Steroids do cause an increase in white blood cell production, but the real reason for increased vascularity is very low body fat.
At competition level, the people who are using steroids are primarily preserving muscle while getting to extremely low levels of body fat. That’s the biggest difference in their appearance compared to naturals.
I’m not sure precisely how widely known this is in the bodybuilder world but at least a goodly number of them seem to be aware that most women prefer a lean-but-fit look rather than the muscle-monster look.
My sense would be that most bodybuilders suffer from body dysmorphia or, at least, picked up a dream of looking a certain way during childhood while looking at superheroes and WWE wrestliers and they simply can’t shake their dream.
That said, there’s plenty of girls with varying types of body dysmorphia so I don’t know that the male bodybuilders have any issue meeting ladies; it’s just a peculiar set of ladies with similar interests.
My husband has a couple of visible veins in his arms, and they sometimes bulge a little. (They bulge a lot when he’s being prepped to give blood. Mine don’t at all. Yeah, he’s a very easy stick.)
He isn’t a body builder and doesn’t take steroids. I’m sure there’s a correlation there, but i agree that it’s not a perfect indicator or anything.
From what I’ve seen, bodybuilders have little trouble meeting ladies. There are many women who find extreme musculature / low bodyfat sexy as hell. Mostly women who are into body transformations themselves.
Many women find bodybuilder level physiques gross and unappealing. There’s also the fact that to have a bodybuilder physique, you need to live and breathe exercise, diet and drugs. Not much fun dating, if you are not into those things yourself.
I’ve never met a het woman who didn’t find a strong male body attractive, though. That’s been my personal goal and getting there has worked well.
True dat. In college, I had a roommate for a little over a year that was an aspiring body builder. He was pretty big, but that’s because all he did was (in order) work out, eat, chase after women, some other stuff, go to class, some other other stuff, and lastly, work. That SOB was too broke to afford the drugs, and rarely came up with his share of the rent on time.
Or, people do things for themselves and not the approval of others.
Some people enjoy the lifestyle. They like how it feels to have full muscles, they like the endorphin rush that comes with completing a tough workout, and they personally like the aesthetics of a lean and muscular body. Being in great shape can feel amazing.
Now imagine that you are one of these people, and you are constantly trying to improve, and you’ve been consistent for years. Incremental progress has become very noticeable. It doesn’t mean that the person has some sort of disorder.
But then, “Every Girl crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man”.
Which works best, muscles or a fat wallet? 
Is it a coincidence that the two males who come to mind that have that unusual physique, Schwarznegger and Hulk Hogan, both seem to have had heart issues?
Probably not, but then again, men having heart issues isn’t all that rare.
Yes. Schwarzenegger had congenital heart problems.
https://hcahealthcaretoday.com/2018/04/06/what-was-wrong-with-arnold-schwarzeneggers-heart/
There are plenty of bodybuilders who are quite healthy in their old age. As two examples, Frank Zane (3 time Mr Olympia of the late 70s) is 83. Here’s what he looked like at 70.
Robby Robinson (another contemporary of Arnold) is 79 (and in incredible shape; this picture was one I found from a quick search, and is from 2023, when he was 76)
Kevin Levrone (a competitor in the 90s, when dudes were absolutely huge) is a young ‘un. He just posted a picture of himself at 61.
Other notable entrants in the community are Rich Piana and John Meadows.
I’ve heard some bodybuilders discussing a new class of myostatin inhibitors (myostatin limits the amount of muscle that your body wants to load on), which is specially tailored to only affect skeletal muscle. They’re hoping that this would prevent the heart from expanding inordinately, if you shift from anabolics to the inhibitors.
Let’s be careful here.
Rich Piana, like Hulk Hogan, was not a healthy individual. He took all sorts of substances, and in extreme dosages.
(Including synthol, which is basically artificially inflating your muscle with oil)
John Meadows had a disease
To he certain, there are bodybuilders who have died during, or when preparing for, competitions. But those risks are better attributed to the use of diuretics, and other forms of extreme dieting, in an effort to eliminate all body fat.
Steroids - which is to say, synthetic testosterone - isn’t causing an epidemic of heart problems for bodybuilders.
Perhaps. But I think this is more likely: they go to the gym, work out, and people notice. They enjoy the attention and the changes they’ve made to their body, so they double-down with longer and more intense workouts, along with steroids. They receive more and more attention, which strokes their ego. It then becomes a full-on addiction. A similar thing happens to people who cover every square inch of their body with tattoos.
Both. In fact all three.
There’s gotta be some exchange rate between those two / three currencies of attractiveness. And different women will have different exchange rates. But I sure don’t know what those rates are and hence how to identify a priori the ladies who favor my particular mix of those attributes, whether credit or debit.
All of your links are to the upload an image page, not to the results of you uploading something.
Steroids apparently cause heart problems, years after stopping them.
Because those giant muscles demand a large blood supply.
It’s not clear to me that chronic amphetamine abuse doesn’t worsen the effect of aortic stenosis (which is common in old age, or people with damaged hearts)
I know that amphetamine abuse can cause acute heart failure for a number of reasons, but they also say things like “may promote cardiovascular disease”, “enhanced atherosclerotic plaque formation”, “remodeling of cardiac tissue” etc.
Arnold had a flaky heart valve. From the description, it never really opened properly. That didn’t bother him when he was young, but it was a problem when his body got older. I’m not willing to give the amphetamines an entirely free pass.
I tried the sharp-dressed route in my youth, to some moderate success. Then I switched to getting strong (and looking it), and things really started rollin’. I realized having a fit, strong bod is being sharp-dressed, without spending a dime on wardrobe. "Nice pecs you wearin’… "
Amphetamines aren’t steroids. I’m not aware of any chronic amphetamine use by Schwarzenegger (not to say he never tried them, just that it wasn’t part of his typical training regimen, nor was it something bodybuilders of his era used to any wide degree)
It looks creepy to me too. I always think about how close to the surface those veins look and that it would be so easy for them to be cut. I know - weird. But it’s just part of the creepiness.