Testosterone: What It Is and How It Affects Your Health

What does testosterone do, and how do you increase low testosterone?

Another study of females transitioning into males found that testosterone increased bone mineral density. But it’s unknown if testosterone can help with reducing fracture risk. Strong bones help support your muscles and internal organs, which can boost athletic performance. Small studies in the early 2000s found that men with heart disease who underwent testosterone therapy saw only slight improvements. Another study found that hormone therapy only widened healthy arteries but had no effect on angina pain. Those with low testosterone may see benefits like improved mood and increased muscle mass after testosterone-based HRT.

It can also lead to precocious (early) puberty, which is when puberty begins before the age of eight. It’s important to note that the normal ranges for testosterone levels can vary based on the type of blood test done and the laboratory where it is done. Your provider will always reference your laboratory’s normal ranges when interpreting your results. Levels are usually highest in the morning and decline during the day. Natural testosterone is a steroid — an anabolic-androgenic steroid.

Doctors usually semen test your T levels in the morning and do a second test to ensure someone’s levels are normal for them, Dr. Patel says. It’s natural for your testosterone level to fluctuate throughout the day. UPMC HealthBeat is the publishing website for UPMC, an integrated health care system based in Pittsburgh. Articles published on this site go through several rounds of review before publishing, including a clinical review conducted by UPMC medical experts.

They compete intensely for control of beaches where females come to give birth and mate. To establish dominance, they will bite and ram each other with their huge bodies, which can weigh up to 4 tonnes (around four times the average weight of females). The battles can go on for hours, but successful dominant bulls, identifiable by the cuts and scars on their chests, will mate with dozens of females who will bear their pups.

It also shows that there is a maximum level of testosterone before there’s no increased response. For men who don’t have hypogonadism, increasing your testosterone may not benefit your libido. Late-onset male hypogonadism happens when the decline in testosterone levels is linked to general aging and/or age-related conditions, particularly obesity and Type 2 diabetes. Late-onset hypogonadism affects about 2% of men over the age of 40.

This is despite having what we might think of as a distinct ‘nature’ – that is, different behavioural predispositions on average – from adults. I could go on, but I know you take quite a different line, Carole. Thank you for being open to unravelling our disagreements together. These points of divergence about sex differences are often attributed to politics but, in my view, they have far more to do with the conceptual frameworks people bring to the evidence.

A man’s testosterone levels will typically peak somewhere between age 20 and 30. After this time, they will gradually decrease for the rest of his life. Testosterone levels are estimated to decrease by 1 percent annually after age 30 to 40.

This all points to the fact that testosterone isn’t the ‘essence’ of masculinity. My target here isn’t the crude and patently false idea that all men are like this, and all women are like that. It’s the notion that, amid all the noise of individual differences, we can extract a male ‘nature’ that is somehow natural, immutable, and driven by testosterone. Both evolution and testosterone allow for a much greater diversity and flexibility of sex roles than previously (and popularly) appreciated – especially in humans. Still think testosterone therapy turns guys into roid-raging gym rats?

You acknowledge that sex is an important variable for understanding mating, and you don’t endorse radical sex-neutral theories. But then you take T-Rex (and me along with him) head-first into straw-man territory. This is where maleness is described as ‘a sort of “essence” that determines … predispositions of the male sex role.’ What serious biologist thinks this? My view is that the sexes are born (on average, as always) with different predispositions, leading to what are called ‘traditional sex roles’, which T-Rex gets right. This pattern, of females being more nurturing and males being more competitive, applies to our own species. We do agree on some things – such as the value of reproductive autonomy, a world free of the threat of male violence, and flexibility of gender expression.