coming up in our documentary i'm terry martin i'll be back at the top of the next hour and we leave you recent pictures from hong kong as a paris for another weekend of protests place for. my own meal and i'm game for the brand new w it is our most popular it's personal devices it's about hope they still affect us all want to plan a strange return. only ring for check out.

testosterone is the most important mile 6 homeowners men who are heavily influenced by testosterone a said to be egotistical and i enjoy taking risks but a number of european scientists have been trying to find out whether to stay strong is really as bad as its reputation. we've come to the months to university hospital to talk to talk to michelle's it's mine a german specialist in the treatment of diseases that affect men he's also an expert on hormones.

true feeding out just astro is responsible for the development of a number of male physical characteristics including hair patterns on the head bowed head also determines beard growth affects muscles and a man's overall personality as the story gets a much more complex or long term some people might think encounter. most testosterone is produced in the testes but a small amount comes from the adrenal cortex. the specific sources of testosterone other light excels the hormones that are responsible for developing male characteristics in the body called androgens the most important androgen testosterone. levels of testosterone rise dramatically during puberty and then remain at a high level but researchers have also found significant short term increases in

this home and immediately after birth. home thus plus yet a sign of it's hard to say why that happens but it seems to be a part of the maturation process in the braille deceive and in the male reproductive system the spirit of a modest. christian of all lips and brawn at the age of 20 he discovered that he had 2 little testosterone in his body doctors later determined that the cells in his brain were not sending out the proper production signals the cause of the problem wasn't clear. at 1st i both had a hard time even describing the symptoms it took a long time for doctors to come up with a proper diagnosis. this fall and. realizing that something was wrong was a gradual process so it didn't happen over night. kept feeling worse and worse

harvey and i had no energy at all and no sex drive either ministers man but i could feel something just wasn't right it. could feel that i was diagnosed with depression. and i realized that something was seriously wrong with me from the top and i went back to. whole foods a medical student at the time and a bodybuilder he kept a close eye on his metabolism and testosterone levels. and was a fluke but i couldn't figure out what was going on i got along well with my family and had a girlfriend and i was doing well at school and then i figured out that this might have something to do with the testosterone deficiency in my habits and interests of swan so i had some tests done and the levels turned out to be about 0 that's a bit low is in the sense of any. how much testosterone demand actually need.

to average men have at least $8.00 to $12.00 per liter of testosterone to anything below that represents a deficiency but the amount also depends on genetics a single missing from that you need to convince testosterone levels are much lower food about 5 to 10 percent that i've met. they use the testosterone to synthesize estrogen to the primary female sex work. that synthesis is carried out by an insulin called aromatase it can be found in cells in several parts of the body including the brain adrenal glands ovaries and testes. in the face of such testosterone levels question of both chose a potentially risky form of medical treatment. needed hormone replacement therapy after other possible causes like vitamin d. or deficiency have been ruled out it might also add to what is also. one of the

side effects of hormone replacement therapy is that it suppresses sperm production which can cause infertility. just tossed around as naturally produced in the testicles but the process begins in the brain and he's reciprocally in the hypothalamus sign and. hides it links the body's nervous system to the end the current system who the pituitary gland tried to do you have. to treat land is divided into 2 sections the anterior portion produces 2 key hormones l. h. and s. l. h. is responsible for stimulating the production of testosterone in the testes. s. h. contributes to the production of span. things to hormones report back to the brain and whether the body is producing enough testosterone in. the

brain or just the amounts of each as necessary. to start a replacement therapy suppresses the hormones in the pituitary gland that are responsible for sperm production and it's like a birth control pill. in months. and a month but if a minister starstruck deficient and wants to have children we have to take a different approach. long testosterone can have serious effects on the body that can too much of this whole mind make men overly aggressive. this is leon home of france a center for cognitive neuroscience says john cole dreher is a research director here dreyer has been studying the influence of testosterone on human behavior and he's found little evidence that to stop strong and strokes aggression in men. should only.

