(THE CHEMICAL CONCEPTS)

In our society a reality will become accepted: Age and sexual gender do not dictate athletic potential. With the main stream acceptance of high quality sports supplementation (and I don’t mean USN whose ingredients don’t match the proclaimed label) came stronger fitter bodies of all ages and entire thirty, forty and fifty-something generations pouring into the once undisputed young man’s domain... the gym.
The term "sports chemistry" once meant anabolic/androgenic steroids (AAS) and seedy images of team doctors closing their office doors to inject some illicit substance into an already enhanced athlete. Oh how things have changed! I often marvel at the way that mere perception alters the true reality given statement of fact, so let's open with a good one:


All things good or bad in life depend upon the chemistry we introduce our bodies to.


Before anyone gets upset and dials organizations that investigate illegal activities, let me explain that statement of fact. All organic and inorganic matter is made up of chemicals and chemical substrates. Any living organism (like you and I) not only has the ability to, but an absolute need for interaction with the environment around it through Action/Reaction Factors. As an example, think of the saturated fat in red meat and eggs.. The liver utilizes saturated fats to manufacture or synthesize a steroid called 5-Cholesten-3b-ol. (Most people know this chemical by the name of cholesterol) Through Action/Reaction Factors controlled and induced by natural endogenous (manufactured inside the body) enzymes the body (begins its illegal activities) utilizes a series of chemical biosynthesis pathways that include the following:


(1) Cholesterol > (2) Pregnenolone > (3) Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) > (4) 4-Androstenedione > (5) Testosterone


So Mr. Police man, arrest that body! It just manufactured an illegal AAS and administered it without a doctor's prescription.

If this body had not been provided with saturated fats (chemical substrates) it simply would have utilized unsaturated fats (plant oils) as the initial testosterone precursor. If the intake of all fats had been excluded, the eventual outcome would be predominant loss of lean muscle mass, energy, and libido with dramatic increase of female pattern fat deposits."Sports chemistry" now refers to everything from diet and supplementation to hormone therapy with testosterone, growth hormone (GH), IGF-1, HCG, and progesterone. Thanks to the major advances made by the sports supplement industry the main differences between each of these is the issue of prescription -vs. - OTC since each is merely a chemical/chemical substrate. This fact level and gender by blurring the fine line between chemical muscle enhancement and nature.

All things good or bad in life depend upon the chemistry we introduce our bodies to.

Interestingly enough the majority of endogenous (naturally produced inside the body) testosterone synthesis in males is handled and regulated by the hypothalamus-pituitary-testes-axis (HPTA). It all begins when the hypothalamus receives neuro-net impulses that signal the release of leutenizing-hormone-releasing-hormone (LHRH) which in turn tells the pituitary gland to release leutenizing hormone (LH). LH then makes contact with the testes Leydig 's cells that produce testosterone and release it into the vascular system. However, there is a secondary testosterone synthesis pathway that may be hyper-activated as a result of high intensity training protocols.

The adrenal glands produce several different hormones. The hormone of interest for this issue is called dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). DHEA is an androgen that is responsive to enzymic alterations called conversions. Two of the enzymic conversion products of DHEA are 4-androstenedione and 4-androstenediol which in turn are converted into testosterone by the 17-BHSD and 3-BHSD enzymes respectively. Of course under normal metabolic conditions there are several other potential conversion products possible including estrogens.

To summarize our bodies’ process food and the liver utilizes the fats saturated and unsaturated to produce (1) Cholesterol > (2) Pregnenolone > (3) Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) > (4) 4-Androstenedione > (5) Testosterone

To conclude the article the objective was to demonstrate what the difference is between a nutritional company and a drug company .The later provides the real drug which your body uses and the nutritional company provides you with the pre cursor to the drug. To put into lay mans terms the one provides with a ready baked bread and the other provides with the ingredients to bake the bread the only difference is that you cant be sure that you will end up with a complete loaf of bread.

Real Drug Companies market real Testosterone and nutritional companies market a pre cursor to Testosterone that your body process and the end result is maybe a 5% yield of Testosterone. Just before you get excited and go buy your bag of ergogenic supplies the IOC has also put a ban on most of these products and in not a to distant future you will require a medical script to obtain theses products.

In keeping up with our aim to bring you the truth and the more you know the less you fear we provided with a few pictures of different products to compare the differences.