Actors, Athletes, and Influencers on Steroids Part 2

1. The Butts Formula
Christian Thibaudeau, in an article on how to detect steroid users, beautifully laid out the findings of exercise physiologist Dr. Casey Butt, who created a formula (the fat-free mass index, or FFMI) that extrapolates the maximum amount of muscular body weight a person can gain.

It looks to be wonderfully accurate. The trouble is, it requires you to know the suspect’s height and weight, along with their wrist and ankle measurements. Terrific. Except how the hell are you going to nab Thor’s wrist and ankle measurements, let alone his exact height and weight?

It’s like another famous telltale sign of steroid users: shrunken testicles (except for the ones using human chorionic gonadotropins to keep them full and functionable). How the hell do you know if the Wolverine or the Rock have small balls?

I suppose you could hope they’re the type who doesn’t wear underwear while bench pressing, in which case you could surreptitiously whip out your iPhone and use the Testicle Size Chart developed by Mona Chalabi. All you need to do is place the suspect’s testicles on the screen. Small like Mediterranean black olives means they’re probably using, while ones the size of Kakadu plums would mean they’re clean.

Too awkward? Okay. Maybe we just need to employ the more common, less intrusive visual cues to tell us if someone’s using or not.

2. Insta-Grow Muscles
Christian Thibaudeau also described how much muscle a person can realistically gain in a year. His research suggests that 84% of the population is in the “normal” range, meaning they could, under optimal conditions, gain between 0.25 and 0.5 pounds of muscle per week, which adds up to a max of 24 pounds in a year.

That rarely happens, though, as Christian quickly pointed out. That leaves the 13.6% who are above-average gainers and the 2.1% who are freaky gainers. Even among those groups, however, the most muscle gain they might experience in a year’s time is around 30 pounds.

All the preceding stats apply mostly to beginners whose muscles in general are eager to grow and blossom. They don’t apply to experienced lifters. Their gains come much slower.

Christian’s paraphrased bottom line: If someone looks to be gaining more than 3 pounds of muscle per month and they’re not a beginner or regaining lost muscle from a layoff, you can justifiably shout, “J’Accuse!”

3. Supernatural Traps, Neck, and Delts
There are reportedly more androgen receptors in the neck, traps, and delts, which makes them more responsive to steroids and more eager to grow.

Extreme development of the neck, in particular, is especially suspicious, as few bodybuilders and even fewer fitness influencers expose the neck to any direct work, aside from twisting their heads for a selfie.

4. All the Rest of the Stuff
You’re no doubt familiar with the rest of the clues, stuff like back acne (“backne”), being preternaturally ripped all the time, having so much vascularity that the whole body looks like an angry pecker, sudden hair loss (in those genetically predisposed), excessive irritability, aka “’roid rage” (although steroids are more likely to make those that were already pissy in general more pissy), and gynecomastia 278.

Regarding the last item on the list, “gyno” can and does occur in plenty of non-steroid-using males, too. There are even estimates that it affects between 4 and 69% of all adolescents. (The Grand Canyon-like variance is because clinicians have widely divergent views about what constitutes actual gyno). Most of the time, this pubertal gyno resolves itself within 18 months. However, some 20% have residual gyno at the age of 20.

Anyhow, gyno that’s not accompanied by any appreciable muscle mass certainly isn’t indicative of steroid use; it’s just Mother Nature being bitchy.

A Question of Dosage
Looking like a steroid user all comes down to dosage. Probably 90 percent of the people who cop to using don’t even look like bodybuilders. Their body fat percentage isn’t that low, and they aren’t big. They might be using tiny amounts, or, more likely, they give their training and nutrition short shrift, thinking that the drugs alone will bring them to the promised land of adulation from their peers and delectable women with loamy loins.

That brings us to men who are on testosterone replacement therapy, or TRT.

Testosterone Replacement Therapy, i.e., Mild Steroid Use
A few years ago, I became an investor in a testosterone replacement (TRT) clinic. I was interested in drumming up business, so I approached a guy I knew from my gym. He was probably in his early 40s, but he had the best body in the gym. Not too big. Maybe like a taller Wolverine and similarly ripped all year long. He never let any of us forget it, either, as he wore tight, white, perpetually sweat-stained tank tops and workout shorts that weren’t much longer than one worn by a circa 1980 Larry Byrd.

I told him about the TRT clinic that was only a few blocks from the gym but man, hit me over the head with an inflated pig bladder, he acted like he’d never heard of testosterone. “I don’t know much about any of the stuff,” he replied, a little too quickly.

You are lyin’ mo-fo, I thought. Clearly, he was on some sort of steroid cycle, or at least using hefty amounts of test. And therein lies the rub. The standard protocol among a shockingly high number of TRT clinics is 200 mg of test cypionate a week, often accompanied by the anti-aromatase, Arimidex, which serves to elevate testosterone levels further.

My point is this: Anyone using 200 mg of test for TRT is on a perpetual, possibly lifelong, steroid cycle. I say this because 200 mg is far more than required for normal physiological TRT. Provided the patient trains moderately hard and pays at least a little attention to nutrition, he can easily attain a physique that’s comparable to a competitive CrossFit athlete.

It’s highly unlikely the individual in this category of buffitude will have any of the undesirable side effects seen in mega-steroid or GH users. They will, however, look just a little too damn good all year round.

