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Javier E

Don't Ask Your Doctor About 'Low T' - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...k-your-doctor-about-low-t.html

testosterone aging

shared by Javier E on 05 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • A FUNNY thing has happened in the United States over the last few decades. Men’s average testosterone levels have been dropping by at least 1 percent a year
  • Testosterone appears to decline naturally with aging, but internal belly fat depresses the hormone further, especially in obese men. Drugs like steroids and opiates also lower testosterone, and it’s suspected that chemicals like bisphenol A (or BPA, commonly found in plastic food containers) and diseases like Type 2 diabetes play a role as well.
  • Clinical testosterone deficiency, which is variously defined as lower than 220 to 350 nanograms of testosterone per deciliter of blood serum, can cause men to lose sex drive and fertility. Their bone density often declines, and they may feel tired and experience hot flashes and sweats.
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  • prescription testosterone doesn’t just give your T level a boost: it may also increase your risk of heart attack. It can add huge numbers of red blood cells to your bloodstream and shrink your testes. In some men, it increases aggression and irritability.
  • a large study published in the journal PLoS ONE found that, within three months, taking the hormone doubled the rate of heart attacks in men 65 and older, as well as in younger men who had heart disease. The Food and Drug Administration has begun an investigation.
  • Used clinically since 1937 and approved by the F.D.A. since 1953, testosterone is now administered in at least five forms, including patches, gels and injections
  • In addition to the cardiac risks, prescription T can mean a permanent shut-off in men’s own, albeit diminished, testosterone production. In other words, once you start, you may well be hooked for life.
  • men should address the leading cause of the problem. Losing weight is a tried and true way to naturally boost testosterone levels. According to findings presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in 2012, obese men who lost an average of 17 pounds saw their testosterone levels increase by 15 percent. In general, a man’s waist should be half his height.
  • At the end of the day, eating more of the right foods and fewer junk foods improves mood and energy — which may be the only fix many men need.
Javier E

