’t certified or nothing, and I wasn’t even 100% sure of how to scuba dive yet, but he was more than happy to strap some

stuff on me and take me with them. So, like, yeah, I mean, in the right kinds of situations and environments, you could learn like that or just roll like that. It’s not illegal.

Dani:

Anyway, sorry, guys, this is, this is not what the podcast is not. But I did mention I’m not a gear person. Yeah, and this, this podcast is about steroids. Now we’ve done a steroid podcast before. I don’t even want to say steroids. This is a podcast about performance enhancing drugs, which colloquially, most people on the street are just going to call them steroids, but it’s like a podcast about the umbrella term of performance enhancing drugs.

And some interesting kind of conversations that I’ve seen become much more popular lately, which is the idea that geared bodybuilding, meaning bodybuilding utilizing performance enhancing drugs, might actually be healthier than natural bodybuilding. I’m seeing this pop up in a lot of places, and I think that it’s worth talking about before that becomes.

Giacomo:

Like, what is talked about too much.

Dani:

Yes. So, well, go ahead and you can get us started. This is like, it’s a big topic. We’re not gonna be able

to cover it all in one podcast, but like, we gotta talk about it.

Giacomo:

Yes, but I wanna start off a little late and I wanna get a little deeper into this conversation without going straight to the facts and arguing.

Dani:

Why are you attacking me?

Giacomo:

Because you have 25 pages worth of ammo. I’m not attacking you. I’m ready to attack with you, I suppose. But I also want to have some fun with this conversation because this is a large part of the culture of a sport that you and I genuinely love.

Dani:

Yeah.

Giacomo:

So my, here’s, and this is something I don’t, well, I know a little bit about, but I want to hear your take on it. And there’s probably something, I don’t know. What was your first exposure to steroids? Like and when was it? Tell me a little bit about that.

Dani:

So, okay. So just for clarity, for anybody that’s a new listener. Giacomo and I both compete in natural bodybuilding. We coach athletes who compete in natural bodybuilding. We specifically do not work with people who are enhanced or geared or using performance enhancing drugs. They’re all the same thing. Not out of judgment necessarily, but it’s just, that’s not our thing.

We don’t know anything about it. It would be irresponsible to do that. But my first introduction would be like, I don’t know, 8th grade health class when like one week you learn about the dangers of the marijuana and the next week you learn about the dangers of hallucinogenics and stimulants and then steroids.

Giacomo:

Okay?

Dani:

And I vividly remember learning about all of the drugs. This is terrible, guys. I was a bad kid learning about all of the drugs and being like, uh, that sounds awesome. That sounds awesome.

Giacomo:

Really?

Dani:

Steroids, that sounds awesome. And then we got to steroids week and I was like, why would anybody take a drug that doesn’t even make you feel fun? I don’t understand. Like, I didn’t understand why anybody would do that as a kid. They’re telling me about hallucinogenics and like seeing sounds and stuff.

And I’m like, where do I find these amazing things? And then we get to steroids and I’m like, so you run faster. Like, people risk their health so they can run fast. Like, I genuinely didn’t understand. So it’s ironic now.

Giacomo:

Okay? And then I. Socially or outside of your social circles at school and in general, how about people using and interested in talking about it? When did that, what was that like for you?

Dani:

So I, nobody talked. I don’t know anybody that talked about it at school.

Giacomo:

Jocks?

Dani:

No, I mean, I didn’t know jocks. I was in the marching band. Okay, so. But I mean, I had some friends that did some sports. It literally never came up. That’s not to say it wasn’t coming up in, like, the boys locker room and the soccer, like the football team or whatever. I don’t know. I didn’t encounter it. The

first time I ever encountered it personally was not steroids. It was ephedra, a fat burner.

Giacomo:

Okay.

Dani:

And it was a coach that I had at the time. I was a whopping 19 years old. 19 years old. Had just lost 90 pounds. But I, like, I just wanted to look like, fitter, firmer. And I was under the impression I had to get leaner. Right now, looking back, that was not true. I needed to build muscle. But my coach, who was also a registered dietitian, suggested that I take what’s called an ECA stack. Ephedra, caffeine, and aspirin.

Giacomo:

Yeah, I remember that stack. There’s one other thing you could add to it, but I hear you.

Dani:

And I almost did. I almost did. But luckily I did enough research and I had a memory of my dad taking ephedra when I was younger, when it was legal and, like, easy to get. And then I remember the big deal about it being banned because it was like giving people heart attacks or something.

Giacomo:

In all fairness, it was good, promoted heavily, and you could literally find it anywhere.

Dani:

Yeah.

Giacomo:

Like, what was that hydroxy cut or anything like that? So it wasn’t exactly, so it wasn’t exactly like, like some dirty, dark secrets we could take.

