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testosterone is the most important mile 6 homeowners men who are heavily influenced by testosterone a said to be egotistical and they enjoy taking risks but a number of european scientists have been trying to find out whether testosterone is really as bad as its reputation. with come to the minster university hospital to talk to dr michel's it's man a german specialist in the treatment of diseases that affect men he's also an expert on homeowners.

feeding and just astro is responsible for the development of a number of layoffs in school characteristics including here patterns on the head of it also determines beer growth affects muscles and a man's overall personality just a story it's a much more complex or long term some people might think. 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 are called androgens the most important antigen is 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 hormone immediately after birth. it's hard to say why that happens but it seems to be a part of the maturation process in the brain and in the male reproductive system the spirit of man was. christian of all brown at the age of 20 he discovered that he had too little testosterone in his body doctors later determined that the cells in his brain were not sending up 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 it didn't happen overnight i kept feeling worse and worse i have

no energy at all and no sex drive either expect when this doesn't run but i could feel something just wasn't right it. could feel that i was diagnosed with depression much left there when i realized that something was seriously wrong with make us all out of the shop and i went. home was a medical student at the time and a bodybuilder he kept a close eye on his metabolism and testosterone levels. martin was a hoot but i couldn't figure out what was going on i got along well with my family and had a girlfriend 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 it's interesting one so i had some tests done and the levels turned out to be about 0 that's a bit low isn't a sense of any. how much testosterone demesne actually need. to

average men have at least $8.00 to $12.00 normal for a leader of testosterone to anything below that represents a deficiency as a tool but the amount also depends on genetics not a single missing from the if 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 or loss. that synthesis is carried out by an enzyme 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 christian fold chose a potentially risky full of medical treatment. most of her kids. needed hormone replacement therapy after other possible causes like vitamin d. deficiency have been ruled out. but i was also. one of the side effects of hormone

replacement therapy is that it suppresses sperm production which can cause in particular. the hardest. just tossed around as naturally produced in the testicles but the process begins in the brain and he specifically in the hypothalamus sign and. hides it links the body's nervous system to the endurance system who the pituitary gland to do who. the pitcher trade land is divided into 2 sections the anterior portion produces 2 key hormones l. h. and s. h. l. i was responsible for stimulating the production of testosterone in the testes s. h. contributes to the production of span. these 2 hormones report back to the brain and within the body is producing enough testosterone and sperm.

the brain adjusts the amounts of each as necessary. and to store testosterone replacement therapy suppresses the hormones in the pituitary gland that are responsible for sperm production and it's like a birth control pills ovi on the pill or 3 months. and then one of the but if a man is to start strong deficient and wants to have children we have to take a different approach. low testosterone can have serious effects on the body that can too much of this whole mind make men overly aggressive. this is leon home the francis center for cognitive neuroscience is john cordray or is a research director here. has been studying the influence of testosterone on human behavior and he's found little evidence that to stop strong strokes aggression in men. should. show the event that testosterone has on human behavior is by no means clear but there is

some indirect evidence that you know the example high levels of testosterone have been found in some prison inmates who've committed serious crimes to be you more and we did a study which indicated that patients who are given a testosterone injections if you could become more aggressive say when they think you know you call to show. your testosterone can also actually improve social behaviors you know. some preordered actually the same thing. so at this point there's little hard evidence pointing to a link between increased levels of testosterone and aggressive behavior. 'd 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. 'd 'd 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. to switch to and we tried to determine whether the increase in testosterone levels would contribute to a change in behavior as your graph shows that both groups started out with approximately the same level of testosterone actually looking at this one that is then we gave one group of testosterone injections it's to once again he said and recorded the increase in the level of this hormone all these troops are.

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 also fish 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 or at this point we observed no. it's between the player who'd been given testosterone and the ones who haven't settled into a set it up. now the rules of the game are 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 dry 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 should team exclusively it's a subtle difference that we confirmed it only in the 2nd stage of the experiment what can you what. the group administered with extra testosterone imposed a more severe punishment when they believed that they had been given enough money but at 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 were surprised by the results but the situation is more complex than that dre a says this is subconscious motivation at work here. some of the young showing a quarter sure. it will do this nominee and shows clearly that you can improve your

social status if you cooperate with people or engage in other kinds of positive social behavior. so more so while testosterone can influence aggression commitments which it also plays a role in the ability to act with generosity so that's been really annoys to. dry eye has been looking for more evidence to support his theory on the influence of testosterone so he's been studying brain activity. there are 2 sides 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. particularly a group of neural structures known as the reward system to mark. improved social status generates a sense of wellbeing like a reward that may explain the boasting trait commonly associated with excessive

manly behavior unless you know it's to support something more not to go upstream there's always a motivation behind generosity if someone sees you being generous they're more likely to think highly of you for example she says men will probably be more generous if they know that they are being observed by women both 20 simply by his own children by the job so this indicates another link between testosterone and generous behavior. this was to oprah's we were. there was to. sow 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 to start and

influence human behavior. the evidence for that myth that testosterone is directly related to masculine traits like aggression has not worn 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 facts to understand when to start might be related to other behaviors like helping and processional behavior as well the metro has carried out an experiment that involves the ultimatum game similar to the one we saw early on. it's actually a way to look at 2 kinds of behaviors one is trust to what extent is the 1st mover 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 could 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 testosterone being related to. competitiveness and threat and the environment and maybe. mobilizing more selfish social behaviors rates are going to keep money.

