Testosterone and Aggression

Off Topic
1

Interesting article on T levels.

Don’t Blame Testosterone for Aggression

Angry, Hostile Men Don’t Have Extra Sex Hormone

By Daniel DeNoon
WebMD Medical News

Nov. 11, 2003 – Angry, hostile men aren’t suffering from excess testosterone, research shows.

They do suffer, however. It’s well known that men who indulge in aggressive behavior are more likely to have heart disease and strokes. Why?

It’s not because they have abnormal testosterone levels, find Maciej Tomaszewski, of the Medical University of Silesia in Zabrze, Poland, and colleagues. Tomaszewski’s team analyzed physical and psychological data on 933 young, apparently healthy men.

The angriest men tended to be the most overweight. The most hostile men tended to have the lowest levels of “good” HDL cholesterol. Overall, the young men with a cluster of risks factors for diabetes and heart disease tended to be the most aggressive.

Testosterone had nothing to do with it. The most angry and hostile men had sex-hormone levels similar to those seen in the least aggressive men.

“Men with clustering of metabolic risk factors … had significantly higher scores of total aggression than subjects with the opposite combination of body-mass index and HDL despite similar testosterone levels,” Tomaszewski and colleagues write in the abstract of their presentation to this week’s Scientific Sessions 2003 of the American Heart Association.

In plain language: Bullies tend to be overweight or obese – and they are at risk of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke.

2

Great Article! I am going to bring this into my psychology Prof. so i can argue with her and maybe score some brownie points on the way…thanks!

3

Seems the T-Mag staff will have to find another compound or molecule name to explain what is really responsible for what we call T-ness here.

Nice to see that this study has similar conclusions to one I pointed in previous posts: Higher-T people are generally more in control of their agression than low-T ones.

Prediction: Potential flame war because these searches pop people’s balloons.

T as a copout ? Or would that be more precisely ‘lack of T as a copout’ ?

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Check this out… ESTROGEN RAGE :wink:

"Although testosterone has been linked with aggression for many years, particularly in males, recent research indicates that estrogen, and not testosterone, may be partly responsible for increased aggression. Since testosterone, through the enzme aromatase, can be converted in the brain to estrogen, higher levels of estrogen can act directly on brain cells.

"In a study to assess the effects of sex steroids on aggressive behavior, Finkelstein and colleagues (1997) administered either depot-testosterone to hypogonadal boys or estrogen to girls at three physiological doses using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, 3-month, crossover design. Responses to placebo were compared with responses to hormones at specific doses. At the low dose, scores for aggressive impulses and physical aggression against peers significantly increased only for girls. At middose, the scores for girls significantly increased for aggressive impulses, physical aggression against peers, and physical aggression against adults. The scores for boys significantly increased for physical aggression against adults. At the high dose, physical aggression against peers significantly increased only for boys. These results suggest that sex steroids affect aggressive behavior in adolecents. Girls showed larger and earlier increases than boys, suggesting that estrogen has a significant role in change in aggression scores during puberty and that testosterone may exert its effect via concersion to estrogen.

“The relationship between aggressive behavior and hormone levels appears to be more complex than just the result of elevated levels of testosterone. Taken together, these studies suggest an increased role for estrogen in aggressive behavior.”