be a vet that the testosterone has on human behavior is by no means clear but there is some indirect evidence in the interim sample high levels of testosterone have been found in some prison inmates who have committed serious crimes to visit with you more and we did a study which indicated that patients who were given testosterone injections if you could become more aggressive thesis on the fix you know you knew politician who knows about testosterone can also actually improve social behaviors you know people are some pro or neutral in the symmetry. so a disappoint there's little hard evidence pointing to a link between increased levels of testosterone and aggressive behavior. ready dreyer conducted an experiment to try to prove or disprove these climbs his 1st task was to measure the testosterone levels in the participants blood. ready testosterone is a fat soluble hormone so it can pass through the membranes of cells bind with

hormone receptors and then produce changes in the cell structure. testosterone can be identified and measured in various bodily fluids. including saliva urine and blood. before the experiment begins one group of participants is injected with testosterone the other group is given a placebo. and misguided. he tried to determine whether the increase in testosterone levels would contribute to a change in behavior as you i scrap shows that both groups started out with approximately the same level of testosterone. then we gave one group testosterone injection its own self and recorded the increase in the level of this hormonal.

now the test subjects are going to take part in a game exercise called ultimatum the game is frequently used in behavior research it's designed to test whether a person is generous all selfish one of the players is given a sum of money and is required to share part of that with the other if the 2nd player accepts the offer the deal goes ahead as planned but if he rejects it neither player gets any money. from those of us more at this point we observed no difference between the player who'd been given testosterone and the one who hasn't is still into still set it up. now the rules of the game a going to change a bit the players will be able to use the money to reward fair behavior or punish unfair behavior and this is where driver and his colleagues observed a difference between the player who got an extra dose of testosterone and the one who didn't.

seem to be. rude it's a subtle difference and we confirmed it only in the 2nd stage of the experiment what can you what. the group administered with its extra testosterone imposed a more severe punishment when they believed that they had been given enough money but in the same time they also reacted more positively when given more money than expected he did you know. we observed a big difference in the behavior of the 2 groups. so can testosterone also stimulate generosity in men the researchers was surprised by the results but the situation is more complex than that dress is this is subconscious motivation at work here. so much that you don't show no quarter show. this man aman and shows clearly. so you can improve your social

status if you cooperate with people or engage in other kinds of positive social behavior. so much so while testosterone can influence aggression commitments which it also plays a role in the ability to act with generosity so that's been living in the. dry eye has been looking for more evidence to support his theory on the influence of testosterone so he's been studying brain activity. that is to a more testosterone based behavior that can improve a man social status and that process could be linked to various mechanisms in the brain it's going to particularly a group of neural structures known as the reward system to more. improved social status generates a sense of well being like a reward that may explain the boasting trait commonly associated with excessive

manly behavior. you know it's 20 percent from one up to god there's always a motivation behind generosity if someone sees you being generous they're more likely to think highly of you for example that these men will probably be more generous if they know that they are being observed by women both week. by the job so this indicates another link between testosterone and generous behavior. that was to. so testosterone may be responsible for positive and negative behavior in both cases this behavior seems to be directed at preserving or even improving social status. psychologist pronto mehta is an associate professor at university college in london . his research focuses on how hormones particularly testosterone

influence human behavior. the evidence for that myth that testosterone is directly related to masculine traits like aggression has not borne out in the data so there are plenty of results suggesting that testosterone is either weakly or unrelated to aggressive behavior at all in humans including human males so the field is still trying to unpack these kinds of the facts to understand when to start or might be related to other behaviors like helping and pro-social behavior as well. mettle has carried out an experiment that involves the ultimatum game similar to the one we saw earlier. it's actually a way to look at 2 kinds of behaviors one is trust to what extent is the 1st move or trusting and 2 to look at reciprocity of trust if someone is hyper trusting is

