How the Military Changed Steroid Research Forever

How the Military Changed Steroid Research Forever

The rapid development of anabolic steroids in the 20th century was not driven by sports or bodybuilding at first. It was driven by war. Military medicine—especially during and after World War II—played a decisive role in accelerating hormone research and shaping how scientists understood and manipulated anabolic steroids. At the centre of this effort was a critical scientific challenge: how to preserve muscle-building benefits while reducing masculinising side effects.

Why the Military Cared About Steroids

Modern warfare created medical problems that traditional treatments struggled to solve. Soldiers faced severe injuries, burns, infections, malnutrition, and prolonged immobilisation. These conditions caused rapid muscle wasting, weakness, and delayed recovery.

Testosterone quickly caught researchers’ attention because it

promoted nitrogen retention (a marker of muscle growth)

improved strength and recovery

aided healing after trauma and surgery

Military hospitals and research units began studying testosterone as a rehabilitative drug, not a performance enhancer. The goal was practical: get injured soldiers functional again, faster.

The Problem: Androgenic Side Effects

While testosterone showed strong anabolic (tissue-building) effects, it also caused pronounced androgenic effects, such as

prostate enlargement

excessive body hair

voice deepening

aggression

sexual organ stimulation

These effects were unacceptable for many patients, especially women, adolescents, and long-term hospital cases. For military doctors, the challenge became clear:

Could muscle growth be separated from masculinization?

This question drove decades of steroid chemistry.

Understanding Anabolic vs Androgenic Actions

Scientists discovered that testosterone acts through androgen receptors present in many tissues

Muscle

Bone

Prostate

Skin

Brain

The same hormone activated all of them. Early on, researchers believed it might be possible to modify the testosterone molecule so that it would

strongly stimulate muscle and bone

weakly stimulate reproductive and secondary sex tissues

This idea became known as anabolic–androgenic dissociation.

Chemical Modifications: The First Strategy

Beginning in the late 1930s and accelerating in the 1940s–1950s, chemists altered testosterone’s structure in specific ways

17-alpha alkylation

Made steroids orally active

Increased anabolic effect in the muscle

Reduced rapid liver breakdown

Unfortunately, increased liver toxicity

Esterification

Changed how long the steroid stayed active in the body

Allowed controlled release via injection

Improved therapeutic use in hospitals

Structural ring changes

Slight changes in molecular shape altered how strongly the hormone activated different tissues

Some compounds showed higher anabolic activity relative to androgenic effects in lab tests

These modifications produced drugs like nandrolone, methandrostenolone, and oxandrolone, many originally tested in clinical or military-adjacent medical settings.

Animal Testing and Tissue Selectivity

Military-funded research often relied on animal models, especially rats. Scientists measured

Muscle growth

Prostate growth

Seminal vesicle size

If a compound increased muscle mass significantly more than prostate size, it was considered to have a higher anabolic ratio.

This ratio became a central metric in steroid research. However, it was an approximation, not a guarantee of safety.

Why Full Separation Never Worked

Despite early optimism, scientists eventually realised a key limitation

Anabolic and androgenic effects are biologically linked.

Muscle growth itself depends on androgen receptor activation. You cannot fully stimulate muscle tissue without activating androgen pathways elsewhere. What researchers achieved was not separation, but relative selectivity.

In practice

Lower androgenic effects meant less, not none

Side effects still occurred with a sufficient dose or duration

Human responses varied widely

Military medicine helped reveal these limits through longer-term clinical observation.

Lasting Impact on Modern Medicine

Although the original military goal was rehabilitation, the research had lasting effects:

Steroids became treatments for burns, wasting diseases, and osteoporosis

Anabolic steroids informed modern hormone replacement therapy

The concept of tissue selectivity later influenced research into selective androgen receptor modulators (SARMs)

Ironically, the same compounds developed for healing soldiers were later adopted by athletes and bodybuilders—often without the medical oversight that military medicine insisted upon.

Conclusion

Military medicine didn’t just accelerate steroid research—it shaped its scientific direction. The urgency of war pushed researchers to explore testosterone’s full potential, while clinical realities forced them to confront its dangers. The attempt to separate anabolic from androgenic effects was one of the most ambitious hormone experiments of the 20th century.