Does testosterone normally decrease with age or increase?!


Question:

Does testosterone normally decrease with age or increase?

I've heard that male baldness was caused by increased amounts of testosterone. I've also heard that testosterone levels decrease with age. This doesn't make sense. Does anyone know the answer to this dilemma?

Additional Details

3 weeks ago
Thank you navigator. However, there is modern data which also indicates that increased levels of testosterone cause baldness. Because of this, drugs which inhibit testosterone production are prescribed to balding men. They have even found in certain male animals that increased levels of testosterone can also cause some types of hair loss (such as the maneless lion pride in Tsavo National Park, Kenya).


Answers:

Testosterone levels decrease with age, true. As for the relation with baldness, it is not that increased testosterone causes baldness. For those men that will become bald (mainly due to genetics), only a normal level of testosterone is needed to make it happen.

The misconception probably comes from centuries ago when it was noticed that eunuchs and castrati didn't lose their hair. People incorrectly assumed that the reverse was also true, that bald men must be exceptionally virile since losing the balls made guys KEEP their hair.

Once medical science advanced to the point where we knew about testosterone, the misconception also was modernized to incorrectly assume that the cause of baldness was high levels of testosterone. Hope that answers your question!

EDIT - adding more in response to your details: The data you speak of is news to me, but interesting. It's still true, though, that for men, in the natural course of things, testosterone levels peak around their mid-20s and decline thereafter.




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