Teens these day are placing a premium on building muscle and making their physical presence perfect.

On average, teens these days are working out and building muscle more than previous generations.

Working out is a good way to relieve stress and improve your quality of life.

Some people take it more serious than others.

While some work out once or twice a week, some of the most avid weightlifters work out everyday, twice a day.

“As I kid my saw my dad and older brother working out and I wanted be just like them. I have continued to lift for football and it also just makes me feel good,” said senior Jordan Vinson.

Vinson, along with thousands of other teens around the world use protein powder to maximize their workout results.

Nationally 35% of boys use protein powder and 6% have used or are using steroids.

21% of girls were reported to use protein powder and 4.6% have used steroids.

At first thought, this number seems rather small, but if you think about how many teens there are in the US, 35% is a staggering number of users.

At Rio many students use protein powder to boost their results from working out.

Mike Smith, the Weights teacher at Rio, insists that supplements for lifting weights are simply not needed.

“Protein powder is unnecessary,” said Smith. “Five healthy meals a day will have plenty of protein for your body to absorb.”

Having about 40-50 grams of protein within 30 minutes of completing a workout is ideal for maximum effectiveness.

Examples of protein-rich foods include chicken breast, which contains 30 grams of protein, one cup of milk, which contains eight grams of protein, and two tablespoons of peanut butter, which contains the same amount as a cup of milk.

It is widely know that steroids can increase results by ten fold.

However, senior Erik Hubbard say that the benefits are not worth the risk.

He also believes that steroids are just a way to shortcut the process of building muscle.

“The disadvantages of steroids heavily outweigh the positives. You can achieve the same results without them, it just takes more work,” said Hubbard.

Steroids can cause severe acne, high blood pressure, bad cholesterol, and abnormal liver function, just to name a few.

With all of these risks and only with the benefit of bigger muscles, it doesn’t make sense to use steroids.