Quotes About Hormones

Males who do extreme amounts of exercise, such as professional soccer players and runners who cover more than 40 or 50 miles a week, have less LHRH, LH, and testosterone in their circulation, smaller testes, less functional sperm. They also have higher levels of glucocorticoids in their bloodstreams, even in the absence of stress. (A similar decline in reproductive function is found in men who are addicted to opiate drugs.)

In a typical study, higher testosterone levels would be observed in those male prisoners with higher rates of aggression. But being aggressive stimulates testosterone secretion; no wonder more aggressive individuals had higher levels.

The shape of women's faces changes subtly during their ovulatory cycle, and men prefer female faces at the time of ovulation.

Success in everything from athletics to chess to the stock market boosts testosterone levels.

The explains why basal levels of testosterone have little to do with subsequent aggression, and why increases in testosterone due to puberty, sexual stimulation, or the start of mating season don't increase aggression either.

John Archer in a definitive 2006 review, "There is a weak and inconsistent association between testosterone levels and aggression in [human] adults, and … administration of testosterone to volunteers typically does not increase their aggression." The brain doesn't pay attention to fluctuations of testosterone levels within the normal range.

glucocorticoids in

Remarkably, the size of neurons' dendritic trees in the hippocampus expands and contracts like an accordion throughout a female rat's ovulatory cycle, with the size (and her cognitive skills) peaking when estrogen peaks.fn6 Thus, neurons can form new dendritic branches and spines, increasing the size of their dendritic tree or, in other circumstances, do the opposite; hormones frequently mediate these effects.

There's support for the idea—three of my favorites are that (a) forcing depressed people to smile makes them feel better; (b) instructing people to take on a more "dominant" posture makes them feel more so (lowers stress hormone levels); and (c) muscle relaxants decrease

it's human behavior, human social behavior, and in many cases abnormal human social behavior. And it is indeed a mess, a subject involving brain chemistry, hormones, sensory cues, prenatal environment, early experience, genes, both biological and cultural evolution, and ecological pressures, among other things.

University of Cambridge.68 When compared with non-CAH girls, CAH girls do more rough-and-tumble play, fighting, and physical aggression. Moreover, they prefer "masculine" toys over dolls. As adults they score lower on measures of tenderness and higher in aggressiveness and self-report more aggression and less interest in infants. In addition, CAH women are more likely to be gay or bisexual or have a transgender sexual identity.

The picture is complicated further—AIS individuals raised female have higher-than-expected rates of being gay, and of having an other-than-female or neither-female-nor-male-sex/gender self-identification.

This context dependency means that rather than causing X, testosterone amplifies the power of something else to cause X.

Over the course of minutes to hours, hormonal effects are predominantly contingent and facilitative. Hormones don't determine, command, cause, or invent behaviors. Instead they make us more sensitive to the social triggers of emotionally laden behaviors and exaggerate our preexisting tendencies in those domains.

testosterone increases the excitability of amygdaloid neurons, and glucocorticoids decrease excitability of prefrontal cortical neurons.

Hormonal responses to various fetal and childhood experiences have epigenetic effects on genes related to the growth factor BDNF, to the vasopressin and oxytocin system, and to estrogen sensitivity. These effects are pertinent to adult cognition, personality, emotionality, and psychiatric health. Childhood abuse, for example, causes epigenetic changes in hundreds of genes in the human hippocampus.

Thus, as adolescence dawns, frontal cortical efficiency is diluted with extraneous synapses failing to make the grade, sluggish communication thanks to undermyelination, and a jumble of uncoordinated subregions working at cross-purposes; moreover, while the striatum is trying to help, a pinch hitter for the frontal cortex gets you only so far. Finally, the frontal cortex is being pickled in that ebb and flow of gonadal hormones. No wonder they act adolescent.

Oxytocin and vasopressin are chemically similar hormones; the DNA sequences that constitute their genes are similar, and the two genes occur close to each other on the same chromosome. There was a single ancestral gene that, a few hundred million years ago, was accidentally "duplicated" in the genome, and the DNA sequences in the two copies of the gene drifted independently, evolving into two closely related genes

one of the good things about being a woman is that my level of testosterone poisoning is lower than most men's.

Sexiness might at first appear to be a merely physiological phenomenon, the result of awakened hormones and stimulated nerve endings. But in truth it is not so much about sensations as it is about ideas—foremost among them the idea of acceptance and the promise of an end to loneliness and shame.

Exposure to some pesticides during infancy, even at very low levels, can lead to serious life-long consequences if the pesticides disrupt hormone-driven developmental processes.

You know, you don't work 30 something years in this business without knowing how to push yourself. So, I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself. The other thing that happens is when your hormones get out of whack your emotions come up.

I might actually be allergic to testosterone. Whenever I've felt a testosterone rush I get, like, sick afterwards, and I feel exhausted and terrible.

Gut health is everything, it's the second brain, where many of our hormones are produced.