Breast cancer drug in bodybuilding supplements?

Are you on dietary supplements to build a robust body? Get alarmed as a breast cancer drug is reportedly being sold in bodybuilding dietary supplements.

Researchers warn that breast cancer drug tamoxifen - mixed in dietary supplements and used by bodybuilders to prevent and treat gynaecomastia (breast swelling) caused by anabolic steroid use - is being sold as a bodybuilding dietary supplement.

The researchers purchased four samples of a dietary supplement called 'Esto Suppress' and analysed its contents.

Tamoxifen was found in three out of the four samples at different concentrations. The product label suggested a dosage of two capsules a day.

"In the past, a growing number of off-the-shelf food, herbal, or dietary supplements - aimed at gym goers and people wanting to lose weight or enhance their sex lives - have contained pharmacologically active substances," claimed Dr Michael Evans-Brown of Liverpool John Moores University in Britain.

These include anabolic steroids, erectogenics (to stimulate erections), stimulants, appetite suppressants and anxiolytics (to treat anxiety).

Often the substances are not listed on the labelling and products may be marketed as 'natural,' said the study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ).

"Most users would be unaware that they are taking these unhealthy substances," added Dr Brown.

A sound piece of advice from him: Read the label carefully and avoid body-building supplements completely.