Saturday, September 30, 2006


Testosterone

When sufficient quantities circulate in the blood of men, it turbo charges libido, sprouts beards, beefs up muscles, hardens bones and incline their minds toward the kind of rambunctious, competitiveness that is both the signature blessing and occasional curse of masculinity.

Men start producing testosterone when they’re still in the womb – as early as the twelfth week of pregnancy. But the real tsunami comes in adolescence. Testosterone circulates from the testicles to the blood, turning on the genes that make boys men.

By the time they turn 30, testosterone levels begin to decline at the rate of 1 percent a year, though most men still produce enough for a healthy libido and healthy erections (that said, it’s definitely more a hormone of desire than performance).

The “normal” range for testosterone is quite broad – somewhat between 240 – 1,000 nanograms of the stuff per deciliter of blood. Trying to boost your level within the normal range can backfire.

“The key point to realize is that the human body balances,’ says Harvard researcher Richard Spark, M.D., author of Sexual Health For Men (Perseus, 2000). “When you give a normal man testosterone supplements, it just causes him to shut down his own internal production. Over time, his testicles will start to shrink.”

“I think you can make the case that some young men have too much testosterone and only when they get a little older do they become reasonable,” says Stanley Korenman, M.D., a reproductive endocrinologist at UCLA School of Medicine. “Throughout history, the world has been run by older men. Young men make better soldiers because they’re more aggressive, and more impulsive. Older men are wiser, they make more sense, and they are the ones who go into positions of leaderships.”

George State psychology professor James Dabbs, PhD., says his research supports the idea that high testosterone hurts occupational achievement. Unemployed men, he found, have higher average testosterone levels than blue-collar workers, who in turn have higher average levels than white-collar workers. Waning testosterone may also make men better husbands and fathers. “It’s very clear in birds,” says Dabbs, “that the testosterone levels of the males drop dramatically once they start nesting.”

A study presented at the Endocrine Society’s meeting last summer showed a similar drop in men following the birth of a child. Lowering testosterone with age, Dabbs speculates, may help predispose men to the gentler activities of parenthood.

Bottom line: Men may need high testosterone to get a mate – and lower testosterone to keep her.

(Quoted from – Man Power by Jim Thornton )


(American Psychological Association’s Division 20, Adult Development and Aging – http://
www.aging.ufl.edu/apadiv20/apadiv20.htm)

Rain












1 Comments:

Blogger halwis said...

I think it is unscientific to put so much weight on the statistical relation between Testosterone levels and the behaviour of men. That said, being a “young” man and having observed a few things in the few years of my existence, I won’t really argue about the facts presented.

8:21 AM  

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