next the players reverse their else. 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 in the cooperate of situations where it's going to garner status and what we found is it has offered to suppress or prosody more arguing that in a cooperate environment it's again a superstition pro-social behaviors that you gain status and so though in those situations to start actually my pro-social. net is convinced that to start steroid implies a much more complex role in human behavior than research has previously phil what

for example we 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 way 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 perceived 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 are the same regardless of culture and geography when christian vall 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 would have sex life so my mom didn't think it was funny so i started reading up on my condition it was in a stream of bytes of folks. is there a medical solution to infertility caused by testosterone deficiency. doctors it's money off as some had. been on monday and. went licensed and one of the things we can do for men who suffer from this problem is to give them injections of good not all dropping hormones doesn't have

a gun to your wrist you can see how p. form of treatment has been used for years even decades yet seems and becomes. the good not a trope ans include h. which is responsible for the production of testosterone in the testes and if sh which contributes to the production of sperm. the treatment was successful for christian of all for his body was able to produce testosterone and fish are spurned for a short period of time he had the sperm frozen for later use. he starts to define it listen 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 a long and his research work focuses on how testosterone affects the body

specifically bone growth. and on some effective from distance the one just faster and extradite its counterpart in females and contribute significantly to bone strength and density action from prenatal development to maturity. on the income and in the. clear example during the 1st 3 months of pregnancy if testosterone causes the ring fingers of the male fetus to grow longer than the index fingers. showed highest 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. because. testosterone clearly has an influence on bone growth even in the early

stages of pregnancy. it might also be responsible for the early development of the so-called power motive. to shawn so this is there's a scientist so i'm interested in finding out where that motive comes from i suspect that its origins can be found in biology is that we're out. 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. or 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 behaviors. from time 5 i'm sure

most. of 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. to go to women to the we found that the power motive plays a role in the response to winning or losing. those who want less have higher levels of testosterone than those who lost everything for the leader. 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. and moved on to convene.

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. those factors are shaped by testosterone during fetal brain development and. hooman thickens. 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. and vitally there's evidence that indicates that there is a connection between the length of women's fingers and the power motive complex as

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 their collective looking at the 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 at 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 the 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. 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 up some of the fluid 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 show 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 test astern the less by 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 testosterone. 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 talk earlier and their language develops faster what we didn't know is why why do girls have the 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 portrayed. 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 even 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. so 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 slight reading faces and language and eye contact but also enormous social skills like pattern recognition and taking things apart to see parts within the homes a bit like on the rubik's cube where you have to see the passion very quickly. the tests indicate the 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 in autism because what is m is more common and boring. so we were trying to understand why why why why does being a boy lead you to a higher likelihood that you'll develop autism and they aren't so we're getting is

that one factor may be prenatal testing auster and. research on this subject is still in the early stages and experts are still trying to find out what role prenatal testosterone plays in determining sexual differentiation in the brain. is going on is that there is no evidence of pre-determination in the brain we're sort of pushed one way or the other by hormonal effects and the early stages of fetal brain development but very much development happens later of after birth 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 moods and on working families and so on and on that and here pronto mehta 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 and a few back loop. also studied how people. to see for 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 decision making 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 this 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 view 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 succumbed 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 and. sitzman tests the patient sperm count and bone density among other procedures. in most cases he's not

able to attribute the symptoms to reduce levels of testosterone. seen tell this graphic shows that testosterone levels of 10000 men ranging in age from 4 to 92 the in here there are boys of course have very low levels signs and homes in need of a good to be here in 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 under my skin for instance to deliver asked majority of cases 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 for a good thing. one layer of body fat lies just beneath the skin a 2nd line of visceral fat is stored in the abdominal cavity. news 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.

and 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 are taking them as well. as on the. use of testosterone derivatives called anabolic steroids that commercial fitness studios has a huge problem right now. and we believe that 13 to 16 percent of all clients have used doping preparations mostly anabolic steroids and it's a lot more widespread among amateur athletes than it is among the professionals at this 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. christiane for tried using testosterone supplements to county his home and deficiency. to supplement interceding and used inside testosterone boosters and capsules for us this was all i knew that they weren't going to work but i tried them anyway or sometimes the companies that make these products play on your emotions to shots and 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 body builders. mind i know for sure. in my own research i came across the case of

a 17 year old who was using these substances. told me it comes as a storm 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. young man and it's a neon you've always actually. 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 testosterone and cuts off the supply. a 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 could impact the pathway between testosterone and behavioral outcomes specifically hormones don't influence behavior directly but there's a mechanism through which they occur specifically one mechanism is they bind to a reception or for that specific or mark in the case of testosterone that would be the intrusion receptor. this binding process takes place throughout the body like a key fitting into a lock. manta believes that in stressful situations. the testosterone receptive. if cortisol levels are high that could actually antagonize or and or impede the

relationship between testosterone and behavior presumably through molecular pathways such as receptor reduction and so we theorized what we call 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 his behavior changes. we've found that when levels of cortisol were low that as fact occur that higher testosterone is related to more dominance when cortisol levels are high that in fact wasn't there higher testosterone 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 and appreciating the complexity that we are human beings were dynamic systems we've developed and evolved to adapt to different environments and that form. malone's actually their beauty again is that they are responsive to the environment so your hormones are a factor 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 2 little testosterone and loses men who have a lot of an awareness. 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 residents. and that concept can change depending on the culture and the era. of. testosterone is the stuff that men are made of the actual quantity is not so important that every man needs at least a minimum amount. of ingots with her for since i started testosterone replacement therapy i've felt a lot better on the depression and lack of energy disappeared in 2 weeks and things just kept getting better for me i'm not confused and unhappy anymore for

a bit. so there's no simple one to one link between testosterone and my look quest for power latest findings indicate it's social and cultural environment factors that determine testosterone so fixed on man he behaved. climate change. the state. environmental projects. globalisation. biodiversity species conservation exploitation the only. human rights displacement. of the global and current to a local action. global 3000. in 30 minutes on d w. ringback

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