I Thought I Was Saving Trans Kids. Now I'm Blowing the Whistle. - 0 views

www.thefp.com/...hought-i-was-saving-trans-kids

trans clinic abuse drug therapy gender dysphoria treatment

shared by Javier E on 11 Feb 23 - No Cached
  • Soon after my arrival at the Transgender Center, I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment. The center’s physician co-directors were essentially the sole authority.
  • At first, the patient population was tipped toward what used to be the “traditional” instance of a child with gender dysphoria: a boy, often quite young, who wanted to present as—who wanted to be—a girl. 
  • Until 2015 or so, a very small number of these boys comprised the population of pediatric gender dysphoria cases. Then, across the Western world, there began to be a dramatic increase in a new population: Teenage girls, many with no previous history of gender distress, suddenly declared they were transgender and demanded immediate treatment with testosterone. 
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  • The girls who came to us had many comorbidities: depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity. Many were diagnosed with autism, or had autism-like symptoms. A report last year on a British pediatric transgender center found that about one-third of the patients referred there were on the autism spectrum.
  • This concerned me, but didn’t feel I was in the position to sound some kind of alarm back then. There was a team of about eight of us, and only one other person brought up the kinds of questions I had. Anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe. 
  • I certainly saw this at the center. One of my jobs was to do intake for new patients and their families. When I started there were probably 10 such calls a month. When I left there were 50, and about 70 percent of the new patients were girls. Sometimes clusters of girls arrived from the same high school. 
  • There are no reliable studies showing this. Indeed, the experiences of many of the center’s patients prove how false these assertions are. 
  • The doctors privately recognized these false self-diagnoses as a manifestation of social contagion. They even acknowledged that suicide has an element of social contagion. But when I said the clusters of girls streaming into our service looked as if their gender issues might be a manifestation of social contagion, the doctors said gender identity reflected something innate.
  • To begin transitioning, the girls needed a letter of support from a therapist—usually one we recommended—who they had to see only once or twice for the green light. To make it more efficient for the therapists, we offered them a template for how to write a letter in support of transition. The next stop was a single visit to the endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. 
  • When a female takes testosterone, the profound and permanent effects of the hormone can be seen in a matter of months. Voices drop, beards sprout, body fat is redistributed. Sexual interest explodes, aggression increases, and mood can be unpredictable. Our patients were told about some side effects, including sterility. But after working at the center, I came to believe that teenagers are simply not capable of fully grasping what it means to make the decision to become infertile while still a minor.
  • Many encounters with patients emphasized to me how little these young people understood the profound impacts changing gender would have on their bodies and minds. But the center downplayed the negative consequences, and emphasized the need for transition. As the center’s website said, “Left untreated, gender dysphoria has any number of consequences, from self-harm to suicide. But when you take away the gender dysphoria by allowing a child to be who he or she is, we’re noticing that goes away. The studies we have show these kids often wind up functioning psychosocially as well as or better than their peers.” 
  • Frequently, our patients declared they had disorders that no one believed they had. We had patients who said they had Tourette syndrome (but they didn’t); that they had tic disorders (but they didn’t); that they had multiple personalities (but they didn’t).
  • Here’s an example. On Friday, May 1, 2020, a colleague emailed me about a 15-year-old male patient: “Oh dear. I am concerned that [the patient] does not understand what Bicalutamide does.” I responded: “I don’t think that we start anything honestly right now.”
  • Bicalutamide is a medication used to treat metastatic prostate cancer, and one of its side effects is that it feminizes the bodies of men who take it, including the appearance of breasts. The center prescribed this cancer drug as a puberty blocker and feminizing agent for boys. As with most cancer drugs, bicalutamide has a long list of side effects, and this patient experienced one of them: liver toxicity. He was sent to another unit of the hospital for evaluation and immediately taken off the drug. Afterward, his mother sent an electronic message to the Transgender Center saying that we were lucky her family was not the type to sue.
  • How little patients understood what they were getting into was illustrated by a call we received at the center in 2020 from a 17-year-old biological female patient who was on testosterone. She said she was bleeding from the vagina. In less than an hour she had soaked through an extra heavy pad, her jeans, and a towel she had wrapped around her waist. The nurse at the center told her to go to the emergency room right away.
  • when there was a dispute between the parents, it seemed the center always took the side of the affirming parent.
  • Other girls were disturbed by the effects of testosterone on their clitoris, which enlarges and grows into what looks like a microphallus, or a tiny penis. I counseled one patient whose enlarged clitoris now extended below her vulva, and it chafed and rubbed painfully in her jeans. I advised her to get the kind of compression undergarments worn by biological men who dress to pass as female. At the end of the call I thought to myself, “Wow, we hurt this kid.”
  • There are rare conditions in which babies are born with atypical genitalia—cases that call for sophisticated care and compassion. But clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals—and most of these teens haven’t even had sex yet. They had no idea who they were going to be as adults. Yet all it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist.
  • Being put on powerful doses of testosterone or estrogen—enough to try to trick your body into mimicking the opposite sex—-affects the rest of the body. I doubt that any parent who's ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes. 
  • Besides teenage girls, another new group was referred to us: young people from the inpatient psychiatric unit, or the emergency department, of St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The mental health of these kids was deeply concerning—there were diagnoses like schizophrenia, PTSD, bipolar disorder, and more. Often they were already on a fistful of pharmaceuticals.
  • no matter how much suffering or pain a child had endured, or how little treatment and love they had received, our doctors viewed gender transition—even with all the expense and hardship it entailed—as the solution.
  • Another disturbing aspect of the center was its lack of regard for the rights of parents—and the extent to which doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.
  • We found out later this girl had had intercourse, and because testosterone thins the vaginal tissues, her vaginal canal had ripped open. She had to be sedated and given surgery to repair the damage. She wasn’t the only vaginal laceration case we heard about.
  • During the four years I worked at the clinic as a case manager—I was responsible for patient intake and oversight—around a thousand distressed young people came through our doors. The majority of them received hormone prescriptions that can have life-altering consequences—including sterility. 
  • I left the clinic in November of last year because I could no longer participate in what was happening there. By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to “do no harm.” Instead, we are permanently harming the vulnerable patients in our care.
  • Today I am speaking out. I am doing so knowing how toxic the public conversation is around this highly contentious issue—and the ways that my testimony might be misused. I am doing so knowing that I am putting myself at serious personal and professional risk.
  • Almost everyone in my life advised me to keep my head down. But I cannot in good conscience do so. Because what is happening to scores of children is far more important than my comfort. And what is happening to them is morally and medically appalling.
  • For almost four years, I worked at The Washington University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases with teens and young adults who were HIV positive. Many of them were trans or otherwise gender nonconforming, and I could relate: Through childhood and adolescence, I did a lot of gender questioning myself. I’m now married to a transman, and together we are raising my two biological children from a previous marriage and three foster children we hope to adopt. 
  • The center’s working assumption was that the earlier you treat kids with gender dysphoria, the more anguish you can prevent later on. This premise was shared by the center’s doctors and therapists. Given their expertise, I assumed that abundant evidence backed this consensus. 
  • All that led me to a job in 2018 as a case manager at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital, which had been established a year earlier. 
markfrankel18

