*******This is a body building tribe, you should be into bulking - that's the building part. **************

Oh I think that's taking a rather narrow view.

Aside from my personal non-enhanced approach to weight lifting, I have something more that steers me away from enhancement products.

Anything that promotes growth can possibly also promote growth of malignant growths. This is seen in Stem cell work where the ability to control the growth on the level of the CoDna the RNA and ensure mitochondrial cooperation is complete. If it takes off the intended path strange and bad things can happen.

Doctors Lucio Tentori & Grazia Graziani of the Department of Neuroscience, University of Rome have done some excellent work which indicates a serious need for further study of a possible linkage between accelerated growth products and complimentary development and acceleration of the growth of cancerous growths in the body.

They observe that Anabolic steroids are seen on other literature to encourage liver tumors ( the word they use is "provoke").
Growth factor-1 (IGF-1) is tied to cancers of the colon, breast, and prostate. IGF-1 pushed cells to reproduce faster. Another function og IGF-1 is that is inhibits apoptosis ( apoptosis is DNA programmed Cellular death). Their research shows that IGF-1 accomplishes this result by either by triggering other growth factors or by interacting with cellular molecular pathways which have an established role in carcinogenesis and cancer promotion. More recently, the finding that erythropoietin (Epo) ( which is often taken to encourage red blood cell production) may promote angiogenesis ( making new blood vessels) and inhibit apoptosis or modulate chemo- or radiosensitivity in cancer cells expressing the Epo receptor, raised the concern that the use of recombinant Epo to increase tissue oxygenation might favor tumor survival and aggressiveness.

Apoptosis inhibition is is particularly disturbing because this is the same4 molecular mechanism that makes Nicotine inhaled as smoke so dangerous. The nicotine causes cell death in the respiratory system. However the nicotine causes the cells to interpret their internal signals to tell them that they should not die. This cause the cells which are damaged by the nicotine to remain partially viable in a damaged state where they are highly likely to produce malignant defective cells that can be cancerous. And Interestingly Marijuana does not do this.
But I digress.

If it is true that IGF-1 promotes cell cycle progression and inhibits apoptosis ( and there is no reason to say it is not true) then IGF-1 is both pushing cells to reproduce faster while preventing damaged cells from dying off and in that manner can cause the development of cancerous growth - which the IGF-1 will also be encouraging to grow at an enhanced rate.

If it is also true that Epo both inhibits apoptosis and interferes with known cancer treatments that use radiation or Chemo therapy then it too is a potential horror story because it is possible that it can make the only treatments available for some cancers less useful.


So I steer clear of those things for other reasons than some "Mister Natural" thing . It is my belief that these things have been shown to be of adequate risk that their use is not worth the potential downsides.
I really don't care If I leave a good looking corpse.