Are You Testosterone Deficient?

On a cloudy day, time moves less clearly than it does on a sunny day. Harken back to the summer days of youth, before the responsibilities of a job or family required one to pay attention to the passage of time. It wasn’t until the streetlights went on that one realized the sun had set and night had covered the neighborhood in a cloak of darkness. The activity on the streets settle as children are called in, even the dogs and squirrels sought shelter as they prepare for their nocturnal slumber.

- By Daniel Gwartney

A man’s physiology undergoes a similar change as time passes, though on a much grander scale. In decades, rather than hours, the “sunshine” of youthfulness passes gradually as the “darkness” of aging suppresses many activities in the body. Among the many documented changes that occur with aging is a clear decline in the concentration of testosterone. Testosterone is a naturally occurring hormone that is responsible, either directly or through one of its metabolites – dihydrotestosterone (DHT) and estradiol (E2) – for promoting anabolic processes in many tissues, as well as initiating and maintaining secondary sexual characteristics. Testosterone is often referred to as the male sex hormone, but it is shortsighted to pigeonhole testosterone to a single set of processes. Testosterone obviously promotes muscle mass and sexual/reproductive function, but it also affects bone density, red blood cell mass, hair growth patterns, organ function, fat cell metabolism, stem cell differentiation, etc.

The Fluctuating Hormone