You feel tired, groggy. You don’t really want to have sex. It must be your testosterone, according to the advertisement. And we would believe it too, considering that the number of testosterone supplement users has tripled from the beginning of 2000 to 2016.
Don’t get us wrong: Testosterone is an indispensable hormone. Babies are exposed to it for the first time in the womb when it defines the differentiation between boys and girls. At puberty, it contributes to bone growth and muscle mass and subsequently continues to affect functions that include your production of red blood cells and emotional stability.
But the message these ads send appeals to the economic and social anxiety men face. It’s like when anti-anxiety medications like Valium came on the scene, exemplifies urologist and Men’s Health adviser Elizabeth Kavaler.
“ALL MATURE WOMEN WERE ADDICTED TO VALIUM BECAUSE IT WAS THE SOLUTION FOR EVERYTHING. TESTOSTERONE HAS BECOME THE NEW ANSWER FOR A LIFE OF SILENT DESPAIR. “
More and more of us feel the exhaustion of anxiety. We are asked to do more with less. We are simply trying to get to the end of the day alive. “Men think ‘well if I have a little more testosterone,’ I will feel
There is a lot of information around T – a lot of speculation and promotion – that makes us jump to conclusions about it. Men give a psychological weight to their testosterone levels – if you have it low, you think you are less of a man; if you’re tall, it means you’re basically LeBron James – and that’s what we’re wrong about. There is little evidence to support these stereotypes.
Having it low does not automatically mean that you are weak or old; Having it high does not guarantee that you have great muscles or a professional athlete’s performance.
A low figure isn’t even likely to stay that way for long. It may simply indicate that you have not been taking too much care of yourself. Having it high does not mean that you are programmed to be aggressive. As long as it is in the normal range, it doesn’t mean that one number is higher than another.
What do you really know about this famous hormone?
There are even social factors and health habits that can impact your T. See everything that makes it change:
POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT
In the book Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, scientists Rebecca M. Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis point out that T levels even respond to social factors such as feedback. They underline research such as a study by the Polish Sports Institute which found that rugby players who watched a good play video and received positive feedback had up to a 50 percent increase in T compared to boys who were shown their errors and critical comments.
LIFT WEIGHTS
Resistance training can lead to a brief increase in T. Cardio does not raise T levels in men who are of normal weight, says Jesse Mills, MD, director of the Men’s Clinic at UCLA. But then there’s another point: Jordan-Young and Karkazis studied the research to discover that T levels themselves are not worth the credit when it comes to performance in an athlete.
How much do you sleep
One study found that testosterone levels throughout the day drop by 10 to 15 percent when men only get five hours of sleep a night for a week.
BE DAD
Testosterone levels in men drop when they become fathers, but the sound of a crying baby can raise them.
OVERWEIGHT
Your fat converts T into estrogen.