Dani:

But when she suggested it to me, it was, it was a banned substance.

Giacomo:

At that point in time.

Dani:

You were competing in bodybuilding at the time, and I knew that it was a banned substance and I didn’t know if, I didn’t think I was ever going to compete.

Giacomo:

This is a whole different. We can go way, way, way down this rabbit hole if you want, but let me bring it back. I want to talk about. No, it’s okay. I. Believe me, I could take the bait and keep going with this. Trust me. I wanted to give some insight to our audience about how I was first exposed to steroids and. Cause I was a jock and granted, it was a tennis team, it’s not like we were really roided out or anything like that.

We definitely weren’t. However, the football team was partaking. I went to an all boys school, right? And there was definitely locker room talk and talks when you went out to, like, a club or whatever, about different kinds of steroids. Like, it was my first. I remember my first experience, I was in a psychology class and I remember us kind of just like the idea of steroids was discussed.

It was more innuendo than direct. But like, it was there. It was very pervasive in that class and a class on religion. Probably too much information for you because I went to a catholic high school, but I also remember my buddies talking about how they could take Deca. I was like, what’s a deca? And I knew it was a steroid, but it was like, oh, you don’t have to, no needles.

Just take a pill and you would look a certain way. You would look better when you went out. So it was about how you looked when you went out. So it was for vanity. And also I started to realize that they got the idea because they were on different teams where it was promoted to be anabolic. It just wasn’t spoken about. It was this taboo thing. And I also remember the eighties and nineties and all of that where there was a lot of fear tactics to try to get people to stop taking steroids.

All those commercials and all that stuff. So fast forward to college where I actually did try a cycle of 30, 30 or 40 day cycle. And then I stopped. It was, what’s that stuff called? Mark McGuire stuff. Thank you. Yeah, that precursor to testosterone.

Dani:

I did try that once. Just to be clear. It wasn’t like the actual steroid.

Giacomo:

No. I mean, if anything, you’re taxing your body more just to get the same, less of the same end result. You might as well, if you’re going to go that route, you might as well just take the steroid or take something, you know, where it’s not gonna mess with your kidneys. That was a logic I wanna make.

Dani:

Sure that I understand. So for example, five HTP is a precursor to serotonin. So what you took was a precursor to testosterone.

Giacomo:

One, three. Nor androstenedyl. Nor androstenedyl. 13. Correct.

Dani:

And at the time, they were not illegal.

Giacomo:

Correct.

Dani:

That’s important.

Giacomo:

Yes.

Dani:

At the time, they weren’t banned in.

Giacomo:

Natural bodybuilding either, believe it or not. And even natural bodybuilding allowed it. But then natural bodybuilding banned it. And I had become exposed to natural bodybuilding from a natural

bodybuilding magazine that was available at a newsstand in Manhattan on a New York City subway.

And I was hooked on the idea. I’m like, I can do this without hurting myself. Those commercials hooked me, the fear tactics and all that crap. And I should probably stop because I can go down this rabbit hole. But that was my foray, if you will, into the steroid world.

Dani:

But this actually brings up an interesting point that, you know, new new drugs, new new performance enhancing drugs come out all the time, and sometimes it takes a while before WADA, the anti doping agency, worldwide anti doping agency, catches up and puts it on the list.

Giacomo:

It’s like the geranium stuff, the geranium flower. It’s like the next derivative to have something that’s super stimulating or like that.

Dani:

Da da, dhea, dhea.

Giacomo:

I think, oh, I’m thinking of something else.

Dani:

But that was just banned a couple years ago.

Giacomo:

Yes, exactly. So these things stay in the market, and there even is that talk in the natural bodybuilding world where it’s like, I could take this thing. Cause I’ll take anything to get an edge that’s legal or.

Dani:

But it will be banned eventually, and, you know, it’s gonna be banned eventually.

Giacomo:

And on the flip side, someone’s like, this is gonna be banned anyway. I might as well just stop taking it now. Even if it were to give me an edge. I’ve heard both of those narratives run in the circles when it comes to the natural bodybuilding world.

Dani:

Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t think we need to go down that too long. But different, different drugs that are banned in natural bodybuilding have different time limits. So I don’t know what they all are. Cause luckily, with only one or two medical exemptions, which is a different topic entirely, I’ve never taken anything on those lists.

But I remember at one point, it was like, you couldn’t have taken ephedra in the past, like, three years, or you couldn’t have taken spironolactone, which is something a lot of people are prescribed for acne. You can’t have taken it in two weeks before the.

