15% of Your Vitamins and Supplements are Spiked with Steroids

Your Vitamins are being Spiked with Steroids!

Regardless of whether they know it or not, many ordinary people who might not even workout are taking steroids. And it’s all because certain vitamin and supplement makers are secretly pumping their products with steroids and other substances in order to boost their performance.

Middle-aged women who are looking to improve their health, younger guys trying to add a little boost to their workout regiment, older men who might be deficient in some nutritional areas, and younger girls who are looking for a hotter body…..the list of people who use nutritional supplements and vitamins come from all walks of life.

And most of them are just average, ordinary people who are simply searching for another means of staying fit, and in good health. Sí, there are some who also want to look great, get that sexy body, and compete in sports but for the most part, vitamin and nutritional supplement users mainly hope to keep good physical fitness.

But what if these normal, everyday people found out that there is something else in their nutritional supplements. Something that they never expected to find in a seemingly inconspicuous, little vitamin or indistinct supplement. Something like steroids, or much, mucho peor, cross-contamination that could put things in vitamins people never dreamed they would be consuming.

Sí, this sounds a little far-fetched and like I’m just making this entire thing up in order to entertain you but the fact is that there are steroids being found in vitamins and nutritional supplements and there is also cross-contamination being found in products such as these as well. What’s bad is that most people are more worried about the steroids being accidentally used by athletes than they are about the cross-contamination.

No obstante, most people don’t know that the truth is some nutritional supplements have been being spiked with steroids in order to improve their performance for quite some time now. But this practice has evolved into something much larger now that new supplements are being spiked with even larger amounts of steroids, most of them unknown to the customer.

This subject recently came up at an anti-doping symposium that was organized by the International Association of Athletic Federations. Hans Geyer, a researcher from the Cologne Doping Control Laboratory in Germany, explained to the symposium that studies concluded that products on the international market contained large amounts of anabolic steroids such as stanozolol and metandienone.

What is so amazing about this is that there was no mention of either of these steroids on the labels of the products that contained them. Geyer said of these shocking findings, “The situation in the nutritional supplement market has worsened and the risk of inadvertent doping is increasing. It's absolutely catastrophic, even criminal in some cases."

The risk of inadvertent doping Geyer speaks of refers to the possibility that some athletes who have to undergo drug testing for their sport could fail a test despite never touching a steroid. They could turn up positive for steroids just by taking certain vitamins and supplements without ever knowing what they are ingesting.

This is where the real outrage takes place among the sports governing world as everything all of these international federations have worked so hard to protect could be tainted due to what’s inside products that are supposed to be natural supplements and vitamins. And in a world where millions of dollars are wasted chasing around athletes who are possible juicers, putting a reasonable doubt on a steroid test does become a major crime.

So what do the sports authorities recommend athletes do since even things that are labeled natural vitamins could contain enough steroids to get a person suspended from their sport? Bien, la mayor parte, the general consensus is that supplement usage isn’t really recommended. But there is work being done so that athletes can know what to use and what not to use.

The head of a World Anti-Doping Agency (AMA) accredited lab, Christiane Ayotte, said of the matter, “We don’t promote the use of supplements. But we are in a very difficult position as we are being pressured by athletes, national organizations and federations to help athletes choose good supplements. Athletes are told not to dope, to take nothing on the list. So they say 'Tell us what we can take’.”

Geyer also weighed in again on the subject by saying, “During the Tour de France most nutritional intake is done on the bicycle and mostly by nutritional supplements. You can't take the schnitzel on the bicycle. Those are the supplements we need to test. We don't recommend nutritional supplements but if they want or need to take nutritional supplements, they should take those with a minimized risk.”

Sports authorities are so worried about this problem that they are constantly testing new lines of supplements and vitamins that are coming out much like the International Olympic Committee did in 2002 when they looked at 624 different supplements from 13 países. Their findings concluded that about 15% of non-hormonal supplements ranging from vitamins and minerals to creatine contained illegal steroids not listed on the label.

So while it looks like most of the higher powers that be may be focusing on the fact that some vitamins and supplements contain steroids because of the athletes, I think there is a much, much more dangerous problem on the arise with some of these products. And that problem deals with cross-contamination issues which are much more alarming than a professional athlete undeservingly failing a drug test.

Just last year German food control services confiscated a load of nutritional supplements that had been pumped full of the steroid stanazolol at a German company. While the supplements were pulled because they contained an illegal steroid, the food control services discovered something even worse in the vitamins than expected. They found that vitamin C, multi-vitamin, and magnesium tablets were being cross-contaminated with the supplements that contained steroids.

And the kicker is that these traditional vitamins were being sold in normal grocery stores to average, everyday people. Germany isn’t the only place where illegal substances are turning up in supplements and vitamins though. A Czech company was found to be making herbal diet capsules that contained a substance called sibutramine.

For those of you who are wondering what sibutramine is, it is a banned weight loss stimulant that is suspected of causing heart failure and even sudden death in some cases. The worst part is that there is no mention of sibutramine being in these herbal diet capsules because it isn’t on the label.

So while it may not be a life or death situation that some steroids are being put into supplements, it is definitely a concern to think that some people who can’t handle a substance like sibutramine because of their heart may be using these products. And what if something even more potent than sibutramine is being put into supplements and vitamins?

Athletes failing drug test because they took spiked supplements they thought were natural is a serious situation. But a person with a certain kind of condition getting a hold of the wrong kind of substance in a vitamin they thought was harmless is a very serious situation. Ojala, extensive research will continue to be done on this subject so that future disasters can be prevented.

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