Where Your Testosterone Went. And Why.

Remember testosterone? It’s still there, just not in the quantity it was when you were in you twenties. Now comes  a study that suggests that the decline of testosterone is a good thing, at least for your family, because the aggression-related hormone appears to take a timely dive when a man has kids.  Peter Ellison, a professor of evolutionary biology at Harvard has a few things to say about that in an interview with science writer Karen Weintraub. First, he says, the new study suggests that like women, men have reproductive states –times in their lives when they are more likely or less likely to mate. That in turn implodes the one-dimensional perception of men as eternal seekers of sex. Ellison suggests that low testosterone might be good for more than the family; it might be good for a man’s health, because the more time a man spends in low testosterone states may influence his risk of diseases like prostate cancer or osteoporosis later in life. He also reminds us that while testosterone supports useful things like sperm production, libido and sex drive, and maintenance of muscle mass, it is associated bad things like aggression and temper. Finally, the professor warns that manipulation of testosterone places men at greater risk of being abusers – either of their partners or of their offspring.

Read Karen Weintraub’s interview with Ellison in the Boston Globe.