Giacomo:

I told the line a little bit. It was like, it’s banned now. And I would have problems with hard lines. So it was like, if it was banned now and it has to be 90 days, I would, like, wait 90 days or six months, and then I would stop doing it. So I was, like, a little slow to respond as far as the hard lines in the sand they drew. But I would always. But I would comply. I comply with the ephedra. I complied with the interesting. Yeah.

Dani:

Anyways, but the argument about the, we gotta go there. We have to go there. Cause we’ll talk about this all day. This will be a three hour podcast. I won’t even be able to fit it on my computer. Why would somebody think that enhanced bodybuilding may be healthier than natural bodybuilding.

Giacomo:

Because I’m just gonna play to that, because obviously, I don’t feel that way. And I don’t agree, because you can get through a prep without experiencing as many of the negative side effects that something like low testosterone would cause or any other of the stressors that would be caused by a prep.

Dani:

When somebody gets appropriately lean for a bodybuilding show, man or woman, there are hormonal repercussions of doing that. Your testosterone is for, as a guy, it’s probably gonna get really, really low. Like, there’s a point in prep where you may struggle to get it up, you know, because your testosterone is so low.

Giacomo:

Oh, yeah, I remember you were like, take it up with your coach. I’m like, what am I gonna do? Say to my coach, I can’t get it? No, but, yeah, no. Low testosterone is a thing. It definitely messes with you.

Dani:

Thyroid hormones can start to, like, tank because you’ve just been in a deficit for so long. I mean, your energy is obviously shit. Your recovery is probably not great.

Giacomo:

You feel depressed.

Dani:

That is all part of bodybuilding prep. A natural bodybuilding prep. Now, when you are taking certain performance enhancing drugs, you can fix a lot of those things during prep. So if your testosterone starts to tank, you can take testosterone to get back into the normal level. You can take thyroid medications to get back into the normal level, thus mitigating a lot of the negative symptoms of prep.

That is why some people think that it is healthier than natural bodybuilding. And if that’s, like, in that argument, right, in a vacuum, if Prep was in a vacuum, I think they’d have a good argument, right?

Giacomo:

I’ll shut this down right away just so that we don’t lose you as far as the messaging here, because that can happen sometimes when we’re too conversational about this stuff. There’s no room for interpretation here. People who are that heavily into steroids will literally tell you, I’m willing to die for the sport.

And I know this is going to short my life. That’s one point. Another point is, six months after a natural bodybuilding show, your levels are all back to baseline. Why do I know this, not just by the body of research out there, that it’s shown to be true? Statistically, the majority of times, all of.

Dani:

The clients we’ve seen it happen to.

Giacomo:

I could literally, I could give you my physicals. I can give you my physical when I was during my competition season, I could show you how my testosterone was around 300. And I can give you my physical six months later and I can show you how it’s back at the upper end of the acceptable range. Which is where, right, which I think it was like 1000 or something like that, I don’t know. But I can show you those tests.

Dani:

So that’s the point. In a natural bodybuilding prep, all of those shitty things happen to your health. But after the prep, once you return to eating enough food and having enough body fat on your body, those will stabilize on their own.

Giacomo:

Million dollar question, will that happen for someone who’s taken steroids during their prep?

Dani:

Unlikely. It’s possible. If, and this is the biggest fattest if of all, if somebody is taking such low doses of those things that they stay in the physiological levels. If they stay within the normal range and it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen. That’s not how it works. The thing that I liken this argument to, and it’s a reach, but follow me here for a second.

You know when you’re talking to somebody about veganism and how cruel the factory farms are, and they start going like, well, what if I only eat meat and eggs and blah, blah, blah from someone’s backyard where they live a happy life and they walk around and they eat grass all the time and they only kill them 5 hours before they were gonna die anyway. What about that? What do you think about that? And it’s like, uh, okay, yeah, that’s, that would be, that would be a significantly better

situation, I suppose. But it doesn’t happen. That’s not how it works. People are not getting their meat from a happy backyard cow. They’re just not, period. Like, that’s not, that’s not what 99% of people are doing, even if they want to make that argument right. To me, this argument with performance enhancing drugs is the same thing. Yes, if that was happening, maybe we’d be good.

Giacomo:

Well, can we blow some holes in the argument as well? And I’m curious to hear your take on your thought on this. What if that person was taking that low dose and then took that low dose for the next two years after the fact and then decided to stop taking steroids with it?

Dani:

No, there would be problems. There would be problems if you take endogenous, I’m sorry, exogenous hormones, meaning hormones that you are not naturally producing. If you’re taking in exogenous hormones for an extended period of time and then you stop taking them, your body will struggle to produce those on its own because it basically became dependent on it. And, you know, we could get into the, like, nuances of, there’s smarter ways to do steroids and dumber ways to do

steroids, healthier and more unhealthy ways to do it. Listen, I’ve known functioning heroin addicts in my life, also like heroin addicts who got up and did their job every day. Somehow they found a way to do it. Was it good for them? No, but they found a healthier way to do heroin. So, I mean, it’s kind of how I feel about it. And the other thing is, if somebody was taking such a low dose to stay in the physiological levels, I’m gonna.

