Too much testosterone kills brain cells

[FUZO]

TweetToo much testosterone kills brain cells


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Too much testosterone can kill brain cells, researchers said on Tuesday in a finding that may help explain why steroid abuse can cause behavior changes like aggressiveness and suicidal tendencies.



Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer's.

"Too little testosterone is bad, too much is bad but the right amount is perfect," said Barbara Ehrlich of Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study.

Testosterone is key to the development, differentiation and growth of cells and is produced by both men and women, although men produce about 20 times more of the hormone.

It can also be abused, and recent scandals have involved athletes who use the hormone, or steroids that turn into testosterone in the body, for an unfair advantage.

"Other people have shown that high levels of steroid can cause behavioral changes," Ehrlich said in a telephone interview.

"We can show that when you have high levels of steroids, you have high testosterone and that can destroy the nerve cells. We know that when you lose brain cells you lose function."

Ehrlich's team tried the same thing with the "female" hormone estrogen, just to be fair.

"We were surprised, but it actually looks like estrogen is neuroprotective. If anything, there is less cell death in the presence of estrogen," she said.

Writing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Ehrlich and colleagues said their findings meant people should think twice about supplementing with testosterone, even if it does build muscle mass and aid recovery after exercise.

"These effects of testosterone on neurons will have long term effects on brain function," they wrote.

"Next time a muscle-bound guy in a sports car cuts you off on the highway, don't get mad -- just take a deep breath and realize that it might not be his fault," Ehrlich said in a statement.

The cells die via a process called apoptosis, also known as cell suicide or programmed cell death.

"Apoptosis is an important thing for the brain -- the brain needs to weed out some of the cells. But when it happens too frequently, you lose too many cells and causes problems."

A similar process is seen in Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia in the United States, affecting an estimated 4.5 million Americans, and Huntington's disease, another fatal brain illness.

"Our results suggest that the responses to elevated testosterone can be compared with these pathophysiological conditions," the researchers wrote.

[kite]

TweetSo does weed, alcohol and stress. Oh well they say we only use about 10% so I say screw it, kill them bastards I ain't usin em.

[mick-G]

TweetI can't remember what i read....

[Stackt]

Tweettwhat ? test = power/energy/great sex ...anyways blueberries keep my memory balanced ...lol

[LilFella]

TweetThis explains several of my friends. I'll start taking it easy on them now, it's not thier fault after all!

[kite]

TweetFrom midwest barbell:
".....I knew this was bunk as soon as I read it - they tested this using MICROMOLAR amounts of testosterone in the plate serum.

I did a little calculation, and the HIGHEST reference range for male testosterone is 827ng/dL. That corresponds to 8.27 ug/L. That's a molar concentration of 0.0284 uM, and they BEGAN their tests almost 50-fold higher - 1 uM and UP.

Such bunk research... Jesus. Hit it until it has an effect, then report it like you're Jesus ****ing Christ.

At that concentration of testosterone, they could be inducing membrane damage leading to similar Calcium currents and peripheral membrane damage leading to caspase activation - their two main assays for cell death in their experiment.




So I did some more rough math:

Making a WRONG assumption that the only partitioning of steroid is into the plasma volume, we can use about 8L for a 100kg adult male. You would need 2,307ug (2.307mg) in total to achieve 1uM final concentration. Being that testosterone is eliminated relatively quickly, you would need this amount released approximately every hour. Over a 24h period, that means you would need about 55mg of testosterone - making your total weekly release 387mg. If anything, I'm overestimating the lifetime of the compound - the real number would probably be higher than this. FURTHERMORE, the thought that a steroid only partitions into the plasma volume is totally bogus.

A more CORRECT observation would be that, for an average 100kg adult male, his body fluids total about 60% of his weight - conservatively. For a 100kg male with 60L equivalent body fluids, one would require 17.3mg released every hour - making the same longevity assumptions as above. This amounts to 415mg per 24h period, or a grand total of 2,906mg per week. Again, this is an UNDERESTIMATE since I'm overestimating the lifetime of the compound.

IN ADDITION, a good 95% + (conservatively!) of the testosterone in one's blood is sequestered by Sex Hormone Binding Globulin - SHBG. That means that you would have to achieve 2,906mg per week AS THE 5% THAT'S NOT BOUND! That correlates to a total release of 58.1 GRAMS of steroid per week - a completely unreasonable number ALREADY... without taking into account the actual INTRACRANIAL concentration!

Now, the brain selectively filters which compounds enter and which don't - through astrocyte processes of the blood brain barrier (BBB). The serum concentration of testosterone doesn't correlate directly to the intracranial concentration of testosterone - as with many drugs. Nobody knows what this efficiency is, but it's known in the case of LSD that while one ingests micrograms, only nanogram or picogram amounts cross the BBB.

You do the math on that one - a factor of up to a thousand times... ? KILOGRAMS of steroid per week. KILOGRAMS.

This sort of bullshit research is the same thing that was done with aspartame, and it's further proof that you must be INFORMED about what you read - to a common viewer, this would be very, very scary.

-M ..."