Bodybuilder's hormones still off balance three years after last cycle

It seems that the negative effects of anabolic steroid use on the body's own testosterone production and fertility are not as temporary as most underground manuals would like us to believe. There's a growing corpse of medical evidence from chemical bodybuilders whose bodies are not recovering from their steroids habit. The latest doom-laden read comes from Morriston Medical center in Swansea, Wales.

The leader in this action, which has been published in Fertility & Sterility, is a 40-year-old bodybuilder. He and his partner have been trying, unsuccessfully, to conceive for six years. Tests have shown that he's the one with a difficulty, not her. His steroids use has left him infertile and with a persistent erection difficulty.

The bodybuilder used growth hormone, Testosterone and Nandrolone for ten years, but had stopped two years before he sought medical help. According to the doctors' reports his corpse was still well muscled, but the first analysis revealed that his testicles were on the small side. The doctors estimated their volume at 3 ml, whereas the average volume of non-steroid using adult males is 18-25 ml. The man's sperm was as dead as a doornail. One ml of normal semen contains 80,000 – 400,000 sperm cells. One ml semen from this bodybuilder contained no sperm cells whatsoever.  Since stopping the steroids the bodybuilder's libido has been short. And on the occasions that he has sex, he's troubled by erection problems.

The doctors measured the bodybuilder's blood concentrations of testosterone, LH and FSH. The standard values for these hormones are 8-40 nano moles/liter, 1.7-8.6 units per liter and 1.5-12.4 units per liter, respectively.   The doctors are at a loss as to how to treat the man, so they have not intervened. They continue to monitor him. Two and a half years after stopping with steroids his testicles started to produce sperm again, but in very small quantities. His testosterone level remains low. For a vaguely normal sexual congress life the man is dependent on the erection medicine prescribed by the doctors.

Although most handbooks and steroids gurus are optimistic about the body's ability to restore its hormonal balance after steroid taking, at least some users don't recover from their cycles. "This case adds to the current literature and illustrates that the side effects of anabolic steroids can be prolonged and irreversible", the doctors conclude.