Death of A Bodybuilder by Jerry Brainum 6/23

 

I've been around bodybuilding, first as a competitor and then as a writer for various bodybuilding magazines for 60 years. In all that time, I've heard of occasional premature deaths of bodybuilders, but it was a rare occurrence. I knew a few bodybuilders that died years ago at relatively young ages. One ardent bodybuilder I knew from New York was Victor Fryzowitz. Victor was an eccentric character who loved being a bodybuilder. He never competed, but still opted to use a few anabolic steroid drugs. The steroid regimes that he used were nothing compared to what's commonly used today, especially among professional bodybuilders. The pathetic thing about Victor was that although he used what was the typical steroid regime back then (this was in the 70s), he never developed much of a physique. He just didn't have the ideal genetics to be a successful competitive bodybuilder. But he did wind up dying in his early 30s from cancer. I think it might have been kidney cancer.

Another, far more successful bodybuilder I knew years ago was Tom Sansone. Sansone won the 1958 Mr.America without using any drugs but later returned to competition by winning the 1963 NABBA Mr.Universe title. For the latter contest, Tom did use a light steroid regime, meaning he didn't take a lot of the drugs. About a decade after his Universe win, Tom succumbed to a type of cancer called Wilm's tumor that is far more prevalent in children. This type of tumor is so rare in adults that Tom's case was described in a medical journal. Since both Victor and Tom used steroids, could the steroids have had something to do with their premature deaths? (Sansone was 38 when he died). It's difficult to show a direct cause-and-effect relationship between anabolic drug use and their deaths. In Tom's case, his possible steroid use didn't cause his cancer. The nature of his tumor was that it likely was dormant in his body for most of his life since it's primarily a childhood tumor. The steroids may have "turned on" the genes that caused his tumor to proliferate and spread. On the other hand, since his death occurred more than a decade after he stopped competing, the most likely explanation is that his heavy smoking habit had more to do with it than any steroids he might have used.

But while bodybuilding deaths in younger people were rare in the past, more recently it seems that such deaths have been accelerating at an alarming rate. Small wonder that Jay Cutler, who won the coveted Mr.Olympia title four times, says that bodybuilding competition has become a "dangerous sport." Other sports present their own dangers. For example, football players, especially linemen, show higher rates of traumatic brain injuries that can lead to dementia. The same is true for boxers. One study showed that even the . . .