What the hell are steroids anyways?

[Muscle Writer]

In bodybuilding, we hear about steroids all the time but steroids have many other uses other than just building muscle mass! They can help with certain forms of arthritis and pain.

From wiki:
Steroids are used as the main treatment for certain inflammatory conditions, such as systemic vasculitis (inflammation of blood vessels) and myositis (inflammation of muscle). They may also be used selectively to treat inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, Sjögren's syndrome, or gout.

Inflammation is characterized by redness, warmth, swelling, and pain. Steroids reduce the production of inflammatory chemicals in order to minimize tissue damage. Steroids also reduce the activity of the immune system by affecting the function of white blood cells.


Let's get back to the question at hand, What the hell are steroids anyways?


Steroids are basically synthetic hormones! Dr. Ruzicka first discovered the use of steroids in the early 1930s particularly to fight medical conditions like cancer. It actually was the Russians to first start using them in weightlifting in the 1950s.

Dr. Ruzicka who was a Nobel prize winner synthesized Methyltestosterone, Mestanolone, and Methandriol. They started human clinical research trials in 1937!


The First Injectable Anabolic Steroid Product


The testes have been known to be responsible for male-typical characteristics and behaviors since ancient times but it was not until 1849 that scientists learned how this happened. German scientist Arnold Adolf Berthold discovered that the testes influenced masculine behavior by secreting an unknown substance into the bloodstream.


A few decades later, French physiologist Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard, the father of modern-day hormone research, sought to capture this essence of masculinity with a concentrated extract derived from guinea pig and dog testicles. He claimed that injecting the extract would increase physical strength and intellectual ability in humans.


The Discovery and Identification of Testosterone


Organon, Schering, and Ciba rushed to isolate and synthesize the powerful hormones contained in testicular extracts.


Karoly David and Ernst Laqueur of Organon (Netherlands) were the first pharmaceutical team to isolate and identify the chemical structure of testosterone when they isolated 10 mg from 100 kg of bull testicles. The discovery of testosterone was first announced in the classic paper entitled “On Crystalline Male Hormone from Testes (Testosterone): More Active Than Androsterone Preparations from Urine or Cholesterol” on May 27, 1935.


At this point, large quantities of animal testicles were required to extract testosterone which made the use of testosterone impractical for commercial use. However, competing research teams were only months away from publishing more efficient methods of synthesizing testosterone.




The Synthesis of Testosterone and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry


Schering and Ciba independently discovered less expensive methods of synthesizing testosterone in August 1935.


German Biochemist Adolf Butenandt and G. Hanisch of Schering (Germany) published a paper entitled “On Testosterone Conversion of Dehydroandrosterone in Androstenediol and Testosterone: A Method for Preparing Testosterone from Cholesterol” on August 24, 1935.


Croatian organic chemist Leopold Ružička and German chemist Alfred Wettstein of Ciba (Switzerland) published the paper entitled “On the Artificial Preparation of the Testicular Hormone Testosterone (Androsten-3-one-17-ol)” on August 31, 1935.


This steroid research was deemed so important that the lead researchers from the Schering and Ciba teams ultimately shared the 1939 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their remarkable work on anabolic-androgenic steroid hormones.

Research Sources:
Wiki
thinksteroids.com
gizmodo.com