Giacomo:

Take it at all.

Dani:

Why? Why do it and compete? You can’t compete in natural bodybuilding, and you’re gonna get your ass handed to you in enhanced bodybuilding. Cause nobody else is doing that. So what’s the point?

Giacomo:

They wanna do it in a non competitive way, just for the sake of, like, seeing what they could do with their body, and they want this little aid.

Dani:

I mean, there are a lot of.

Giacomo:

They’Re disciplined enough to not do it the rest of the year. I don’t know.

Dani:

No, that’s not a thing. So there are lots of people who don’t compete in bodybuilding who do go to these like, kind of shady TRT clinics that are not really, like, there to help guys with naturally low testosterone. They’re there to help people get above the natural range. But those people who are doing it for a lifestyle reason, they are even less likely to be doing it for a couple of months and come off of it.

Giacomo:

And I would like to think if someone did that for a couple of months, once or twice a year, five years later, they would still have some risks, even if it was a super low dose.

Dani:

I have known many people, many, many people, because, like I said at the beginning, ironically, I was like, why would anybody want to do this now? It’s like, I have a lot of friends that do this, and I have no judgment, okay? Like, I don’t give a shit what anybody else does to their body. That is your prerogative.

Giacomo:

Well, I do worry about the influence that it has on other people, though rightfully so.

Dani:

I do worry about the influence that it has on particularly young people. Young people whose brains are not fully formed yet. Never in a million years did I think I’d see high school girls on gear. And that is absolutely 100% a thing now. Yeah, that’s scary. They could be damaging their reproductive systems before they’re even out of high school.

Giacomo:

And we’re not throwing stones or shade. However, there are people who are going to do it anyway and there are coaches that will support them when they’re looking for it because they’re like, well, you’re gonna do this unhealthy thing in the most healthful way possible, right? PSD is your risk sign away knowing that your life will be potentially effective, but doing anyway, which if you’re an.

Dani:

Adult, if you’re an adult with a fully formed frontal lobe and you decide this is the route you wanna take, have at it. I think it should be legal. I think it should be, what’s it called? Like controlled substances, but I think it should be. I think people should be able to do whatever they want with their body, honestly.

Giacomo:

And remember, this isn’t us trying to like, whatever, cause a whole bunch of drama out there that literally the topic here is, are steroids healthy? And the answer is an obvious, resounding no.

Dani:

Kind of. Kind of. Kind of. So let me back up a little bit.

Giacomo:

Sure.

Dani:

Most of the, and I have, I mean, listen, I literally have a ton of research that I haven’t even picked up yet. I haven’t even looked at it and maybe I don’t need to. So most of the performance enhancing drugs that exist have medical uses, right? Like there are real reasons to use clenbuterol, right? It’s prescribed for asthma.

Sometimes it’s also only FDA approved as. What is it? It’s not a horse. A horse nebulizer, I believe. A horse nebulizer. That’s the only FDA approval of it. But I digress. Doctors do off label, prescribe it for asthma. Insulin is something that lots of bodybuilders.

Giacomo:

Use, prevent muscle atrophy if someone has.

Dani:

Cancer, and also, hello, diabetes.

Giacomo:

Like medicine in the medical world, the steroids have value, all of the different.

Dani:

Type of anabolic steroids. So we just keep saying steroids, right? But there’s a ton of anabolic steroids. They all kind of operate a little bit differently. Some of them are oral, some of them are injectable, but they all have medical uses for somebody who needs it, for somebody who’s ill and needs it. But that’s the thing, right? We’re taking somebody.

It’s the risks versus the benefits. If somebody is ill, if somebody’s testosterone is in the subdivide physiological levels, if they have low testosterone, their life is going to be pretty miserable if they don’t

get treatment for it. So doctors will prescribe them to get them back into the physiological level and they will be healthier for it.

Giacomo:

If you’re someone who has chronically low testosterone levels. It doesn’t matter if you’re young, it’s probably the right move to talk to a doctor and to figure out what your next course of action is. And that next course of action, more likely than not, will include some dose of anabolic steroid, and it will make sense for you, depending on your situation or life.

Dani:

Diuretics are prescribed for people with kidney issues all the time. Stimulants are prescribed to people with ADHD or narcolepsy. Like, there are medical uses for all of these things.

Giacomo:

Totally.

Dani:

But all of these things are not usually taken together or, like, in various conjunctions with one another by healthy people to put them in some sort of superhuman range.

