We all know about the pressure that society puts on young girls to have the ‘perfect body’. Pictures of stick-thin models and celebrities mean that increasingly girls feel the need to diet and exercise to get thin. The way the media portrays people’s bodies is often unrealistic and has been linked to illnesses such as anorexia and depression. But it’s not just girls that are under pressure to look a certain way. Blokes too often feel under pressure to have the perfect, rippled body.

For boys, big is best, and the bigger your muscles are, the better. Exercising and taking care of yourself is one thing, but for most guys a body like Brad Pitt is pretty hard to get. Increasingly, guys in search of the perfect, muscled physique are being tempted to take anabolic steroids to help them achieve this. Sure, the effects on muscle growth can often be dramatic. But unfortunately it comes with a price.

What they are:

Anabolic steroids are a group of man-made chemicals that are similar to testosterone. They’re not the same as the steroids that some people are prescribed by their doctor for diseases such as arthritis. They come in tablets or in liquid form which has to be injected. They’re sold on the black market, often in gyms, and there are often fake or mixed with other chemicals, meaning you can’t be sure what you’re getting.

They work on muscle by making it grow. The only problem is, they work on every other cell in the body too, and as a result can produce some pretty nasty side effects.

The down side:

Anabolic steroids can be really bad for your health and can cause serious damage to your body. They can cause damage to your heart, your kidneys and your liver, as well as stunting your growth.

They can make you very aggressive – this is called ‘roid rage’. While people might take them to make them feel good about their body, they can actually bring on severe depression and suicidal feelings.

So they can cause a lot of damage both to your physical and mental health. But also, rather than making you look like the muscled hunk you want, they can affect your appearance for the worse:

They can make you go bald – at whatever age you take them

They give you acne, not just on your face, but all over your back, shoulders and chest. Not a good look, really.

If this wasn’t bad enough, they can also make you grow breasts, which don’t go away when you stop taking the anabolic steroids, meaning the only way to treat this is with surgery.

They often make a guy’s nuts shrink and reduce the amount of sperm you produce to the extent that it can make you infertile. They also make you impotent.

The reality is, there’s no quick fix solution if you want to get bigger muscles. Go to the gym, work out sensibly, eat properly. While it might be tempting, the side effects of anabolic steroids can often mean you’ll end up feeling far less attractive than before you took them.

Dr Alex Shand