It’s blamed for everything from road rage to rogue elephants. Yet it seems the male hormone makes you fatherly, gentle and in tune with your partner’s need to breed.
Remember when you were a pimply teenager with a voice that sounded like the school bell being kicked down a flight of stairs? You knew your body was changing, along with the order of priority you placed on your Action Man dolls and standing behind your friend Keith’s older sister when she got onto the school bus.
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Someone said your hormones were making all this stuff happen; powerful things. They make hair sprout and limbs lengthen. They turn carefree the children who loved snuggling up with their parents on weekend mornings into overwrought morons who want those same parents to drop them off around the corner from the school gate because they can’t bear to be seen with them and their sad family sedan.
Adult men and their hormones
But you’re an adult, so you think hormones no longer play a role in your life. Think again. New research has come up with some real surprises about that much-maligned male hormone, testosterone. It’s been blamed for everything from road rage to a reluctance to ask for directions and marital infidelity.
We watch those unflinching Discovery Channel wildlife specials, where the male lion wipes out the cubs because they’re not his own.
Researchers at the Northwestern University in Chicago studied mice (It carries fewer risks than studying black-maned lions). Surprisingly, they found that it’s the traditionally “female” hormone progesterone which causes male mice to be aggressive towards their offspring, reports the magazine New Scientist.
Of mice and men Male mice are not traditionally known to be good fathers. They sometimes attack and kill the little ones and seldom have a role in rearing them.
The mice were divided into two groups, the “control” group and the “knockout” group, which had undergone gene therapy which disabled the gene which makes progesterone receptors and enabled them to react to the hormone.
The researchers were startled when the so-called knockout mice began exhibiting protective paternal behaviour. The aggression towards their offspring disappeared and they started looking after the cubs. The males even carried the pups back to the nest if they strayed.
So, did this mean they were quiche-eating, metrosexual mice? Not at all. The mice had lost none of their natural aggression towards their male peers. Only the behaviour toward the offspring had changed. The study’s authors don’t mention whether the mice jostled each other to get closest to the cheese during Happy Hour or whether there was road rage on the treadmill.
Progesterone causes aggression The researchers now want to track progesterone levels in pregnant women. They already know that progesterone levels decrease just before birth, and they know want to establish whether fathers undergo a corresponding drop in progesterone levels, which they think may aid the bond process with the newborn.
It leads to an enticing prospect for an advertising campaign highlighting the scourge of women abuse: “Guys who hurt their partners and kids have high progesterone levels – they’re girly”. But most blokes have always known that anyway, hence the adage: “If all the men who ever hit a woman were laid end to end it would be a really good thing”.
There’s more to hormone levels, though: researchers at the Institute of Applied Psychology in Lisbon found that men who’re hoping to become fathers can adjust their testosterone levels to increase the likelihood of their partners conceiving.
The elevated levels of testosterone coincided with periods when the couple had plenty of sex. It’s been known for some time that testosterone has a role in boosting sperm production. It’s also well-known that women tend to be more receptive to sex around the time that they ovulate. It’s now believed that men respond subconsciously to the pheromones emitted by their partners so that their testosterone levels – and their resulting larger numbers of viable sperm – peak when their partners are most likely to conceive.
So, testosterone can make you kind to your kids and responsive to when your wife wants to breed with you. Still not convinced of its virtues? Consider this: Male elephants are seldom dangerous. They’ll only stand on you if you try to hurt the herd and when they’re in musth (A kind of sexually charged aggression that makes them beat up trees and anything that’s available), which happens at the end of the mating season.
That’s when their testosterone levels fall. So again, testosterone, blamed for all manner of male idiosyncrasies, isn’t the villain – quite the opposite.
Stress makes testosterone levels drop
A study by the Medical Research Council’s Human Reproductive Sciences Unit in Edinburgh, Scotland suggests that stresses such as job loss, divorce, bereavement or serious illness can trigger a sudden drop in testosterone levels. In the future, treatment with hormones may in some cases replace the prescription of antidepressants. (William Smook)
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