The Athlete

Performance Enhancing Supplements

Male and female athletes alike use performance enhancing supplements more and more these days. When it comes to sports nutrition, different people use different types of performance enhancing supplements for entirely different goals. For example, some performance enhancing supplements help you lose weight, while others are engineered to help people put muscle or bulk up. Still others may be designed to do neither, but provide either short bursts of energy or allow for increased endurance or power. You should always try to seek professional advise from either a registered sports physician, a nutritionist, sports doctor or trainer before you start taking performance enhancing supplements. They should be able to advise you before you embark on such an endeavor, and always heed their advise. Also, don't forget that just because the use of a certain performance enhancing supplement resulted in safe results for a colleague or teammate or yours, it doesn't mean that it is safe for you to use. Different people react to performance enhancing supplements differently.

Some people have had extremely adverse experiences with performance enhancing supplements. Athletes have actually died from using performance enhancing supplements and there is a long list of possible negative side effects that differ from supplement to supplement. If after consulting a physician or your trainer, you decide to start taking performance enhancing supplements, it's very important to be acutely aware of what you're putting in your body. Always read the labels very carefully. Don't go overboard, and follow the recommended amounts. If you experience any negative side effects, you might want to stop using them. It's also important to carefully monitor your dosages an d keep track on a piece of paper or in a spreadsheet how much you took and when. And if the performance enhancing supplement you use is banned by the sport you play, that's cheating, and nobody likes a cheater.