the 2nd mover going to reciprocate that trust. as in the experiment carried out by sean dreyer one player was given an extra dose of testosterone the other player was given a placebo. the experiment will measure the level of trust between the 2 the player administered testosterone can use his money to make sure that the other player also profits but will the 2nd player give back some of his winnings as a gesture of gratitude or would he keep it all for himself. and we found 2 interesting facts 1st it's consistent with the stereotype testosterone reduce trust in the 1st mover so that is somewhat consistent with the stereotype being related to. competitiveness and threat and the environment may be. mobilizing more selfish social behaviors rates are going to keep money. next

the players reversed their roles. in both tests the player with the extra testosterone shares his winnings with the other this is an example of pro-social behavior. we know that reciprocity even cooperated situations it's going to garner status and what we found is it has asked her to sit reciprocity more arguing that in a cooperate of environment it's again a superstition pro-social behaviors that you gain status and so go in those situations to stop her and actually my pro-social. mehta is convinced that to starts to implies a much more complex role in human behavior than research has previously fill out

for example it can promote socially positive behavior but there's always a motivating factor behind that behavior. you can imagine when we think about our leaders and people in positions of power they have expertise knowledge and experience that they're going to relate to their subordinates that's part of being a good leader that's also part of some definitions of power where you're helping others as a way to influence others in some ways so you can think of it as process but it's also in some definitions an exertion of power. but concepts such as masculinity status and power are up to see differently in various cultures around the world will the test results differ from one country to the next. so my laboratory isn't one in someone else's laboratory in germany someone else's laboratory is in

a rural part of the south of the united states that should theoretically be expected to change the results. but the effects of testosterone on the human body at the same regardless of culture and geography when christian vote found out that he was infertile he started looking for solutions. but my mother took me to see a urologist and he told her that i would never have children or that i could have a super lot of sex lives so my mom didn't think it was funny so i started reading up on my condition. is there a medical solution to infertility caused by testosterone deficiency. doctors it's my life is somehow. when i'm. out and licensed and one of the things we can do for men who suffer from this problem is to give them injections of get out of dropping hormones that's never done during

your happy form of treatment has been used for years even decades where you had seemed and comes. the good not outright plans include l h which is responsible for the production of testosterone in the testes and if s. and each which contributes to the production of sperm. the treatment was successful to christiane of all for his body was able to produce testosterone and sperm for a short period of time he had the sperm frozen for later use. he starts if i had listened to what the doctors told me at 1st it would have ended right there but now i can have children. all of the szell ties is a professor of psychology at friedrich alexander university in ellen his research work focuses on how testosterone affects the body specifically bone growth.

companies would know some effect from distance their own just tossed around and extradite its counterpart in females and contribute significantly to bone strength and density engine from prenatal development to maturity. in the. clear example during the 1st 3 months of pregnancy if testosterone causes the ring fingers of the male foetus to grow longer than the index fingers in a sling fingers. show ties notes that in general women's index fingers are longer than they ring fingers in men it's just the opposite. here you can see that in this image of a man's hand. index finger is clearly shorter than the ring finger that. goes because. testosterone clearly has an influence on bone growth even in the

early stages of pregnancy it may also be responsible for the early development of the so-called power motive. as a scientist so i'm interested in finding out where that motive comes from i suspect that its origins can be found in biology. here is conducting an experiment in which the participants write a fantasy narrative this may help them to determine whether they are motivated by power. the power motive is a common human characteristic that involves one person's efforts to have an impact on the behavior of others this motivation does not necessarily manifest itself in conscious attitudes or the beliefs that we have about ourselves our research indicates that the way we perceive ourselves actually has little to do with what makes us tick and what influences our spontaneous behavior. which for.

