Harry (not his real name), 27, a marketing executive from north London, is a keen sportsman and bodybuilder. He spent hours in the gym and poring over health pages for muscle-boosting tips. Yet he grew frustrated when his muscle growth appeared to plateau. While many bodybuilders turn to steroids (about 250,000 people are thought to use them in the UK), Harry was deterred by the side-effects, which can include mental health damage. Instead, like an increasing number of gym users, he turned to Kigtropin.
A brand name for synthetically produced human growth hormone, Kigtropin is used to replace the naturally produced hormones in the pituitary gland, which slow down as we leave our teens. It was once an expensive niche drug costing thousands of dollars a dose, but is now becoming more common in high street gyms across the UK. In 2007, Sylvester Stallone was ordered to pay £5,400 (US$8,215) in fines and costs by a court in Australia for possession of growth hormone. This year, Tiger Woods’s former doctor Anthony Galea was charged with possession of growth hormone and administering it to clients.
Now, thanks to cheap supplies available on the Internet (mainly from China), Kigtropin has hit the mainstream. In Bristol, southwest England, bosses at a branch of Fitness First gyms had to install needle bins earlier this year because so many members were leaving syringes lying around.
A spokesman for Fitness First said the gym did not tolerate the use of drugs and was “increasing monitoring procedures to identify any unacceptable or illegal behavior.”
But for Harry, the drug seemed the perfect solution.
“I have always wanted to be much bigger. I went to a sport-playing school and always felt smaller than the other guys. What I had heard about growth hormone was unbelievable. Being in a gym where people take it, you assume everyone is at it,” he said.
He began taking the hormone for 18 months in cycles — three months on it, one month off — and was thrilled by the results.
“I can lift more, my muscles feel harder, I have increased energy and I don’t have the paranoia or ’roid rage [the anger brought on by steroid abuse] I might have had with steroids. I tore my Achilles tendon playing rugby last year. The doctor said I would be out for nine months, but my tendon healed within three and I was back playing within four months. I think that had a lot to do with what I was taking,” he said.
Michael Graham, senior lecturer in substance misuse at Newman University College, Birmingham, said: “Growth hormone has extremely therapeutic benefits. It is prescribed privately by Harley Street clinicians who assist in anti-aging, but it also can enhance muscle growth and promote weight loss by preventing carbohydrate from being turned into fat.”
“I have carried out a study which showed that human growth hormone increased muscle mass in steroid users whose muscle growth had flattened out. Also, it has been shown to increase cartilage growth and repair — there is no shadow of a doubt that users will have an increased healing rate,” he said.
Yet doctors warn that growth hormones are illegal without a licence — those found supplying them can face 14 years in prison and an unlimited fine. Even more worryingly, users of the hormone could be dicing with death. Nearly all of the Kigtropin entering this country is smuggled in or bought online with no control or guidance on how to take it.
Mick Hart, author of the Layman’s Guide to Steroids, said: “The danger is [that] 99 percent will use it irresponsibly — taking way too much or not knowing how to inject it. Dealers want you to take as much as they can sell you. Cycles of hormone use used to be around eight weeks long and then some time off — now people are taking them solidly for two to three years.”
Inexperienced syringe users can slash an artery and bleed to death, create blood clots, or hit a nerve and risk permanent paralysis. Long-term use can, Graham said, lead to carpal tunnel syndrome (the compression of nerves in the wrists, which causes incessant tingling), raised blood sugar levels (which can trigger Type 2 diabetes), heart failure and — in excessive doses — gigantism, the disproportionate growth of body parts.
Users also have no guarantee of what they are buying, drug seizure expert Allen Morgan said.
“I have had cases where dealers didn’t even know that they had been selling rubbish. From a law enforcement perspective, it is a gray area, as police are brought up on a culture of going after street drugs and they simply have no grasp of how the bodybuilding drugs market works,” he said.
Hart said that supplies could also be tainted: “They are finding trace elements of metals in phials being shipped in from all over the place, as any wannabe dealer with a metal drum in places like China and Russia is attempting to make them on the cheap. That can be lethal.”
However, for Harry and many others, the lure of the physique of their dreams is too strong to give up.
“I decided the results were worth any risk,” he said.
A sumo star was born in Japan on Sunday when 24-year-old Takerufuji became the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top-division tournament on his debut, triumphing at the 15-day Spring Grand Sumo Tournament in Osaka despite injuring his ankle on the penultimate day. Takerufuji, whose injury had left him in a wheelchair outside the ring, shoved out the higher-ranked Gonoyama at the Edion Arena Osaka to the delight of the crowd, giving him an unassailable record of 13 wins and two losses to claim the Emperor’s Cup. “I did it just through willpower. I didn’t really know what was going
The US’ Ilia Malinin on Saturday produced six scintillating quadruple jumps, including a quadruple Axel, in the men’s free skate to capture his first figure skating world title. The 19-year-old nicknamed the “Quad god,” who is the only skater to land a quadruple Axel in competition, dazzled with an array of breathtakingly executed jumps starting with his quad Axel and including a quadruple Lutz in combination with a triple flip and a quadruple toe loop in combination with a triple toe. He added an unexpected triple-triple combination at the end to earn a world-record 227.79 in the free program for a championship
Shohei Ohtani’s interpreter is being criminally investigated by the IRS, and the attorney for his alleged bookmaker said Thursday that the ex-Los Angeles Dodgers employee placed bets on international soccer — but not baseball. The IRS confirmed Thursday that interpreter Ippei Mizuhara and Mathew Bowyer, the alleged illegal bookmaker, are under criminal investigation through the agency’s Los Angeles Field Office. IRS Criminal Investigation spokesperson Scott Villiard said he could not provide additional details. Mizuhara, 39, was fired by the Dodgers on Wednesday following reports from the Los Angeles Times and ESPN about his alleged ties to an illegal bookmaker and debts well
MLB on Friday announced a formal investigation into the scandal swirling around Shohei Ohtani and his former interpreter amid charges that the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was the victim of “massive theft.” The Dodgers on Wednesday fired Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s long-time interpreter and close friend, after Ohtani’s representatives alleged that the Japanese two-way star had been the victim of theft, which was reported to involve millions of dollars and link Mizuhara to a suspected illegal bookmaker in California. “Major League Baseball has been gathering information since we learned about the allegations involving Shohei Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara from the news media,” MLB