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Testosterone: Poison Or Elixir?
A scientific facts-based exposition of this crucial androgen hormone
Note: for the purposes of this article, the word male will refer to individuals with an XY pair on the 23rd chromosome while the word female will refer to individuals with a YY pair on the 23rd chromosome. This distinction is important as biochemical processes differ significantly between XX-bearing and XY-bearing individuals and as this article is about the physiological effects of testosterone, such differences are important. Readers who prefer to imagine that biology has no relevance to biochemistry are welcome to stop reading now.
And so with that lamentably necessary piece of guidance out of the way, let’s dive into the article.
It’s commonplace to hear people talk about “testosterone poisoning,” as a supposed explanation for undesirable behaviors exhibited by men of inadequate emotional development. According to this trope, these undesirable behaviors are the result of an excess of testosterone in the bloodstream which through some unspecified chain of cause-and-effect induces the male brain to initiate them. It’s an amusing conceit and has gained widespread adoption because of its evident simplicity. But as is the case with nearly all simple explanations, it’s completely wrong.
Before we look at what testosterone actually does in the human body, let’s begin by understanding what it is. According to the International Union of Pure & Applied Chemistry, testosterone is formally 17β-Hydroxyandrost-4-en-3-one. It is synthesized from cholesterol and works by binding to androgen receptors in the body’s cells. Both men and women produce testosterone, but adult males between the ages of approximately fifteen and forty-five have between six to ten times the amount of testosterone circulating in their blood than women of equivalent age.
The body produces testosterone continuously and its biological half-life is between thirty to forty-five minutes (e.g. 1g of testosterone produced at noon will have fallen to 0.5g by 12.45 and to 0.25g by 13.30); around 90% is excreted in urine with the remainder excreted in feces.
In males, testosterone triggers both hair growth (facial hair, bodily hair) and hair loss (male pattern baldness) as well…