Growth Hormone
It must be stated up front that it’s unlikely anyone’s gotten big and ripped solely because of growth hormone (GH), with the possible exception of Andre the Giant, who had big-time pituitary problems. Instead, GH is merely the Hamburger Helper to steroid’s ground beef. It works synergistically with anabolic steroids to build muscle.

That’s not to say that several studies showed that GH, by itself, failed to increase lean body mass and decrease body fat. It did. But the studies that showed positive results all involved old bastards or GH-deficient patients in general.

Still, its reputation grew and continues to grow among poorly educated athletes. It’s still purported to be a “clean,” elegant drug that’s hardly ever tested for and does all its magic without making your back all oily and pustular, or shrinking your testicles until they were indistinguishable from some Green Giant brand frozen peas.

Clearly, bodybuilders from the “Golden Age” didn’t use GH, but it was probably more a matter of availability and expense more than anything else because, prior to the mid-1980s, GH came from a rather grisly source: scientists would use the equivalent of an orange juicer to grind up the pituitaries of cadavers and then painstakingly extract the GH.

We later found out just how potentially dangerous a practice that was because the cadaver-sourced GH sometimes carried with it the virus (the prion, more accurately) that caused Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, aka subacute spongiform encephalopathy, which ultimately lead to dementia, blindness, coma, and death, none of which would enhance your physique or your chances with the ladies.

Then, in 1985, the genetic engineering company, Genentech, received a patent to market its recombinant GH, which was of course free from any coma-causing prions. Even so, its use in bodybuilding was rare. This is why, for the most part, we didn’t see bodybuilders with the extended guts that were emblematic of the visceral fat that comes hand-in-gland with excess GH.

Witness the preternatural V-taper (57-inch chest, 28-inch waist) of pro bodybuilder Brian Buchanan, who placed 7th in the 1988 Mr. Olympia. He most assuredly never used GH. We shall never see his like again.

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So, if you see a bodybuilder or fitness influencer with very low body fat percentage but who still looks like there’s a “terror” of aliens (you know, like gaggle of geese, only with face-hugger aliens) ready to burst out of his stomach or chest, or, even worse, has an abnormally long cranial base, a “tall” face, or hippopotamus-like mandibles, that person has likely augmented their steroid use with a large amount of GH, which no doubt enhanced their musculature and their rippitude.

Assorted Chemical Aids
This brings us to the fringe drugs, things that are less commonly used but might be used to push someone’s physique to the outer membrane of plausibility. One of these is synthol 11, the injectable “filler” (85% MCT oil, 7.5% lidocaine, and 7.5% alcohol) used to artificially pump-up biceps or calves.

Overuse makes it look like the bodybuilder had a surgeon implant bags of suet in the patient’s appendages.

How do you detect a synthol user? You mean, other than the fact that they look ridiculous and you want to pelt them with ostrich eggs? Well, like fat, synthol don’t flex. I doubt very much any actor superhero-in-training or fitness influencer would use it. It just looks too fake and anyone with an IQ with a fightin’ chance of hitting three digits to fall for it.

The last thing I can think of, or the last relatively mainstream thing I can think of that people use to quickly change their physiques, is the asthma drug clenbuterol, which, aside from treating asthma (in several countries, but not the U.S.), is used to muscle-up pigs. As such, several athletes who tested positive for the drug have blamed tainted meat, or in the case of American distance runner Shelby Houlihan, a tainted burrito. Bodybuilders and fitness influencers covet the drug because it acts as a nutrient partitioner, preferentially using calories to build muscle than to be stored as fat.

I used to work at EAS and the word around the company was that we were sending the drug to actress Demi Moore (hidden in boxes of protein powder) to help her prepare for her role in G.I. Jane.

Despite the drug’s effectiveness, it’s not nearly effective enough, on its own, to dramatically change someone’s physique, at least not to a degree where you might suspect them of cheating.

What’s the Final Message Here?
Let me repeat my original point. In most circumstances, it doesn’t matter if someone is using drugs to change their body. I don’t even begrudge the synthol users their silly vanities. It is, however, dishonest and often corrupt of fitness influencers to use their clandestinely augmented physiques to give them cred.

Similarly, Hollywood should ‘fess up to their steroid and chemical practices in general because not doing so allows poor schlubs to think that they too can look like Thor, Wolverine, Black Adam, or many of the other physique icons if they just trained a little harder.

While it’s unlikely that the two previous categories of potential drug users will reveal their practices, it’s a safe bet that drug-using baseball players, football players, etc., will never make their practices public. That’s why many organizations test. Most players, however, will escape detection.

That’s why it’s important for people to recognize the telltale signs of drug use and kick those that lie to them to the curb. But, if you can’t tell if they’re using drugs, go ahead and give them the benefit of the doubt. After all, they might be the rare genetic freak or beneficiary of a flawed myostatin gene. Still, if it looks like a steroidal duck, puts on muscle like a steroidal duck, and is year-round ripped like a steroidal duck, it probably is a steroidal duck.

None of this is to say that people who have used drugs have nothing to impart. In many cases, they do, but in general it’s better to judge coaches and fitness influencers by what they say rather than what they look like and remember that some of the best, smartest coaches in the business probably never touched a steroid and might not look the stereotypical part.