As the leading candidate for a facetious diagnosis of Testosterone Poisoning here at SG Orbital HQ, when news scoots across the radar with the headline “Men: Sugar could make you less manly,” it gets my attention, in that inimitable WHAT YOU SAY? kind of manner.
And not just because of my penchant for quoting Ash, either. Gimme some sugar, baby.
Looking a bit deeper, what was uncovered as part of a way to improve diagnostic testing for hypogonadism (low blood testosterone levels) is that the test methodology didn’t account for proximity to eating. The study revealed that men, regardless of their normal blood insulin levels — normal, pre-diabetic, or actually diagnosed with Type-II diabetes — showed sharply diminished T levels after eating (or, in this case, being given a glucose solution). This condition lasted several hours, and 15% of the subjects who went into it with normal testosterone levels had theirs go down far enough to be clinically considered hypogonadic at least once in the hours after the surrogate meal.
Okay, so what? Just because I’m the token meat-head around here, why should the rest of you care?
The combination of the greying population and increasingly lousy eating habits have combined, in addition to the potentially flawed diagnosis procedures this study brought to light, to cause the recent, um, swelling in the prescription of testosterone supplementation and/or erectile dysfunction (ED) commercials.
Frankly, I’m on the fence about taking something where the side effects may include claw-foot bathtubs. On the one hand, they’re awesome, and the current tub at my house is both small and shallow. On the other, my neighbors really don’t need to put up with those sorts of shenanigans.
As far as what else having testosterone does for folks of both genders, it’s a big player in the realm of muscle development, which is where my primary understanding of its role came from. This touches on another possible reason why T levels are depressed in the wake of a flush of sugar into the bloodstream — both testosterone and insulin fit into the same receptors, so when insulin production needs to go up to take care of all that sugar, testosterone production drops so as not to leave the insulin twiddling its thumbs with its arms full of glucose, waiting to put it into the fridge. This is one reason why a lot of bodybuilders and strength athletes are hypervigilant about their carb intake. Without going to those extremes, this effect can (hopefully) be mitigated by opting for complex carbohydrates, which take longer to enter the bloodstream, and don’t have the same peak-and-crash glycemic profile.
* As has been pointed out repeatedly, and with great vehemence, if you’re not Regimental under the kilt, even if it’s a Utilikilt, purists insist you’re just wearing a skirt.
[Source: NewsWise]
Related posts:
Recent Comments