Usage of Performance Enhancing Drugs Starts in Youth Athletes

Sports can be a very large aspect of people’s childhood and upbringing. As sports become more popularized, there is a need for these activities to become more structured with improved rules and regulations. However, as athletes continue growing from childhood to adulthood some regulatory lines become blurred and many individuals become over worked. According to Makhni, Morrow, Luchetti, Mishra-Kalyani, Gualtieri, Lee, Ahmad (2014), “Overuse injury in adolescent baseball players is a growing concern among sports medicine practitioners. Several studies have documented the high prevalence of arm pain experienced by these athletes during the course of the season, indicating that approximately 30% of these athlete’s experience pain in the shoulder or elbow throughout the course of the season” (41). From the author\u27s personal experience, when involved in tournament structures of athletics there was an over emphasis on continuing to play without the proper rest needed for the body to heal from over exertion. This led the author to retiring from sports earlier than maybe foreseen or wanted and this experience is not uncommon. With that being said, the passion for an individual’s sport can fuel continual involvement in competition that can lead to unforeseen injuries. A key component that holds relevance to this topic is the various ways athletes attempt to promote peak physicality of their bodies and not all of these are considered societally acceptable practices. Many athletes use Performance Enhancing Drugs (PEDs) to promote peak physicality. In the following sections, PED usage, foundation of this pattern, regulations on exertion, and personal experience, will be explored to place greater emphasis on the tendencies for youth to get over worked and with this, it can lead to the usage of PEDs throughout a professional career in an attempt to raise peak physicality and avoid potential downfalls associated with athletic over exertion