Ray Peat on testosterone

"The primary male hormone, testosterone, has chemical and functional properties of both estrogen and progesterone; this combined function gives males a short-term stability (fewer goiters, migraines, etc.) but a lack of adaptiveness in the longer range (higher mortality in infancy and old age)."

- Nutrition For Women

"Anything which produces tissue atrophy will tend to produce cancer. The important question is, what will induce differentiation and useful function in cancer cells? There are many substances which promote differentiation and oppose the effects of estrogen, and some of these have been found to be useful in cancer therapy. Among the substances opposing estrogen are dopamine and nickel, prolactin inhibitors; chalones, the tissue specific proteins which inhibit cell division (and possibly more ephemerally, the peptides of memory); the aprotic solvents, DMF and possibly DMSO; progesterone and testosterone; thyroxin and iodine; magnesium ATP, the stable form of the biological energy molecule; vitamin A, a protein-sparing nutrient which promotes differentiation, and vitamin E (and the closely related coenzyme Q, or ubiquinone)."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress will cause a rise in estrogen and a loss of anti estrogens such as thyroid, progesterone, and (in men) testosterone. Male apes who are bullied have decreased levels of testosterone, and this effect persists long after their environment has improved. The stress of subjugation seems to lead to an adaptation of passivity. Their passivity prevents further injury, but we dont know how stressful their continuing submission is."

- Nutrition For Women

"Energetically, the estrogen-dominated metabolic state is less efficient than the oxidative state which is dominated by thyroid and progesterone (or testosterone). The estrogen state, like the rats state of learned helplessness, is parasympathetic, in the sense that many chemical balances have moved away from the mobilized sympathetic or adrenergic state. The estrogen state, for example, depresses blood sugar, while the mobilized state spares glucose by oxidizing fat."

- Nutrition For Women

"Normally, the liver treats estrogen like a poison, removing it immediately from the body. If the liver gets sluggish from malnutrition or too much estrogen (or other damage), it can allow the hormone to build up to very high levels. Since estrogen is metabolically antagonistic to progesterone and testosterone, i think the pill might decrease libido by coun teracting these other hormones."

- Nutrition For Women

"Pfeiffer has investigated the relationship of porphyria to certain forms of schizophrenia, but I dont think he has mentioned that a good dose of glucose, or of an anti-estrogen hormone, such as testosterone or progesterone, will make the symptoms go away,"

- Nutrition For Women

"Progesterone is the precursor (following acetate and cholesterol) for all of the other steroid hormones, so it can be used in men. It (or its precursor, pregnenolone) has been used for prostatitis, arthritis, and infertility in men. Large amounts, though, would probably suppress LH, and lower testosterone synthesis, but a smaller amount (especially in old men) seems to increase sperm count and motility. In male and female athletes who become infertile, it would seem to be the appropriate therapy, generally in combination with thyroid."

- Nutrition For Women

"Excess stress (by elevating estrogen and/or depleting progesterone, etc.) may bring on symptoms in someone who never had them. Spending a summer in Alaska, with an unusually long day, may relieve the symptoms of a chronic sufferer. Dark cloudy winters in England or the Pacific Northwest are powerful stressors, and cause lower progesterone in women and testosterone in men."

- Nutrition For Women

"Stress inhibits the thyroid, and can lower progesterone (and/or testosterone) while raising estrogen. Recent work by Siiteri and his group shows a hormonal involvement in various autoimmune diseases. Females are much more susceptible to these sicknesses than are males."

- Nutrition For Women

"Testosterone and progesterone both have direct anti-estrogen activity."

- Nutrition For Women

"Some of the changes of aging probably relate to autoimmune reactions, in which the body attacks itself; both testosterone and progesterone normalize the immune system, suppressing auto-immune problems."

- Nutrition For Women

"one day a month, at ovulation, women normally produce considerable testosterone"

- Nutrition For Women

"Men with Parkinson’s disease have been found to be deficient in testosterone, one of the hormones involved in tissue maintenance and repair, and supplements of the hormone relieve some of the symptoms."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Men’s testosterone declines with stress and aging, and its conversion to estrogen is increased by stress and inflammation. Endotoxin specifically increases the conversion of testosterone to estrogen"

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Treatment with dihydrotestosterone (which can’t be converted to estrogen) might be more effective than with ordinary testosterone, considering the increased activity of aromatase with age, stress, and inflammation, and the probable role of estrogen in the excitatory degenerative process."

- March 2017 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"during constructive exploration, energy is abundant, and cells with the highest energy needs are protected by progesterone, testosterone, DHEA, and other steroids."