Giacomo:

Right.

Dani:

And that is what is often going on.

Giacomo:

These doses are 2030, 40, 50 times more than the normal dose. No, really, literally. And there’s a cocktail of them. I mean, it can go in that direction. The sport literally promotes it, encourages it.

Dani:

That’s. That’s an entire other issue. My feelings about the IFBB and the NPC, like, I could go off.

Giacomo:

Right. Do you think people dying younger on.

Dani:

Not the athletes. Not the athletes. They’re doing what the organization is encouraging them to do. The organization itself. I want to see some people in jail in that organization, honestly. But I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go too far. Off topic here.

Giacomo:

We’re getting a little salty about the politics of bodybuilding and all that, which makes sense. We could go there.

Dani:

I mean, I have lots of. There’s lots of gripes I have in the natural bodybuilding world, too. So I don’t want to make it sound like I don’t. Bodybuilding inherently as a sport is not healthy, period, full stop. Nobody that knows what they’re doing is doing it because they think it’s healthy. They’re doing it because they love it. They’re not doing it to make money because you don’t. They’re doing it because they love it.

Giacomo:

Yeah. And I like to make the argument that anything you take to that extreme of a level, even outside of sports, is gonna have some negative side effects, consequences, and actually, in many ways, be bad for your health. That’s just how it goes.

Dani:

And I don’t think. I don’t think that every coach that works with enhanced athletes or makes suggestions about this or that thing to take. I don’t think they’re bad. Like, on the one hand, I don’t know enough about it to say what is and isn’t the responsible or intelligent ways to suggest this stuff, it’s, to me, it’s almost like a, like a harm reduction situation, which I feel about natural bodybuilding, too. Like, oh, you’re gonna do this competition, you’re gonna temporarily

harm yourself for this competition? Okay, let’s do it the best way possible. And I feel like in the enhanced side of things, there are coaches doing that as well. Like, you’re going to do this anyway.

Here’s how we can support your liver, support your kidneys, et cetera, et cetera. Make sure the dosages are like, not going to kill you, even though accidents happen and people drop dead all the time. Dallas McCarver. Dallas McCarver was 25 or 26, and.

Giacomo:

He didn’t he swat, he couldn’t swallow it.

Dani:

Too much insulin. His blood sugar dropped unbelievably quickly, so he needed to eat to get his blood sugar back up quickly, and he choked to death.

Giacomo:

Cause he was so anxious about needing to eat. Cause his body was feeling like crap cause of his insulin crash. That’s a freak accident.

Dani:

I mean, that’s a freak accident.

Giacomo:

That’s something that was arguably avoidable.

Dani:

But if somebody doesn’t know, like, hey, you can’t take insulin before you go.

Giacomo:

To bed, and they’re worrying and they don’t understand, they go to sleep and don’t wake up.

Dani:

I mean, combinations of stimulants and diuretics have, like, I mean, there was a woman who dropped dead backstage at a competition, actually, in the last year. It happens way more than people realize. It’s actually, it’s one of the deadliest sports that, like, an everyman could get into. Like, nobody. You

don’t need to meet a qualification to do it.

Anybody can do it. So anyway, it’s a, it’s a lot, and I feel like once you start to go down that path, that saying, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail, is 100% what happens there. Every problem, every stall you hit in prep, every struggle that your body hits in prepost, a lot of it comes down to like, okay, what new supplements can we add or take away or change in order to get you past this plateau?

Whereas in natural bodybuilding, that’s not an option. So there’s a lot more, you have to have a lot of different strategies, you have to have a lot of different tools. Like, there are coaches in the natural bodybuilding world who the only tool they have is cutting calories and adding cardio.

That’s it. They’re not doing diet breaks. They’re not doing refeeds. They’re not doing deloads. They’re not doing certain things to help the body get better. So again, this happens on both sides. I just think it’s a little bit more dangerous on one side than the other.

Giacomo:

Oh, yeah, totally. Absolutely. In many ways, yeah. Is there anything else we really want to say about this? Is this kind of it for this episode? I feel like we’ve pretty much covered most of what I would want to talk about as far as the health of steroids and culture of it and this and that. I don’t know.

Dani:

I just, I don’t want to see this idea become like the new consensus that it’s just healthier.

Giacomo:

Do you think that will happen?

Dani:

Okay, so we’ve been talking about this for 15 years, like, publicly, we’ve been talking about this stuff for 15 years. And I remember 1015 years ago being like, my biggest gripe with the folks that used performance enhancing drugs was that they lied about it all the time. And, I mean, that still happens all the time where people are not natural, but they say they’re natural or they don’t say that they’re not natural.

