It provides for beard growth, a deep voice, bulging muscles and the reproductive drive – the hormone testosterone. A lack of testosterone leads to muscle atrophy, osteoporosis and weight gain, among other things. As the German Green Cross reports, testosterone is also significant for well-being. It promotes assertiveness and makes men slightly more aggressive than women. And it is an indispensable factor for reproduction, because it allows the sperm filaments to mature and is thus the prerequisite for conceiving children. In women, by the way, the ovaries and adrenal cortex produce small amounts of testosterone.
Men also go through menopause
The male sex hormone testosterone is produced in the testes, six milligrams a day. The hormone is already broken down by the body in about twelve minutes and must therefore be renewed again and again. This is controlled in a specific part of the diencephalon, the hypothalamus, which monitors the entire hormone system in both men and women and coordinates it with the nervous system.
Release hormones are produced in the hypothalamus every two to four hours. These activate the pituitary gland, also called the hypophysis, to release messenger substances. The messenger substances stimulate other glands in the body to produce hormones and release them into the blood. Now the hypothalamus recognizes the increased hormone level in the blood and then curbs the production of the releasing hormones. This cycle maintains a balanced hormone level.
After 40, the testosterone level decreases.
Around the age of 40, testosterone levels in men begin to decline, but very slowly. About one-third of all men in the second half of life are affected. Annually thereafter, hormone production decreases by about one to two percent, but these are only averages. Some men still have hormone levels comparable to thirty-year-olds at an older age.
