Home » Attitude »

Testosterone Dives When Kids Show Up

September 13, 2011 7:30 am 0 comments

Share This:

Subscribe:

Author:

Tags:

All men experience a long slow and one-way drop in testosterone starting sometime in the twenties, but now it seems that behavior also plays a role, and one behavior that seriously turns off the testosterone is nurturing children. Researchers at Northwestern University who studied a group of 624 men aged 21.5 to 26 years old for 4.5 years found that the men who started with high testosterone were more likely to become fathers, but once they did, their testosterone went down substantially. The findings suggest that this is especially true for fathers who become the most involved with child care. A Northwestern news release reports that the effect is consistent with what is observed in many other species in which males help take care of dependent offspring. Testosterone boosts behaviors and other traits that help a male compete for a mate. After they succeed and become fathers, “mating-related” activities may conflict with the responsibilities of fatherhood, making it advantageous for the body to reduce production of the hormone.

Read more from Northwestern University.

No Comments

    Leave a Reply


    Recent Posts

    • Pain

      Bad News About Good Cholesterol

      Remember good cholesterol? You know, HDL cholesterol, the kind that was associated with reduced risk of stroke? Forget it. Now comes a study from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute suggesting that people with genes that boost HDL levels  do not, in fact, have a lower risk of heart attacks. Strange. The Boston Globe reports that the scientists in looked at a gene variation that raises HDL levels, and should consequently give people a 13 percent decreased [...]

      Read more →
    • Gear

      Sports That Don’t Break Your Bones Make Them Stronger

      What doesn’t break your bones makes them stronger. Especially if what doesn’t break your bones is a load-bearing sport like basketball or volleyball. How to we know? Because when researchers at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden measured the bone mass of more than 800 young men and studied their exercise habits, they found that after five years, the men who did a lot of load-bearing activities at the start of the study and those who increased their amounts of [...]

      Read more →
    • Pain Camel Jumping Strengthens Core

      Camel Jumping Strengthens Core

      Sports physiologists have yet to analyze the muscle groups that benefit most from the popular Yemenite entertainment plainly named “camel jumping,” but we’re guessing it’s good for the core, and not so good for the ankles. The New York Times’ Lens gives us an enlightening photo essay, shot, admittedly, by a photographer in Yemen who got bored waiting around for actual news. Anyone up for an over-50 team?

      Read more →
    • Attitude Pain

      Email Dependence Is Bad For Your Health

      Don’t have time to read SportsGeezer because you just got an email? That’s a bad sign, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine. Researchers at the school attached heart rate sensors to workers in a suburban office, and divided the users into two groups; one with email, one deprived. A university news release reports that people who read email were found to work in a steady “high alert” state, with more constant heart rates. Those removed from [...]

      Read more →
    • Gear Pain

      “Workout Boosters” Boost Blood Pressure Too

      The names of the products—Jacked3D, Oxy Elite Pro, Code Red, and Nitric Blast, should offer some clues to the kind of science behind their sales; the science of marketing. Now comes the science of medicine, brought to bear on these “workout boosters” by the Food and Drug Administration, which determined that the active ingredient in the supplements, dimethylamylamine or DMAA, said in marketing materials to increase energy, concentration and metabolism, actually increases blood pressure. The FDA has sent letters to [...]

      Read more →
    • Attitude Pain

      Latest Treatment For Chronic Pain: Don’t Think About It

      Researchers in the psychiatry and behavioral science department of Johns Hopkins Medical School have some radical advice for sufferers of chronic pain: don’t think about it. Isn’t that what my mother used to say? Futurity reports that researchers at the school surveyed 214 people with myofascial temporomandibular disorder, or TMD, serious facial and jaw pain, about their sleep quality, depression, pain levels, and emotional responses to pain, including whether they ruminate on it or exaggerate it. Guess what? The scientists [...]

      Read more →
    • Uncategorized

      For Heart Health, Coffee Not Soda

      Why is is unsurprising that soda has been associated with a higher risk of stroke? Perhaps because it has long been associated with weight gain, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and coronary artery disease. Hmmm. Now, finally, comes a study from the Cleveland Clinic’s Wellness Institute and Harvard University, showing not only that sugar-sweetened and low-calorie sodas is associated with a higher risk of stroke, but that coffee, either caffeinated or decaffeinated, is associated with a lower risk. A [...]

      Read more →
    • Pain

      Would You Give Up Your Arms And Legs To Live?

      Would you give up your arms and legs to live? Will Lautzenheiser, a 36-year-old instructor at the Montana State University, made that choice after his body was invaded by a flesh eating bacteria. Now Lautzenheiser is in the sites of the limb transplant team and Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who would like to replace some of his sacrificed limbs. Read the whole story here.

      Read more →