And they’re like, buy my program, you’ll look like me. They’re like leaving out a very important part. And I was pissed about it. Cause I feel like they’re selling a lie when they do that. And this does happen all the time. But I remember saying, like, God damn it. I wish these people would just be honest. I wish they would just be more transparent about it.

Giacomo:

Cause it creates other problems when people are private about stuff for them and for others, it just does.

Dani:

But now people are being more transparent about it. People are being more open about it.

Giacomo:

And it’s different than you thought.

Dani:

It’s way different. I thought, naively, I thought people would be like, you know, I use this or I use that. People would realize that to look like them, like, that’s a false expectation. They’re not gonna be able to look like them because they don’t use steroids. Naively, I thought this. Now it actually turns out more people are going, oh, hmm. So I should just use steroids. And I didn’t, I didn’t foresee that. I didn’t expect that to happen.

Giacomo:

No, that blindsided me too, actually.

Dani:

But it is happening like it’s happening. And again, full grown adults do whatever you want with your body. But the message, I think, especially when our sons and our daughters are watching us, it’s not great.

Giacomo:

Well, then even that, aside from you I think what it’s important, I think what’s important that we missed over here is literally just like, rattling off all the things that happen to your body by continuously taking in synthetic testosterone. What, more than, oh, as opposed to your body?

Dani:

My notes will come in handy.

Giacomo:

After all we really spoke about are like, what do you call it? We spoke about how taking in synthetic testosterone will eventually make it so that you don’t produce synthetic, you don’t produce testosterone on your own, but what is it actually doing to your body?

Dani:

Okay. So, especially over time, long term risks. And remember, your mileage may vary.

Giacomo:

And this isn’t even counting all the other things that we were talking about that you wind up taking with the whole hammer tool.

Dani:

And, oh, I have them. I have them. I have a lot written here.

Giacomo:

Let’s do it.

Dani:

Testosterone taken for long term risks for men. They may see their breasts grow, they may see their testicles shrink, they may not be able to get their partner pregnant, and they may find out that their prostate gland has gotten bigger. Women may, I would say will, but may get a deeper voice. And you cannot change it back once it happens. The only thing you could possibly do is go get, like, surgery on your vocal cords to try to get it back.

Notice a part of their genitalia has gotten bigger. Like, sometimes significantly grow more body hair, lose hair on your head, like thinning hair on your head, stop getting periods, or get them way less than they used to. Although I would argue that thinning hair and getting fewer periods will likely happen during a bodybuilding prep. But again, it will come back right after.

Men and women might start to get acne. Higher risk of swollen or torn tendons, liver tumors or changes in the liver, higher levels of bad cholesterol, lower levels of good cholesterol, high blood pressure, problems with the heart and blood flow, issues with anger or violence. The research is still out on that.

Mental health conditions, we always say hormones control everything, including how you’re feeling. Addiction to anabolic steroids. Not like physical addiction. Well, maybe that would be considered physical addiction, but like a psychological addiction to needing bigorexia, basically.

Giacomo:

Exactly.

Dani:

Risk of HIV or hepatitis if you’re using needles. And teens who take anabolic steroids might grow less than usual.

Giacomo:

There you go. Everything grows. Not just your muscles, as they say. Your heart grows, your other organs grow. And when your organs start to get to manipulate, be manipulated like that, it winds up causing other health problems and you can’t undo it.

Dani:

Human growth hormone, which is another thing that is absolutely used, may lead to and I just really want to emphasize, may lead to. I’m not saying this will happen, I’m saying this does happen to a lot of people, especially with prolonged use. Pain in the joints, muscles that feel weak, a buildup of extra fluid in the body. So, fluid retention, diabetes, trouble seeing, carpal tunnel syndrome, trouble controlling blood sugar, duh.

Diabetes, heart growth called cardiomyjali. Cardiomygale. Your heart grows, your heart is a muscle. If you take anabolic steroids, your heart is going to grow. That’s not good for you. And high blood pressure. Diuretics, which are often taken, leading right up to a competition to help achieve that dry look. So, to me, this is one of the scarier things that somebody can mess with.

Honestly. Diuretics can cause side effects when you take them at any dose, even at doses that healthcare providers suggest. Some of the side effects are losing more fluids than you take in, which is literally what bodybuilders are trying to do. Squeezing pain in the muscles, called cramps. Feeling faint, woozy, weak, or not steady. Being low in potassium, which the body needs. Having a drop in blood pressure. Feeling clumsy when you move, and having trouble keeping your

balance. Diuretics can lead to death. Like, literally, we need a certain amount of hydration to transport electrolytes through our body. The electrolytes send signals to our heart to beat. If they’re not getting there, you can just drop dead. Like instantly terrifying stimulants. So, amphetamines, beta, two agonists, ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, cocaine, which sounds crazy, but it’s not a lot of. I know quite a few bikini competitors that utilize this towards the end.

