Predictors and effects of testosterone on career, video games, etc.

[Arch0wl]

Men in committed, romantic relationships (whether married or just with boyfriends/girlfriends) had 21% less testosterone than those not in them: http://bec.ucla.edu/papers/Gray_10-20-03.pdf

Increased testosterone after a loss increases likelihood of persevering and competing again: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...18506X06001887

Men with increased testosterone "were 27% less generous towards strangers with money they controlled." http://journals.plos.org/plosone/art...l.pone.0008330

From "The Sexual Paradox:



This article analyzes the effects of testosterone on video games and mentions the "willingness to persevere after loss" effect but applied to video games.

Also, Adult women who were exposed to unusually high levels of androgens in the womb due to congenital adrenal hyperplasia score significantly higher on tests of spatial ability. And testosterone declines by roughly 1% per year starting at age 30 -- so by age 65, it will have declined by 35% or more. Why does this matter? Because a group of 56 healthy older men (aged 60–75 yrs) were supplemented for 3 mo with testosterone to 150% of baseline, which resulted in significant enhancement of spatial cognition and no change in any other cognitive domain.

These things matter, because they hold strong implications for success in sports, esports, and risky/adversarial careers like trial law and investment banking; if gender discrimination is cited as a major reason for why, say, 13 percent of women make up the Association of Trial Lawyers of America membership when hormonal explanations are sufficient to explain causality, or if tendency to persevere after loss / predicted spatial ability / tendency to be adversarial are predicted with higher testosterone (or at least higher testosterone relative to women), then this would explain a huge portion of the sex disparity in both esports and abstract board game sports like chess. Note that even if this were true, some women would still reach the top, since women with very high testosterone exist -- they just wouldn't be as common, and since the benefit of high testosterone is most strongly felt in sports involving strength/power, those women can get more return for their hobby-time by going into traditional sports, such as a scholarship or even professional career, when they would barely get anything in return from spending all their time playing league of legends or starcraft.

Another unintended consequence of the perseverance result: it may have an effect on how many people participate in skeptic/rationalist practices like belief-updating.

What would perseverance have to do with skepticism? Well, it involves belief-updating after you've found a previous belief of yours untenable. Now, finding out that you can no longer justify a belief is not a competitive loss, but for lots of people, being wrong might FEEL like a loss, even if it's not actually a loss of anything. Laypeople associate arguments with winning, for example, even though that is an incorrect model of what argumentation actually is. Now, I doubt men in rationalist/skeptic communities have very high testosterone because of the result earlier about how managers have significantly higher testosterone than programmers, and programmers make up a huge chunk of rationalists. But very high testosterone is not necessary to induce a perseverance effect -- they just need to have *enough*. Even a man with lower-than-average testosterone still has significantly more testosterone than the average woman, which could be enough to create a disparity in who is willing to belief-update. If this is the case, then belief-updating (and the whole process around this) might be correlated with testosterone levels to a degree, even if it's not necessarily increased at very high levels of testosterone.

Either way, some of these results are fascinating, and carry implications beyond their superficial result.

[FF_rules]

56 people study is too small; the other studies were also probably small studies. I tend to be skeptical when seeing statistics; but that aside the general idea is that Testosterone leads to more aggressive and motivated actions?

[Arch0wl]

Originally Posted by FF_rules

56 people study is too small; the other studies were also probably small studies.

no. it's not too small.

but first, two things:

1. what study are you referring to, since the first study did not have 58 subjects

2. if you're "skeptical when seeing statistics", how on earth are you coming to the conclusion that the other studies must have small sample sizes?

now as for your complaint specifically: are you at all familiar with research in endocrinology? relatively small sample sizes are common in that discipline because you can measure before-after hormonal levels and because the major variable that you're dealing with is hormonal change. it's not like opinion polls where you need a gigantic sample size. this study about the dose-response levels of testosterone is famous -- it was cited 645 times and uses a sample size of 61 men.

[Kraezymann]

This is interesting. In what ways does testosterone get affected by regular gym use? If at all? Is there a noticeable difference in people who frequent the gym as compared to those who don't? And how does the gym affect women who frequent the gym, chemically? I know testosterone levels would be higher in dudes who frequent the gym, but how much of it is simple gym use, before drug use?