Malcolm Gladwell: Do Genetic Advantages Make Sports Unfair? : The New Yorker - 0 views

www.newyorker.com/...130909crat_atlarge_gladwell

gladwell ethics sports

shared by markfrankel18 on 03 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • markfrankel18 on 03 Sep 13
     
    "Eyesight can be improved-in some cases dramatically-through laser surgery or implantable lenses. Should a promising young baseball player cursed with normal vision be allowed to get that kind of corrective surgery? In this instance, Major League Baseball says yes. Major League Baseball also permits pitchers to replace the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow of their throwing arm with a tendon taken from a cadaver or elsewhere in the athlete's body. Tendon-replacement surgery is similar to laser surgery: it turns the athlete into an improved version of his natural self. But when it comes to drugs Major League Baseball-like most sports-draws the line. An athlete cannot use a drug to become an improved version of his natural self, even if the drug is used in doses that are not harmful, and is something that-like testosterone-is no more than a copy of a naturally occurring hormone, available by prescription to anyone, virtually anywhere in the world."
grayton downing

Males Court Bearded Ladies Less | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views

www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38186/title/Males-Court-Bearded-Ladies-Less/

males court science research

shared by grayton downing on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • many females also don blue ornamentations like the males, though they are less bright. These so-called “bearded ladies”—masculinized females—suffer reproductive consequences as a result of their markings.
  • We were very excited to find that ornamented females appear to pay costs of reduced reproductive output,
  • Ornamented females seemed less popular in the lab, as well: males spent less time courting them.
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  • males dislike ornamented females because blue badges indicate a potentially negative quality in females. Although both sexes may develop similar ornaments because they share the genes that underlie the phenotype, expressing the ornament can be beneficial in one sex but detrimental in another.
  • One solution is to have the expression of [ornamentation] regulated by other factors that are already different between sexes,”
  • the causation and persistence of ornamentation in females” as well as “unambiguous information on fitness consequences of female ornamentation,” he continued. Because both sexes produce testosterone, added Cox, “regulation by testosterone is not a perfect mechanism for complete sex-limitation [of blue badge expression].”
  • detrimental ornamentation in females is a paradox that “begs the interesting question of why male-typical ornamentation persists in female fence lizards,” said Langkilde. “We plan to follow this up by examining potential benefits associated with these male-typical ornaments in females.”
aqconces

Hitler constantly high on crystal meth while leading Nazi Germany: report - NY Daily News - 0 views

m.nydailynews.com/...rmany-report-article-1.1973719

hitler nazi meth research

shared by aqconces on 01 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • New research shows that the German Nazi leader was on a constant supply of crystal methamphetamines to stay awake and energized, according to the UK Independent.
  • The intoxicated Fuhrer, a famous hypochondriac, was on more than 74 different medications while he ordered the systematic murders of Jews across Europe
  • It also claims he took nine shots of methamphetamine while living out his last days in his bunker to ease his pain and stress
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  • Hitler was on a steady stream of barbiturate tranquilizers, morphine, nasal and eye drops containing cocaine and other drugs — along with bulls’ semen to boost his testosterone — thanks to his Berlin-based personal physician, Theodor Morell, according to the report
  • He was characterized as “a quack and a fraud and a snake oil salesman”
  • Hitler was shown to have signs of Parkinson's disease by the end of World War II in 1945, and the dizzying array of drugs likely contributed to his serious health issues.
  • aqconces on 01 Jun 15
     
    Studies show that Hitler was constantly high on crystal meth while leading Germany.  Fuhrer was on more than 74 different medications while he ordered murders of Jews.  
Javier E