this part of the experiment involves a series of 10 tests and finding out how the participants respond to victory or defeat. the test results can be manipulated one participant can win up to 8 of the 10 rounds. the researchers want to find out whether any changes take place in the test subjects hormone levels. when we found that the power motive plays a role in the response to winning or losing. those who won this had higher levels of testosterone than those who lost everything from. and if one of the participants is not motivated by power but wins it has no effect on the amount of testosterone

in his system. we can't say that winning or losing is exclusively responsible for changes in testosterone levels we have to take into account factors such as the individual's personality and motivation. but those factors are shaped by testosterone during fetal brain development. but does it all come down to testosterone and its influence in determining for example male think the length and the development of the power motive. women have only 10 percent of the testosterone levels found in men does that mean that they are less motivated by power. viper there's evidence that indicates that there is a connection between the length of women's fingers and the power motive complex

business i was not it's a complex situation that will require a lot more research. scientists have learned more in recent years about female sex hormones but the relationship between women and power has not been widely studied. the field has focused on male reproductive system and males for the past 100 years and has largely in the collective looking at female sex hormones in the context of status and leadership and this is. this is a large gap in the literature today. we've come to the university of cambridge to talk to clinical psychologist simon baron cohen. part of his research focuses on how gender affects human behavior in general and the brain in particular. we've been looking sex differences in the mind between males and females on average

and one of tests that we use is where you have to find a shape that's hidden in a design as quickly as you can and we find that on average man are faster at finding this target hidden in the overall design. baron cohen and his colleagues conducted behavioral studies of children and adults. since they started by testing hormone levels in numerous samples of amniotic fluid the liquid that helps protect the fetus in the womb. we've measured the testosterone during the pregnancy in the womb in the amniotic fluid so this is the baby in the womb and some women during pregnancy have a clinical procedure called amniocentesis where a needle goes into that fluid to take out some of the florence and we can measure testosterone in the fluid and babies vary in terms of how much of the hormone they

are exposed to so boys showed more and more testosterone than girls in the amniotic fluid. in the early stages of fetal development the genitalia show no signs of gender distinction. after approximately the 7th week of gestation a gene on the y. chromosome can activate a process that results in the development of testicles lyta testosterone plays a role in the development of masculine characteristics in several parts of the male fetus including the brain. while looking at these long term the facts of the hormones presumably mediated by changes in brain development. so we're measuring the behavior but the assumption is that hormones have changed brain development in males and females because they're exposed to different amounts of the hormone. after the babies and baron cohen study were born

he measured and analyze their reaction to a series of images. what we found was that the higher the child's prenatal testosterone the last 5 contact the child makes at their 1st birthday so this was a surprise for us because you would think i contact is influenced by social factors but actually it seems to also be influenced by prenatal test auster and. the children were tested again at the age of 2 the results indicated that girls more actively sought i contact them boys did and had better verbal skills. they talked earlier and their language develops faster what we didn't know is why why do girls have this advantage in language development but now we can relate it

back to the prenatal testosterone because we found that children who had higher prenatal testosterone had smaller vocabularies years later baron cohen conducted more tests on the children. they were shown images of various facial expressions and were asked to describe the emotion the images put tried. and again we found that the higher the child's prenatal testosterone the more difficulty they have on this test of empathy which is a surprise again for us because we're finding as if in there it's 8 years later since we measured the testosterone this still in the fact that we're observing. to sum up girls did better on tests that involve verbal and social skills. boys were better at developing analytical skills. the same hormone seems to be

involved not only in social development like reading faces and language and eye contact but also in nonsocial skills like pattern recognition and taking things apart to see parts within the homes a bit like when the rubik cube where you have to see the pattern very quickly. the tests indicate that boys are better able to understand abstract concepts but have less empathy baron cohen has used the findings to support his theory of a possible link between testosterone and autism. we looked at their relationship between typical sex differences and autism because what is m is more common than boring. so we were trying to understand why why why why does being a boy need to to a higher likelihood that you'll develop autism and the answer we're getting is that

one factor may be prenatal test auster and. research on this subject is still in the early stages and experts are still trying to find out what role prenatal tests tossed around plays in determining sexual differentiation in the brain. was given is that there is no evidence of pre-determination in the brain we're sort of pushed one way or the other by a hormonal effect from the early stages of fetal brain development for very much development happens later of after birth and in infancy and beyond that when the hormones act jointly with a number of extra law factors in the environment and above all in a child social environment it's looking with him for a reason and here. matter has been researching the influence that hormones and social environment have on behavior development.