- January 2018 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Progesterone and DHEA are the precursors for the other more specialized steroid hormones, including cortisol, aldosterone (sodium-retaining hormone), estrogen, and testosterone."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"People who studied the effects of steroids on aging skin found that the steroids which reversed structural age changes in the skin (progesterone, testosterone, pregnenolone) sometimes restored hair growth"

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"Since DHEA can be easily metabolized into testosterone (by the skin, for example), and into estrogen, I dont think it should ever be administered alone, without an approximately natural balance of pregnenolone and progesterone."

- Generative Energy Restoring The Wholeness Of Life

"There are many antiestrogenic systems ( thyroid, progesterone, testosterone, sulfation, methylation, glucuronidation, antiinflammatory factors, etc.) and the varied, specific nature of the organism’s response to stimulation is probably sufficient to account for the different’ outcomes, such as masculinity or feminity, tumefaction or growth, alertness or mania."

- 2000 - March

"Since it was known that estrogen treatment was dangerous for men, and that it increases blood clotting and vascular spasms, there ha to be some overriding belief that led to its general use in treating prostate cancer. That belief seems to be that estrogen, the female hormone, opposes testosterone, the male hormone which is responsible for the growth--and therefore for the cancerization—of the prostate gland. Everything is wrong with that sentence, but you can can find every part of the belief present and functioning in the medical literature."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Since the time of Brown-Sequard.and Eugen Steinach, it has been accepted that declining testicular function is a common feature of aging, and testosterone was probably the first hormone that was clearly found to decrease consistently with aging."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The conversion of testosterone to estrogen occurs in the testicle itself, but this conversion is also inhibited by the favorable hormonal environment of youth."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"LH (luteinizing hormone) increases when progesterone or testosterone is deficient, and growth hormone and prolactin (which are closely associated in evolution) both increase under a variety of stressful situations, and with estrogenic stimulation."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Prostate cancer patients who had higher levels of LH and lower testosterone died most quickly. (Harper, et al., 1984.) Also, a high ratio of testosterone to estradiol or of testosterone to prolactin corresponded to better survival (Rannikko, et al, 1981.) Considered separately, patients with higher testosterone levels had a better prognosis than those with lower levels, and patients with lower growth hormone levels did better than those with higher growth hormone levels. (Wilson, et al., 1985.)"

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"In human prostate slices, several hormones —~ (including insulin, and probably prolactin) stimulated cell division; testosterone did mot,, under these experimental conditions. (McKeehan, et al., 1984.) Contrary to the stereotyped ideas, there are suggestions that supplementary androgens could control prostate cancer (Umekita, et al., 1996), and that antagonists to prolactin and estrogen might be appropriately used in hormonal therapy"

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"By the age of 50, men often show an excess of both prolactin and estrogen, and a deficiency of thyroid and testosterone. This is the age at which enlargement of the prostate often becomes noticeable."

- 1998 - May Ray Peat's Newsletter

"At a certain point, the continued production of red blood cells can make the blood so viscous that this viscosity impairs circulation through capillaries, and creates a vicious circle, stimulating the formation of more red blood cells. Men are more likely than women to have polycythemia rubra vera, possibly-because testosterone is anabolic to the bone marrow, and estrogen tends to slow blood cell formation"

- 1997 - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"Progesterone is an anti-androgen, and blocks testosterone’s effects. When testosterone is given to newborn or very young rats, it sets up a male pattern of hormone development, but if progesterone is given at the same time, that doesnt happen. Progesterone prevents the differentiation away from the basic female path into the male specialization."

- 1995 - August.September - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The many ways in which the heart is able to resist stress, and even to thrive on it can be generalized to develop ways to protect other organs, and the whole body, from the chronic and cumulative stresses that lead to generalized atrophy, declining function, and aging. During stress, the heart and other working organs become resistant to the glucocorticoid hormones. When a person is given radioactive testosterone, it can be seen to reach the highest concentration in the heart. It is testosterone’s antiglucocorticoid effect which causes it to enlarge skeletal muscles, when exercise is moderate."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"The other anti-catabolic steroids, pregnenolone, progesterone, and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), are present in larger amounts, and are of more general importance, than testosterone, especially in the brain, where their concentration is very high."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter

"here are several systems that oppose the toxic effects of adrenalin. GABA, dopamine, and adenosine have multiple anti-adrenergic effects. In many situations, the parasympathetic system is protective against adrenalin. The protective steroids also act at many levels. Magnesium, retained in the ce)l largely under the influence of ATP and thyroid, is our basic calcium blocker, or calcium antagonist. GABA and dopamine inhibit the ACTH-glucccorticoid system, and shift the steroid balance toward the protective anti-glucocorticoids, progesterone, testosterone, pregnenolone, and DHEA."

- 1992 - June - Ray Peat's Newsletter