Making the Team at Any Cost

A spot on the football squad may be the ultimate goal for some athletic students, but what price are young athletes willing to pay to make the team?

"Young athletes are using nutritional supplements to improve their performance or appearance, without knowing if there will be an adverse effect on their bodies in the long run," says Dr. Joseph Chorley, attending physician with the Texas Children's Hospital Adolescent and Sports Medicine Clinic.

"Using supplements like Creatine and Ephedra to boost performance levels and improve physique has been a common practice among adult athletes for years, but now the supplements are showing up in high schools and on playgrounds nationwide," Dr. Chorley says.

Last year, Americans spent close to $13 billion on nutritional supplements, a 250 percent increase from 1998.

According to Dr. Chorley, nutritional supplement users should be extremely cautious, especially during an athlete's developmental years. Currently, the lack of federal regulations and proven data that supplements are safe and effective in young users should be red flags to parents and young athletes to proceed with care.

"Nutritional supplements do not have to pass pre-market safety checks and are not required to give therapeutic doses on the labels; therefore, the user determines the dosage, leaving the door open to overuse," Dr. Chorley says. "There is no way to know how much of a supplement a person is getting per dose. A user may think he or she is taking the right amount of a nutritional powder when, actually, the supplement may just be filled with talc."

In addition, long-term studies on the ingestion of nutritional supplements are inconclusive, and no studies have been completed on children who take supplements.

"The general thinking right now is that if it is safe for adults, then it is safe for children, which is not necessarily true," Dr. Chorley says. "We just don't know what the implications are yet."

Dr. Chorley adds that although some study has been done on supplements, this research has been conducted by supplement manufacturers and is of questionable scientific merit.

Parents should be aware of a young athlete's activities and be ready to confront a child about using supplements. First, parents can educate themselves on supplements by talking to a specialist and obtaining literature on the substance. Also, parents should get to the heart of the problem by asking their children why using the supplement is so important to them.

Lastly, parents should stress the proven ways of attaining a physical goal through proper nutrition and strength training-without the aid of supplements.

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©2006 Texas Medical Center

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