Justin Dubin, MD, on potential health effects of SARMs and anabolic steroids

In this video, Justin Dubin, MD, discusses the potential harms of SARMs and anabolic steroids. He is an author of the paper “Utilization Patterns of Testosterone Supplementation and Replacement in Young Adult Men,” which he presented at the 2024 Sexual Medicine Society of North America Fall Scientific Meeting. Dubin is a urologist with Memorial Healthcare System in Aventura, Florida.

Transcription:

This study revealed a concerning popularity of potentially harmful substances like anabolic steroids and SARMs among young men. What are the potential health consequences associated with these substances, and what can be done to reduce their usage?

The main motivating factor for this study was, like I said, a lot of young men were coming to me under the age of 40, either on testosterone replacement therapy or interested in testosterone replacement therapy, especially people who really were not eligible for it. Now, the long-term factor is that a lot of these things, especially testosterone replacement therapy, you can become dependent on. Not only can you be dependent on it for life, it can also cause infertility. When we're looking at men who are under the age of 40, fertility can be a big factor. We know that things like SARMs can potentially compromise your fertility. We know things like anabolic steroids, which was unfortunately seen to be in a large usage in a population of men that were using these interventions in our survey, these are things that can have long-term impacts. Anabolic steroids especially can have issues on bone health, liver health, kidney health; it depends on the steroid, but there are other health implications. And if we can at least educate men and let them understand that doing these things can have long-term impact. It's not just about looking good and feeling good now, especially when it comes to family planning and your overall health in general, I think it goes a long way, and we really need to make sure that, once again, we are meeting our patients where they are, whether it's online, whether it's in the community, we really need to do a better job of destigmatizing these conversations so guys are comfortable asking their providers and also educating them, so that they know the risks before they're doing any of these things.

This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.