How to Project Power - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...how-to-project-power.html

public speaking power authority communications psychology

shared by Javier E on 10 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • ‘‘Keep your limbs away from your body,’
  • research shows that people posed in expansive postures feel more powerful, exhibit higher testosterone levels and have lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol — all characteristics of high-ranking social status.
  • in 2008, she and a theater instructor began offering a class at the Stanford business school called Acting With Power. To her surprise, the class did not appeal to just women and international students. Olympic athletes also showed up, as well as ‘‘overprivileged, overeducated white guys and pretty much everyone else,’
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  • Take ownership of the space around you, whether it’s a boardroom or a cubicle. ‘‘Say to yourself: ‘This is my room. This is my table. This is my audience,’
  • Don’t bother overexplaining yourself. Speak succinctly
Javier E

Scientific Thought Strains Everyone Should Know - NYTimes.com - 0 views

brooks.blogs.nytimes.com/...more-tools-for-thinking

conceptual tools thinking scientific concepts

shared by Javier E on 05 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • n Tuesday’s column I describe a symposium over at Edge.org on what scientific concepts everyone’s cognitive toolbox should hold.
  • the Pareto Principle. We have the idea in our heads that most distributions fall along a bell curve (most people are in the middle). But this is not how the world is organized in sphere after sphere.
  • altruism
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  • We survive because we struggle to be the fittest and also because we are really good at cooperation.
  • “temperament dimensions.” She writes that we have four broad temperament constellations. One, built around the dopamine system, regulates enthusiasm for risk. A second, structured around the serotonin system, regulates sociability. A third, organized around the prenatal testosterone system, regulates attention to detail and aggressiveness. A fourth, organized around the estrogen and oxytocin systems, regulates empathy and verbal fluency.
  • “subselves.” This is the idea that we are not just one personality, but we have many subselves that get aroused by different cues
  • the concept of duality, the idea that it is possible to describe the same phenomenon truthfully from two different perspectives. The most famous duality in physics is the wave-particle duality
  • “Shifting Baseline Syndrome.
Javier E

Researchers Propose Earth's 'Anthropocene' Age of Humans Began With Fallout and Plastic... - 0 views

dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/...egan-with-fallout-and-plastics

anthropocene geology human effects

shared by Javier E on 18 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • we’ve left the Holocene behind — that’s the geological epoch since the end of the last ice age — and entered “a post-Holocene…geological age of our own making,” now best known as the Anthropocene.
  • the Anthropocene Working Group (because of my early writings, I’m a lay member), has moved substantially from asking whether such a transition has occurred to deciding when.
  • 1950 as the starting point, indicated by a variety of markers, including the global spread of carbon isotopes from nuclear weapon detonations starting in 1945 and the mass production and disposal of plastics.
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  • There’s little predictability in how things will play out after this anthropogenic jolt, especially in the living world. [More on the “great acceleration” behind the jolt is here.]
  • Once you begin to get the many feedbacks bouncing off each other and bouncing off the Earth system, it’s going to be very hard to follow what’s going to happen, particularly biologically…. One could not imagine, at the very end of the Cretaceous, the beginning of the Tertiary, that the mammals — these itty-bitty little squeaky furry things, would take over – effectively taking the position that the dinosaurs held for so long. All we can say is that, for sure, it will be different. We’re going down a different trouser leg of history.
  • on whether it’s possible to have a “good Anthropocene.” Kolbert’s Twitter post last spring nicely captured their view:
  • Taking full ownership of the Anthropocene won’t be easy. The necessary feeling is a queasy mix of excitement and unease. I’ve compared it to waking up in the first car on the first run of a new roller coaster that hasn’t been examined fully by engineers.
  • That’s a very different sensation than, say, mourning the end of nature. It’s more a celebration, in a way — a deeper acceptance of our place on the planet, with all of our synthetic trappings, and our faults, as fundamentally natural.
  • in the broadest sense we have to embrace the characteristics, good and bad, that make humans such a rare thing — a species that has become a planet-scale force.
  • “The way I would like to see it is in, say, 100 years in the future the London Geological Society will look back and consider this period…a transition from the lesser Anthropocene to the greater Anthropocene.”
  • Fully integrating this awareness into our personal choices and societal norms and policies will take time. It is “the great work,” as Thomas Berry put it.
  • Technology alone will not do the trick. Another keystone to better meshing humanity’s infinite aspirations with life on a finite planet will be slowly shifting value systems from the foundation up
  • Edward O. Wilson’s “Biophilia” was a powerful look outward at the characteristics of the natural world that we inherently cherish.
  • Now we need a dose of what I’ve taken to calling anthropophilia, as well.
  • We have to accept ourselves, flaws and all, in order to move beyond what has been something of an unconscious, species-scale pubescent growth spurt, enabled by fossil fuels in place of testosterone.
  • We’re stuck with “The World With Us.” It’s time to grasp that uncomfortable, but ultimately hopeful, idea.
sissij

