Growth Hormone

Don't know about you, but I was feeling a little bit left out while Barry Bonds bore down on Babe Ruth the past couple of months. How could you help but pine for those halcyon days when Baltimore was -- for a couple of months -- the center of the steroid universe. Now, you don't have to. Former Orioles pitcher Jason Grimsley, with his tawdry admissions and redacted deposition, has re-established Charm City as the East Coast capital of baseball's still-mushrooming performance-enhancing drug scandal, and I have only one thing to say: Baltimore: Get In On It!

WASHINGTON -- Months before former Oriole Jason Grimsley said he and other players were using human growth hormone, Congress was quietly pressuring baseball to save players' urine specimens so they could be analyzed when a test for the performance-boosting drug becomes available. The idea was to make certain a deterrent existed so that players could not use the growth hormone with impunity while a screening procedure was still in development. But Major League Baseball balked at the request, according to interviews with baseball officials and congressional staff.

Two years ago, Richard Casey was feeling his age. At 48, he was tired, gaining weight and suffering from a growing number of aches and pains. On top of that, his libido had decreased. "I could see the distance between my 40s and my 20s," he says. "As I looked ahead, it was all downhill. That's depressing." Looking for relief, he found a Chicago doctor named Paul Savage, who focuses on adjusting hormone levels in older patients. Savage modified Casey's diet and workout, and prescribed several hormones, including human growth hormone.

Restore your looks, health, energy and physical abilities." "What was once the secret of celebrities is now finally within the grasp of everyone." The claims on "anti-aging" Web sites promise that human growth hormone will give aging adults everything from better memory to better skin tone, better waistlines and a better sex drive. Not surprisingly, though, the benefits of the hormone - whose U.S. sales far exceeded $700 million last year - are much more limited. And its downsides are far greater than the ads let on, including an increased risk of diabetes, especially in men. True, growth hormone can boost muscle and reduce body fat. But, while you may look more buff, you may not actually be stronger, research suggests.

FORMER major league pitcher Tom House claims he was a human medicine chest during his playing career, which can mean only one thing. He's going to have a hard time getting into the Hall of Fame. House is also going to have a hard time getting anyone to believe him, though he was once considered something of a pioneer in the area of pitching mechanics and conditioning. It was House who popularized the idea of having pitchers throw a football to perfect their motion, but the notion that he would have had access to human growth hormone (HGH)

Patricia Costa's friends told her Nicole was a perfect little girl. Sure, she was tiny for a 3-year-old, but she was adorable and perfectly proportioned. She had a charming feistiness about her -- a determination that seemed to grow as Nicole confronted the childhood taunts of bigger peers and the indignities of being the smallest kid in school. Like many other children who rank at the bottom of growth charts, Nicole had no identifiable disorder depressing her growth. So what if she's tiny, Patricia's friends insisted.

NEW YORK - The use of muscle-building drugs and amphetamines remains commonplace in major league baseball, current and former major leaguers say, even as players are being tested for steroids for the first time this season. Far from abandoning performance-enhancing drugs, they say, some players have switched from steroids to drugs like human growth hormone. Some players who say they do not use muscle-building drugs contend that this places them in a difficult position: either join in and use the banned substances or risk losing ground to players who use them in an effort to win the huge contracts that come with hitting the ball farther or throwing it harder.

Dr. Ron Livesey was fat, tired and out of shape. At 49, he felt that his best years were behind him. So one day seven years ago, on his way to a meeting, he stopped at a doctor's office in Palm Springs, Calif., for his first hormone injections. Early the next morning, Livesey was at the medical meeting, sitting in a darkened auditorium watching slides of technical data. To his surprise, he found himself alert, taking everything in. He continued the hormone treatments. "People started commenting that I had so much more bounce and energy," he said.

Q. I am a 30-year-old man, and I am starting to feel old. I am in the Army and can tell that I've lost a step on the younger guys. I want to improve my overall health, and after looking here and there, I think growth hormone (GH) is probably the best way to go. I'm not trying to boost my performance so much as get some of my old recovery time back. Would my body quit producing GH if I started taking it? That is the last thing I want to happen, as it would eventually tie me to a supplement.

Which will it be, a drug-free Olympics or the most doped Games ever? From the creatine and steroids that are being abused on high school football teams to the HGH (human growth hormone) and EPO that enhance recovery time and, thus, improve training for world-class athletes, performance-enhancing substances have altered the sports landscape. Last week, the International Olympic Committee trumpeted its steps to police the use of EPO - the hormone erthyropoietin. EPO, which increases the production of oxygen-rich red blood cells, was developed to help victims of kidney diseases but has become the banned substance of choice among endurance athletes who cheat.