Giacomo:

Craziness.

Dani:

Stimulants can help athletes exercise longer, feel less tired or hungry, feel more alert and aggressive. Like, you see why people would want to use them. But the risks. Crappy sleep, lowered focus, feeling nervous or angry. Dehydration, heatstroke, heart palpitations, or fluttering tremors.

High blood pressure, the sensation of seeing things that are not there, called hallucination, stroke, heart attack, or other problems with blood flow. Insulin. I mean, we talked about insulin a little bit already.

Giacomo:

Do you see the size of this list of stuff? All these risks, this is, it’s just craziness. And to think that people go down this path and they just keep going, and it’s all normalized. You become desensitized to it, and it’s so baked into the culture that it’s actually hard to. You wind up, like it becomes a part of your identity. You can actually wind up. It’s like not stopping because you feel like you lose a party or something.

Dani:

Okay, so, like, we all know the stoner, right? We all know the stoner. That is their entire personality. It’s just that they are stoned all the time, and their whole life is weed. This can happen the other way also. There you go. Thyroid meds. Didn’t even touch upon thyroid meds, but thyroid meds. Levothyroxine, I believe. Common side effects are tremors, nausea, vomiting, cramps, diarrhea, headache, nervousness, irritability, excessive sweating, increased appetite.

That sounds terrible. Fever, sensitivity to heat, temporary hair loss, insomnia, and severe side effects include chest pain, irregular pulse, rapid heartbeat, and heart attacks.

Giacomo:

Yeah, we’re really selling it, Dani.

Dani:

Klenbuterol, which was that horse? Yeah, it was for treating horses with asthma, which I didn’t even know was the thing. Didn’t know horses could have asthma. But it also speeds up your

thermogenesis. It increases your thermogenesis, which is why bodybuilders sometimes use it.

Heart palpitations, tremors, heart rate. And you see how, like, many of the things I’m saying have the same side effects. Now take a bunch of them at once, and my guess is it’s not one plus one is two, but, like, one plus one is five.

Giacomo:

But if we were to just sit here and read out all this stuff to you, people would wind up blowing all kinds of holes in the argument that it was unhealthy talking about how they use it. Different people that are using in which way like that would have done nothing for you.

Dani:

And I’m not arguing with that again. I’m telling you, there are people out there that exist that are doing this the best way possible. My argument is the best way possible is still not good.

Giacomo:

And compared to natural bodybuilding, there’s no comparison whatsoever. It is clearly the more unhealthy of the two by a landslide. Not only short term, but especially long term, as in the rest of your life. And again, we aren’t here to judge. We aren’t here to stir the pot. And we respect personal choice, but informed personal choice. Right. And then, of course, there is that worry as far as us. It’s like we want to make sure that we do our due diligence in the bodybuilding world

and in the fitness world, to make sure that people don’t get lost in these kinds of rabbit holes and think that they could do it safely or that they’re influenced by it, and they don’t know that there’s another side like, no, this is not healthy. And this is actually, it’s a game of chess that you’ll lose every time, put it that way.

Dani:

But I mean, the bottom line is, if you want to be healthy, don’t compete in bodybuilding, natural or otherwise. Don’t do it. And I said, don’t compete. Because the off season, the building phases of natural bodybuilding, they’re good for you. They’re healthy. You’re eating amply, you’re eating well, you’re lifting weights.

Giacomo:

There is a lot of risk to learn how to do competitive bodybuilding as a lifestyle, as a career, as something you would do more than once, and even only once, especially because you don’t learn anything after the fact, if it’s a thing that you check off on your bucket list. So comes with a lot of

risks. Comes with a lot of risk.

Dani:

Some people feel like they’re not bodybuilders if they don’t compete. I don’t believe that. If you actively engage in the art of trying to build your body in the gym, you are a bodybuilder. You don’t have to step on stage. That’s a competitive bodybuilder. That’s a different thing. But you can build muscle, you can lose fat, just down to a certain body fat percentage most of the time.

It’s when we drop below a certain body fat percentage that we start to have these negative repercussions. So that’s, that’s the line you got to toe right there. And it’s a little bit different for everybody. Also, some people can tolerate being a little bit leaner with no repercussions. Some people can’t. That’s just the way it goes.

Giacomo:

Big learning curve when it comes to natural bodybuilding. There’s a very big learning curve for you to be able to minimize the health risks and the risks, the psychological risks, and the risks in general, in terms of, like, you having the body you want after the fact. There is a big learning curve when it comes to natural bodybuilding. When it comes to minimizing all these risks, hiring a coach, I could not recommend it enough.