researchers have including my lab have looked at both directions of the facts how hormones influence dominance and status related behaviors and how one social status and the environment in turn can impact hormone fluctuations in a few back loop. also studied how people. to see themselves and how that perception influences their behavior. do people consider themselves dominant or passive and what role does testosterone play and so what we found was that testosterone didn't have a direct effect on competitive decisionmaking but it really depended on whether they filled out the questionnaire suggesting that they were high or low in dominance so some of our work does suggest that hormones do impacts behavior such as competitive behavior but interestingly in inconsistent with the sort of myth

about testosterone as direct a fact is depends on people's personalities so the way we see ourselves. so testosterone influences our personality and in turn our personality influences our level of testosterone. high levels of testosterone a said to make men verrall and dominant and society either views such men with respect or contempt testosterone also fuels competition among men perhaps it's no coincidence that this hormone was discovered during the late stages of the industrial revolution and. in the $850.00 s. shall edward brown sic are was one of the 1st scientists to speculate on the existence of substances that we now know is hormones he also regularly injected himself with the fluid extracted from animal testicles and claimed that this

process improved his sexual prowess and physical well being. testosterone has long been associated with masculinity strength and vitality. today testosterone replacement therapy has become popular among older men. in some . advertisements it's tough as a miracle cure much as brown sekhar claimed more than a century ago pharmacies doctors and drug companies make a lot of money selling testosterone preparations cells have increased sharply since 2007. tough to michel's its men is regularly consulted by older men suffering symptoms of exhaustion many worry a testosterone deficiency may be the cause of concern for you. sitzman tests the patient sperm count and bone density among other procedures. in most cases he's not

able to attribute the symptoms to reduced levels of testosterone. this graphic shows that testosterone levels of 10000 men ranging in age from 4 to 90. 3 in here there are boys of course have very low levels signs and homes in need of a good to system. year in the pool but the levels increase during puberty then we see high levels of testosterone slide into old age. if we rule out disease there are several reasons why testosterone levels may fall. in other mice and fences are given the vast majority of cases of these patients produce less testosterone simply because they're overweight. obesity is a problem for many older men and younger men too for that matter. overweight men

usually have a lot of visceral fat and that fat releases a number of harmful substances. and it can lead to insulin resistance my blood pressure and lower testosterone levels. one layer of body fat lies just beneath the skin a 2nd life have a visceral fat is stored in the abdominal cavity needs several vital organs. excess visceral fat can cut testosterone production which can promote the storage of even more fat in the abdominal cavity this causes the spare tire that's common among middle aged men. testosterone is often associated with doping scandals in competitive sports. michelle clairvaux with the german elim peak sports confederation is an expert on the use of performance enhancing substances including testosterone.

testosterone plays a key role in regulating muscle mass and how the body responds to exercise size during a prolonged physical activity the muscles suffer a minor trauma so afterwards the body starts repairing the damage muscular tissue and increasing its strength and size. of this i'm awesome. until recently only professional athletes use performance enhancing drugs now amateur athletes a taking them as well. for users testosterone derivatives called anabolic steroids or commercial fitness studios is a huge problem right now. and we believe that 13 to 16 percent of all clients are used to doping proper asians mostly anabolic steroids and it's a lot more widespread among amateur athletes than it is among the professionals at the school is a. healthy males produce 40 milligrams of testosterone every