Sorry for the silly questions, but I'm actually curious and don't really know the answers.

[Arch0wl]

any anabolic activity will raise testosterone to a degree

by "anabolic activity" I mean the following:

- hypertrophy training
- high intensity interval training
- strength training

however, strength training gives you the most testosterone release out of all three, iirc.

With that said, the most effective way to raise your testosterone, by far, is to inject testosterone. Lol.

The problem with that though is it requires research/preparation and you honestly shouldn't do it unless you're already extremely committed to a lifestyle that is benefited from it.

It's unconventional to do this, but there is another option: SERMs. One is clomid, aka clomifene citrate, and the other is nolvadex, aka tamoxifen citrate. It's rx-only, but still unscheduled in the US, so law enforcement will not actually enforce your possession of it and not actively seek out anyone who possesses it. In other words, it's about as illegal as downloading an mp3 file off of seedy underbellies like flashflashrevolution.com ;)

For any drug that is rx-only but unscheduled you can usually get them from places like AllDayChemist. They're so unenforced that you can actually pay for your purchase using a credit card, which happens with no illegal transaction ever unless both you and your source are tremendous idiots.

One guy on reddit tripled his testosterone using Clomid. He posted pictures of himself. He's 52 and looks amazing: http://i.imgur.com/WPErcxl.jpg

(I don't know if this is against the rules to talk about, because I took the FFR rules to mean discussion about how to obtain scheduled drugs, so please let me know if this is against the rules somehow)

[Kraezymann]

I'm getting a new dance pad in 2 weeks, I can't wait to start playing again. HIIT sounds so great.

And I'll be staying away from injections haha. I'm too pure~

[Arch0wl]

counter to what 90% or more of people believe, injections are actually safer than pills.

This is because, assuming your product is sterile and your injection process is done right, you're injecting a completely pure carrier + a couple of solvents + the hormone in your muscle. This should be obvious, but numerous interactions with laypeople have shown me it's not: you DO NOT inject in a vein. That is the opposite of what you want to do. Yet, I've seen regular people make mock-injection gestures and when they do they hit a location known for having a vein, ostensibly comparing it to heroin use. Note that heroin is so catastrophic for your body that addiction reduces your lifespan by 20 years or more, while testosterone is a hormone produced by your body and you're simply adding more of it. Testosterone is one of the least harmful scheduled drugs you can take. I can't stress this enough: heroin is universally regarded as the most harmful recreational scheduled drug that with regular use will annihilate core functions of your body. Comparing drugs based on their mechanism of transport alone (injection) is horrible for public health and is one of the most inaccurate drug-harm comparisons you could make; it's like comparing hide-and-seek to BASE jumping, or comparing joining the boy scouts to joining the infantry battalion of the marine corps.

What happens with orals? Well, you can't just buy testosterone powder and eat it. It will be completely destroyed by your stomach, if not your liver. So, drug producers methylate/alpha-alkylate the drug to allow it to pass through your liver. This, in turn, has two effects:

1. The half-life is considerably shorter. Testosterone cypionate has a half-life of about eight days. So, once you take the compound steadily, it will build to consistent blood levels and you will have constant testosterone working in your system. This is not the case with say methyltestosterone, which has a half life of 6-8 hours. You'd have to take the pill 3x/day to have it constantly working -- once in the morning, once in the afternoon, and one before you sleep. For pills like Dianabol (methandrostenolone) this is simply not possible because the half life peaks at 6 hours. Side effects also happen more rapidly -- imagine having to balance an anti-estrogen with a testosterone pill because if you don't you might get magic acne over the course of a few hours.

2. The stress on your liver is considerably greater. One 25mg tablet of dianabol might be equivalent to a single drink. This doesn't sound like much, but consider that you might be taking two of them a day. And dianabol is certainly not the most liver-toxic oral steroid available. So, it's generally not a good idea to do this for long periods of time, especially if you're taking *other* compounds that have to pass through your liver also.

With that said, I don't think ANY kind of hormonal supplementation, whether injection or pill, should be done unless you're willing to do the necessary research.

SERMs are more or less fine to take, though, which is why I think it's okay for casual lifters to try them out. It's a much easier alternative to TRT, and the side effects (to the extent there are any at all) are minimal.