Whats the difference between the steroids in asthma inhalers and the ones jocks use?
Dear Cecil: It’s a miracle! No, I don’t have stigmata, I haven’t tasted a Circus Peanut and enjoyed it, and I haven’t heard Steve Miller apologize for ripping off other artists. What has happened is that I’ve found relief for my asthma in a medication known as a steroid (Azmacort). I assume it’s not the same kind of steroid that pumps up men and women with low self-esteem or athletes with no conscience. But what’s the difference? Why am I being told there are no “side effects”? This sounds too good to be true. — M. Kelly, Lansing, Michigan Dear M.: I don’t know about “no side effects.” Do they not count blindness these days? Not that that’s likely with careful use of steroid asthma inhalers. But if the message you heard was that inhalers are risk-free, you heard wrong. Steroids are lot like the Internet–versatile, dangerous in the wrong hands, and seemingly impossible to describe in coherent English. A typical encyclopedia account begins by informing us that steroids are “any of a cla