day but for those who are trying to increase muscle mass and performance that amount is too little. christian for tried using testosterone supplements to county his home and efficiency. and discipline of speed and you can find testosterone boosters and capsules for if you just this was all i knew that they weren't going to work but i tried them anyway or sometimes for the companies that make these products play on your emotions after that you shot something that's why i bought them and of course they didn't help at all. but only anabolic steroids synthetic versions of testosterone can produce the kinds of results. that the athletes want the use of steroids to enhance performance is widespread among bodybuilders. in my own research i came across the case of

a 17 year old who was using these substances. really comes as it was scary it was injecting more than a 1000 milligrams of testosterone derivatives a week. he was also taking dianabol steroids tablets every day or. so and all of that's a lot more than a 1000 milligrams a week that's a dangerous amount for a 17 year old does this for. the abuse of anabolic steroids can have a number of dangerous side effects including high blood pressure strokes heart attacks and liver damage. excessive increases in testosterone can lead to reductions in spend production. because the brain determines that the body has enough to start and cuts off the supply. pronto matter has been

studying with the substances besides testosterone can influence human behavior for example cortisol a hormone that's often released in response to stress and low concentrations of blood sugar there is some evidence that cortisol levels impact the pathway between testosterone and behavioral outcomes specifically hormones don't influence behavior directly but there's a mechanism through which they are cursed specifically one mechanism is they bind to or scepter for that specific or mark in the case of testosterone that would be the interaction receptor. this binding process takes place throughout the body like a key fitting into a lock. made to believe that in stressful situations blocks the testosterone receptive. if cortisol levels are high that could actually intact denies or and or impede the relationship

between testosterone and behavior presumably through molecular pathways such as receptor reduction and so we theorized what we called the jewel hormone hypothesis . this role playing exercises designed to test the effect of course on testosterone one participant gives a series of orders to the other if the player who's supposed to follow the orders feel stressed. changes. we found that one levels of cortisol were low that as fact occurred that higher testosterone was related to more dominance one cortisol levels are high that in fact wasn't there higher to start and was not related to more dominance so this is

suggesting that testosterone is a fax dominant behavior in a position of leadership really depends on what's happening in the stress axis in the body. so is it possible that testosterone is just one of many substances that can influence human behavior. more research on this subject needs to be done at this point experts have come to a variety of different conclusions. biology does not mean simplicity i think it's recognizing in appreciating the complexity that we are human beings we're dynamic systems we develops and evolves to adapt to different environments and that form. actually there beauty again is that they are responsive to the environment so your hormones are facts the way you behave but then the environment also affects your hormone release in general testosterone represents 2 of the major societal things about time competition and success.

the cliché is that men who have too little testosterone and loses men who have a lot of it are winners. i don't know whether i should be proud of how much testosterone i have or not. but it's appends on what society thinks are desirable qualities and rents. and that concept can change depending on the culture and the era. testosterone is the stuff that men have made of the actual quantity is not so important but every man needs at least a minimum amount. of use with for and since i started testosterone replacement therapy i felt a lot better on the depression and lack of energy disappeared in 2 weeks of other things just kept getting better for me i'm not confused and unhappy anymore.

so there's no simple $1.00 to $1.00 link between testosterone and male aggression or quest for power latest findings indicate it's social and cultural environment factors that determine testosterone so fix unmanly behavior. the w.c. top show strong opinions clear positions for international perspectives beijing is taking a tough stance on democracy protests in homecoming its economic influence is growing dramatically and it's boosting its military offensive so is china striving for global supremacy find out for to the point shortly. to the point. is the. natural riches of

precious resources. and a rewarding investment. farmland has been called ethiopia's green gold the country has an abundant supply and leases it to international try and. government is after high export revenues and the corporations high profit margin. but not everyone benefits from the booming business. expropriation environmental destruction starvation. the price for government and corporate greed. selling out of a. dead donkey sphere know how enough. start september 18th on d w.

demonstration but consequences for those caught up in the clashes with police. he faces a. sentence if.