That medical reliance to maintain their condition is exactly what I used to explain it to my college age daughter, who was worried about the “thousands” who were going to be out of work. I said, “What will a woman do when her meds run out, if she is in the wilds of Afghanistan? In a couple weeks, her muscle mass declines, her voice rises, her breasts start growing. All of a sudden, she is not the man her fellow soldiers were counting on, at all.”
The light bulb went on— “Oh, they basically take steroids?”
I think it’s fun to explain the real world to young people.
Quite. They’re on chronic meds and physical therapies.
Soldiers need be in a condition where they can be told (by orders or circumstance) “here’s an M16, go survive in a battle zone for a week” with no food, meds, support, etc. We have enough healthy volunteers without having to resort to those fixated on self-mutilation.