These Wearables Are All About Neuroscience | Big Think - 0 views

bigthink.com/...les-are-all-about-neuroscience

neuroscience brain science technology science

shared by sissij on 12 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Artist, writer, and experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats, fresh from his recent Reciprocal Biomimicry project, is back, and this time it’s wearable.
  • It’s clothing designed to alter one’s self-perception.
  • Wearing clothes that make you feel good isn’t new, of course, but Keats’ press release claims to be “applying cutting-edge neuroscience to millennia of costume history.”
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  • The bracelets can encourage the wearer to assume a “power pose,” boosting self-assurance through the release of testosterone.
  • Superego shades have irises that open and close in sync with the wearer’s breathing, raising his or her consciousness of his or her respiration.
  • Superego shoes offer heels whose height can be adjusted to ensure the wearer is always taller than anyone with whom he or she is speaking.
  • sissij on 12 Mar 17
     
    I think it is very interesting than even those wearable designs can be related to neuroscience. They seem to me that the two subjects are very far away. Those designs are very interesting as it combine some idea in science with artistic designs. As we learned in English when we were having a speech project, power pose is a standing position that can strengthen our confidence and persuasiveness. By having those clothing specially designed, it can force us into such position. I think this is a very fantastic idea. I really like the changing height high heel. As a short person, I know how people feel when they have to raise their heads to talk to people. --Sissi (3/12/2017)
sissij

The Increasing Significance of the Decline of Men - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...nce-of-the-decline-of-men.html

new york times social media research bias

shared by sissij on 17 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • At one end of the scale, men continue to dominate.
  • But at the other end of the scale, men of all races and ethnicities are dropping out of the work force, abusing opioids and falling behind women in both college attendance and graduation rates.
  • From 1979 to 2007, seven percent of men and 16 percent of women with middle-skill jobs lost their positions, according to the Dallas Fed study. Four percent of these men moved to low-skill work, and 3 percent moved to high-skill jobs. Almost all the women, 15 percent, moved into high-skill jobs, with only 1 percent moving to low-skill work.
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  • For boys and girls raised in two-parent households, there were only modest differences between the sexes in terms of success at school, and boys tended to earn more than their sisters in early adulthood.
  • At the same time, the divorce rate for college graduates has declined from 34.8 percent among those born between 1950 and 1955 to 29.9 percent among those born between 1957 and 1964. In contrast, the divorce rate for those without college degrees increased over the same period from 44.3 percent to 50.6 percent.
  • First, there are irreversible changes in the workplace, particularly the rise of jobs requiring social skills (even STEM jobs) that will continue to make it hard for men who lack those skills.
  • Men are really going to have to change their act or have big problems. I think of big guys from the cave days, guys who were good at lifting stuff and hunting and the things we got genetically selected out for. During the industrial revolution that wasn’t so bad, but it’s not going to be there anymore.
  • This vulnerability, in turn, makes boys more susceptible toattention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and conduct disorders as well as the epigenetic mechanisms that can account for the recent widespread increase of these disorders in U.S. culture.
  • Schore argues that a major factor in rising dysfunction among boys and men in this country is the failure of the United States to provide longer periods of paid parental leave, with the result that many infants are placed in day care when they are six weeks old.
  • Females consistently score higher on tests of emotional and social intelligence. Sex differences in sociability and social perceptiveness have been shown to have biological origins, with differences appearing in infancy and higher levels of fetal testosterone associated with lower scores on tests of social intelligence.
  • Second, male children suffer more from restricted or nonexistent parental leave policies and contemporary child care arrangements, as well as from growing up in single-parent households. Advertisement Continue reading the main story
  • It has been a longstanding objective of right-wing regimes to push women back into traditional gender roles. Is that what’s going on here? Or could it be something less pernicious and more important?
  • sissij on 17 Mar 17
     
    I think this research is very interesting. It takes a different perspective when discussing gender issues. It notices that there are actually a decline of men in the society. Although there are still wage inequality and other gender problems that women are usually in disadvantages, men are having more and more disadvantages now as the the society shift from physical work to mental work. As the society evolved, the social structure also evolves. Gender equality means we should put equal attention to all genders (there are more than two). --Sissi (3/16/2017)
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