How Long Do Steroids Stay In Your System? (From a Doctor)

Steroids are medications that frequently consist of artificial substances that resemble testosterone (the male sex hormone) or other synthetic androgens with comparable effects [1].

There are two types of steroids:

• Anabolic steroids
• Corticosteroids

I recommend natural anabolic steroid use to my clients to enhance their athletic performance.

Corticosteroids, on the other hand, are used to treat certain medical conditions [2].

Steroids stay in your body for about 4 to 12 hours, depending on the type of steroid you take. The best way to answer this question is through the half-life of steroids.

Half-life is the time it takes for an atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) concentration in blood plasma to reach 50%.

This provides an estimate of how long it will take for the drug to be removed entirely, as well as a timeline for how long it will be detectable on a drug test [8].

The anabolic drug's half-life varies greatly.

Compared to injectable anabolic steroids, oral anabolic steroids of the same dose have shorter half-lives.

Based on my trial period, I can confirm that while the half-lives of the injectables can extend for days, those of the oral steroids only survive for a few hours.

Remember once more that these are only the half-lives of the different drugs.

We found that AAS levels may remain in the system after the half-life values for steroids are reached. This means it's still easy to detect anabolic steroids during drug testing.

The time a steroid and other drugs stay in your system will often increase as you get older and less healthy.

We took voluntary drug tests on our clients and found the younger ones passed the tests 8 hours after consuming the steroids, while the older ones still tested positive.

4. Body and Muscle Mass

Generally, steroids will stay in your system longer if you weigh more.

This is because obese people have more inflammatory molecules in their bodies that interfere with how steroids work [9].

Steroid use causes testosterone suspension impeding the body's regular hormone production.

This lowers testicular activity, which results in weight gain, low sperm count, and testicular shrinkage [14].

After testing anabolic steroids with a few male clients for six months, we noticed some male-pattern baldness and male breast development.

Anabolic steroids' hormonal effects may also increase testicular cancer risk, particularly when combined with insulin-like growth factors [15].

In addition, excess anabolic steroid drug dosage use makes women more masculine.

We noticed this in a few of our female clients whose body fat and breast size diminished, and their voices deepened which is a clear sign of steroid use.

We found that some of these effects become permanent when oral steroids are used repeatedly.

Although there have been no studies on this, it is widely thought that anabolic steroids will cause an irreversible growth of the clitoris in females [16].

The misuse of liver-damaging steroids has been linked to tumors, liver damage, and a rare disorder called peliosis hepatis, in which the liver develops blood-filled cysts.

The cysts can burst, leading to internal bleeding and, in extreme circumstances, death [17].

5. Stiff and Stunted Skeletal Muscle

The growth spurt that occurs throughout puberty and adolescence is typically triggered by escalating testosterone levels and other sex hormones.

These increased testosterone levels also send signals to limit growth.

When a child or adolescent uses anabolic steroids, the artificially elevated sex hormone levels can cause the bones to cease growing before they should [18].

Evidence points to stiffer tendons in weightlifters who abuse anabolic steroids, which may enhance their risk of tendon injury [19].