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According to a study by Roger Tobin, Tufts University physicist, the use of steroids by a Major League baseball slugger can easily result in significant improvements in terms of home run production along with modest enhancements in the bat-and-ball speed and muscle mass. It was remarked that the production of home runs can be enhanced by as much as 50 percent or more with the use of steroids.

From News-Medical.Net:

“A change of only a few percent in the average speed of the batted ball, which can reasonably be expected from steroid use, is enough to increase home run production by at least 50 percent,” he says. This disproportionate effect arises because home runs are relatively rare events that occur on the “tail of the range distribution” of batted balls.

“In most any statistical distribution — of people’s heights, SAT scores, or how far baseballs are hit — there’s a large bump where most of the values fall, with the graph falling rapidly as you move away from that region in either direction toward the rarer values,” explains Tobin. “It’s a well-known statistical property of such distributions that a relatively small shift in the center point of the distribution can produce a much larger proportional change in the number of values well above or below the center. Because the distribution’s ‘tail’ is particularly sensitive to small changes in the peak and/or width, home run records can be more strongly affected by steroid use than other athletic accomplishments.”

Tobin was quick to acknowledge the fact that modern-day athletes achieve more than athletes of the past but this improved trend cannot be only due to cheating. He further remarked that Physics is unable to determine whether or not a specific home run is assisted by steroid nor can it indicate if an extraordinary performance is all about the use of steroids. But Physics and Physiology can reveal some untold truths about the use of steroids and improved home run production.

The findings of this study are expected to be of utmost importance as the game of baseball has often been troubled by accusation of steroids.

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Jareem Gunter, a college baseball player with dreams of making it big in the world of professional sports, told Congress this Tuesday that his dreams were shattered after he discovered that what was considered by him as a safe and legal dietary supplement resulted in liver failure.

From TimesUnion.com:

“A key principle of the (’94) law is that supplements were not subject to pre-market approval, since the cost and time alone required to see a product through FDA approval would sound the death knell for this industry,” Hatch said. As for products that contain steroids, he said, “Simply put, under current law, these products are not allowed to be marketed.”

Michael Levy, director of the FDA’s division of new drugs and labeling compliance, told the panel his agency has a limited ability to keep dietary supplements with steroids from being marketed.

“FDA generally cannot identify violative products before they enter the marketplace,” Levy said. “After products enter the market, we must undertake a painstaking investigative and analytical process” to show the products violate the law.

Daniel Fabricant, interim executive director and CEO of the Natural Products Association, which represents retailers, manufacturers, suppliers and distributors of health foods and dietary supplements, said, “The barriers to enforcement are simple: money, manpower and will.”

It is really sad to know about one more possibly new episode of steroidabuse. One thing that people tend to forget while using steroids or supplements is the fact that both of them need to be used as per qualified medical advice and as per the instructions. Steroid abuse can only lead to side effects like what Jareem faced.

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If you want to stay protected from the deadly H1N1 virus (swine flu) then this video on swine flu immunity is just meant for you. Stay protected and keep your loved ones protected too.

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