IndexHow do athletes hide the use of performance-enhancing drugs in tests?How much advantage does doping give the athlete?How does the use of Can doping have a negative impact on the body? ConclusionSteroids have been one of the major performance-enhancing drugs that everyone has heard of. However, there are plenty of growth hormones and performance-enhancing drugs that are introduced every year to try to stay one step ahead of WADA (World Anti-Doping Association). This is not a recent problem and has been happening for decades. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay How do athletes hide the use of performance-enhancing drugs on tests? The vast majority of sports and sporting events require all athletes involved to take a test that detects performance-enhancing drugs. This discourages athletes from doping. However, athletes get away with taking them every year. They do this by using masking agents such as diuretics. Diuretics increase the rate of urinary flow and sodium excretion to regulate the volume and composition of body fluids. These can be abused by athletes because they excrete water for rapid weight loss and to mask the presence of banned performance-enhancing drugs. Diuretics are not the only drug used to disguise themselves, there are hundreds of others that use different techniques to disguise themselves. Former Australian modern pentathlete Alex Watson has tested positive for excessive amounts of caffeine in his system. That's because excessive amounts of a suspect substance in an athlete sometimes raise red flags for testers, and caffeine had been a previous masking agent for some performance-enhancing drugs. However, after some further investigation and after Watson claimed he was never involved in doping. How much advantage does doping give an athlete? The definition of doping in sport is all prohibited substances, procedures and methods that are allegedly used to gain an advantage over other competitors. The reason they are all banned is because they can offer an advantage. But how much benefit do they really offer? Steroids are basically liquid testosterone and increase the production of red blood cells which improve the repair of other cells and the distribution of oxygen to the muscles, therefore increasing muscle growth. In 1996, an experiment was carried out in which 43 men were divided into 4 groups. But they didn't know which group they belonged to because they were injected with ether with testosterone or simply with a placebo. This experiment was performed in 1996 and can be found on the New England Journal of Medicine website.• Group 1 did not train for 10 weeks.• Group 2 took 600 mg of anabolic steroids and did not train for 10 weeks.• Group 3 did not take steroids but trained regularly over the 10 weeks. • Group 4 took 600 mg of anabolic steroids and trained regularly for 10 weeks. Everyone maintained a consistent diet related to their daily intake. After ten weeks these were the results.• Group 1 had no changes in their body• Group 2 gained approximately 3 kg of muscle• Group 3 gained approximately 2 kg of muscle• Group 4 gained approximately 6 kg of muscleThese results demonstrate that certain doping can dramatically improve muscle growth, which equates to improved performance. However, what is interesting is that group 2 who took steroids but did not.