What we're doing in this line of thought is negotiating that limit.
My remark was that no testosterone is absurd due to the critical role it has in development, providing a bound on what it would mean for testosterone to be a toxin. Some is good. I acknowledge that having high-enough testosterone levels to the point where heart failure and prostate cancer is implicated, would be difficult (although if true, the effect is non-linear: this study did not replicate issues with heart disease, nor did its citations[0]). So too much is bad. If you insist on framing testosterone as a toxin, then the dose will make the poison as well as the cure.
(100% testosterone is a nonsense quantity since you can always raise blood concentrations, but let's put it at values greater than 1000ng/dl for most people)
A universal drop in testosterone within at least the US, with something leftover to explain after controlling for lifestyle factors, and no sign of stalling in the trend, brings us to a conundrum. If we do nothing, and testosterone decreases faster than it used to, and some testosterone is good, and no testosterone is bad, but too much testosterone is bad, should we stop the process? Unless you set the "too much" to be much lower than what has been medically accepted, the answer must be yes at some point.
Since this is about picking an optima, what is at stake is whether or not testosterone levels before the 2000s were responsible for outsized rates of heart disease and prostate cancer (or other morbidities), and if this is true, whether or not the problems gained through the decline of testosterone weigh off the cost of its presence. We could include other externalities like status-seeking behaviors or sperm counts, which would make the comparison harder but more honest.
What I expect - I am not sure - is that testosterone's presence in heart disease (not prostate cancer) will be comorbid with testosterone-independent factors, such as diet/exercise. And since the norm seems to be testosterone declining with age I would be surprised if pushing that curve towards youth ends up being a good thing.
Feel free to challenge these assumptions, but I really think what we need to do is debate the weights.
> I'm identifying that people are only suggesting positive aspects of high testosterone and ignoring the negative. And, you are again reiterating the positive aspects in a biased, almost spiritualised way.
I am curious why you would use the word "spiritualized". I was not invoking the supernatural within my argument (the word "spiritedness" doesn't count; its meaning is secular). The emphasis on positive factors is because I'm debating your emphasis on the negatives. Attempting to frame the argument as spiritual without pointing to particulars is to add connotations of irrationality which aren't there. It is true that I am arguing emphatically.
> If you insist on framing testosterone as a toxin
I didn't intend my argument that way.
I was responding to the parent who was proposing that some environmental toxin had been introduced since the 1990s resulting in lower testosterone levels in men, seemingly from an underlying assumption that high testosterone is inherently good.
I was challenging that assumption directly. It seems at least equally plausible that some environmental toxin has been removed since the 1990s (to be specific, lead would be a good candidate) resulting in lower testosterone levels in men.
My remark was that no testosterone is absurd due to the critical role it has in development, providing a bound on what it would mean for testosterone to be a toxin. Some is good. I acknowledge that having high-enough testosterone levels to the point where heart failure and prostate cancer is implicated, would be difficult (although if true, the effect is non-linear: this study did not replicate issues with heart disease, nor did its citations[0]). So too much is bad. If you insist on framing testosterone as a toxin, then the dose will make the poison as well as the cure.
(100% testosterone is a nonsense quantity since you can always raise blood concentrations, but let's put it at values greater than 1000ng/dl for most people)
A universal drop in testosterone within at least the US, with something leftover to explain after controlling for lifestyle factors, and no sign of stalling in the trend, brings us to a conundrum. If we do nothing, and testosterone decreases faster than it used to, and some testosterone is good, and no testosterone is bad, but too much testosterone is bad, should we stop the process? Unless you set the "too much" to be much lower than what has been medically accepted, the answer must be yes at some point.
Since this is about picking an optima, what is at stake is whether or not testosterone levels before the 2000s were responsible for outsized rates of heart disease and prostate cancer (or other morbidities), and if this is true, whether or not the problems gained through the decline of testosterone weigh off the cost of its presence. We could include other externalities like status-seeking behaviors or sperm counts, which would make the comparison harder but more honest.
What I expect - I am not sure - is that testosterone's presence in heart disease (not prostate cancer) will be comorbid with testosterone-independent factors, such as diet/exercise. And since the norm seems to be testosterone declining with age I would be surprised if pushing that curve towards youth ends up being a good thing.
Feel free to challenge these assumptions, but I really think what we need to do is debate the weights.
> I'm identifying that people are only suggesting positive aspects of high testosterone and ignoring the negative. And, you are again reiterating the positive aspects in a biased, almost spiritualised way.
I am curious why you would use the word "spiritualized". I was not invoking the supernatural within my argument (the word "spiritedness" doesn't count; its meaning is secular). The emphasis on positive factors is because I'm debating your emphasis on the negatives. Attempting to frame the argument as spiritual without pointing to particulars is to add connotations of irrationality which aren't there. It is true that I am arguing emphatically.
[0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28740585/