This isn’t me selling us. It’s like, and I don’t, let me be nice. You want to work with somebody so that you cannot make the same mistakes they did, and that you can learn how to minimize your risks faster, and you’re still going to take some time to be able to, you’re going to wind up being on the other side of it. Some of those risks will become reality, and you got to work through those, and then if you wind up doing a long term, you could essentially do this somewhat unhealthy thing with

minimal risk, but not without consequences. And it takes some time. So you want to fast track yourself to doing it. You really want to do it. Because I don’t want to shame this book, because I love it, and I would encourage people to do it all the time if they genuinely want it. I’d be like, yeah, let’s do this thing.

Dani:

I don’t know if I would, but I would.

Giacomo:

But it comes with a set of risks. And to minimize those risks, and to fast track yourself to minimizing those risks, you absolutely want to work with someone, do your research, know what you’re getting into before the fact, and then obviously weigh out whether or not you want to continue to do it, as you realize how it plays out in your life, because it’s not the only part of you.

Dani:

I just thought of another major difference between natural bodybuilding and enhanced. Most of the time, natural bodybuilders, male or female, most don’t compete every year.

Giacomo:

hmm.

Dani:

Because it’s too much. Like, it’s just too much. You need time to recover. And there are a lot of, not all of enhanced bodybuilders that do compete every year that by all rights, should not be able to compete every year. But somehow they are, those guys up on the Olympia stage, the biggest guys, the leanest guys. And I enjoy watching it like it’s a freak show that I like to see.

However, it is not normal. It’s not normal for them to get their period. But I mean, they do it every year. They show up for the Olympia every year, like the same handful of guys. And you just, you don’t usually see that. I know some natural athletes who compete every year. Right.

Giacomo:

But here’s the deal with the natural athletes. One, sometimes they, some of them just honestly just should not. Like, they’re just addicted to the stage. So you got, you see that kind of person. I’ve been there, not ashamed to admit you have the other kind of bodybuilder who, there’s a reason to do it. They can be more competitive.

Dani:

They might lose their pro card if they don’t compete.

Giacomo:

Not even that. They just have a chance to be more competitive. They know it. They’re chasing like a higher placing, and they could get there. But here’s a difference between the natural and the enhanced. The enhanced can get there no matter what, because they could just take a drug, the natural bodybuilder. Well, within reason, they have aid, they have a way to get there. The natural bodybuilder doesn’t. They know that if they’re not going to have a shot at placing better because

their body’s not cooperating, at some point they got to call it, and they got to wait two years. Even if they even, like, they could have been on trajectory to do better, doing everything right. But if their body

had other plans for them, they have to do the smart thing and know I ain’t gonna place better. I gotta wait, and I gotta do it two years later. Whereas I feel like there’s a lot more wiggle room with enhanced bodybuilding, I think.

Dani:

I mean, maybe.

Giacomo:

We don’t know.

Dani:

Maybe, maybe not. I mean, the, I know more natural bodybuilders than NPC, IFBB bodybuilders, honestly.

Giacomo:

And it’s not like we’re talking about this stuff in grave detail with, I.

Dani:

Love a lot of NPC and IFBB bodybuilders, and most of them compete every year. I mean, most of the ones I follow are women. So part of it could be that they are just smaller and less muscular than some of the guys. Yeah, but most of them do compete every year.

I mean, some of them are just gunning for that Olympia stage, which I get, like, you only have, if that’s your dream, there’s a window of time that you’re gonna be able to accomplish it. I get it. But it just, it wouldn’t even be possible.

Giacomo:

Ooh. Careers do last longer in natural bodybuilding.

Dani:

Careers do last longer in natural bodybuilding.

Giacomo:

You’ve seen Hanse bodybuilders in their eighties, late seventies. You do in natural bodybuilding?

Dani:

Yeah, I mean, they’re not, like, outstanding or anything like that, but they’re still going craziness, and that is, like, so impressive to me. There’s a lot of things about natural bodybuilding. I wish that the whole world would just, like, the natural bodybuilding world would get their shit together, because if they did, I think they could be a force.

Unfortunately, they’re not doing that right now, although there are some positive things happening. But one of the upsides to a natural bodybuilding show is that you do see people in their fifties, sixties, and seventies, men and women that, you know, they might not win a beauty contest, but they’re still exercising, they’re still eating well, they’re still getting out there, and it’s like, it’s really inspiring. All right, guys, thank you so much for tuning in to another

episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels radio. I know this was a big one. Let us know what you think. If you have any questions for us or you’re interested in any kind of coaching, go to veganproteins.com. reach out to us there. You can email us coacheganproteins.com. you will hear back from one of us within a business day. Once again, thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Dani and I’m Giacomo and we will talk to you soon. Bye.