I watched pro wrestling as a kid. Not only that, I watched it with a willful suspension of disbelief far longer than I should have, as I confessed in this post on my old blog.

That post, from November 2005, highlighted the high body count in pro wrestling. A reader who calls himself Dino asked me to highlight it again:

I can attest to the passion of young fans for pro wrestling. At Thanksgiving, a young cousin gave a heartbreaking account of the depression he was still feeling months after the death of Chris Benoit, the 40-year-old wrestler who killed his wife and son before taking his own life last June.

Here's Dino again:

I was surprised to learn that five wrestlers 44 or younger have died since, according to this list (thanks again to Dino for the heads-up). One death is from an auto accident, one is from a heart attack, one is described as "natural causes," and the other two causes of death are "unknown."

If you look at the entire list, you see quite a few young men (and several young women) dying from heart attacks, murders, suicides, cancer, and who knows what else. ("Unknown" is a recurring theme.)

This article by Eric Cohen attempts to explain why:

Cohen notes that the pattern of premature death continues even after they retire:

How many actual deaths can be blamed on steroids? That's impossible to say, since the only person who'd know a wrestler's entire drug history is the wrestler himself, who isn't likely to conduct any press conferences from the grave. My guess is that it's not the steroids themselves that put so many toe tags on so many young men and women who should be in the prime of life. If steroids have any role, I'd guess it's more likely to be as part of a bad chemical stew. Steroids, painkillers, recreational drugs, stress, and the physical trauma of thousands of choreographed body slams a year, repeated year after year with no real break, would wear down anybody.

Even in cases in which bodybuilders die at young ages -- such as 36-year-old Erik Fromm, who died in early February; or Shelley Beattie, who died at age 39 a few days later -- you don't want to jump to conclusions.

Nor do you want to read too much into the murder-suicide of famed cosmetic surgeon Bruce Nadler and his wife two weeks ago. Nadler, inventor of the "ab etching" surgery that turned many a treadless-tire midsection into a six-pack, had voluntarily surrendered his medical license rather than contest charges of professional misconduct stemming from his willingness to prescribe a variety of drugs, including anabolic steroids.

Nadler was also an enthusiastic consumer of those drugs, as he noted in this interview. Were the professional and mental issues that led him to shoot his wife and then take his own life related to anabolic steroids and/or human growth hormone? Again, it's impossible to say.

This case report from 2001, which looks at the hearts of two young, steroid-using bodybuilders who died suddenly, offers an intriguing hint.

One died while lifting at age 32; the other died in his sleep at age 29. The researchers couldn't find conclusive evidence of steroid-induced cardiac abnormalities, but speculated that steroids may alter the cardiovascular response to stress hormones. Since you need those hormones to train effectively, and you certainly get a shot of adrenaline when you're playing sports (even if it's a choreographed sport like pro wrestling), there could be a link between steroid use and heart attacks at young ages.

Still, what we don't know about the health effects of steroids looms larger than what we do know. That's why I cringe when I hear well-intentioned health experts talk about shrunken balls, lost hair, and "backne" as the most serious side effects of steroid use. The biggest problem is our lack of knowledge about what the real dangers might be.

Sunday blog juice

One more steroid comment before I let it go. According to Tom Verducci in Sports Illustrated, Roger Clemens may honestly believe he never took steroids, even though anecdotal evidence strongly suggest he did:

I have to admit this possibility never occurred to me.