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Matthew Milone's avatar

Congratulations on finding a treatment that worked, and thank you for encouraging others!

Nevertheless, I think that your first conclusion in part III relies on incorrect assumptions. The most important is that the difference in experience between an average man and an average woman is similar to the difference between an average woman and a hormonally deficient woman.

I'm not an expert in biology or chemistry, but I strongly suspect that, in some ways, males are far less sensitive to testosterone than females are. (argument below) Consequently, the effects of different testosterone levels within a sex (especially within one person) don't imply anything about the effects of different testosterone levels between the sexes.

The difference in testosterone concentration between men and women is *enormous*. Even when women's testosterone peaks in their 20s, the concentration for women at the 90th percentile is only one-fifth of the concentration for men at the 10th percentile. The medians differ by a factor of ~15. For most intents and purposes, these distributions do not overlap.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Testosterone-distribution-10th-25th-50th-75th-and-90th-percentile-in-men-A-women_fig1_283326530

Despite this, the distributions of traits that are associated with testosterone--libido, aggression, and more--overlap considerably between men and women. This implies that men are less sensitive to testosterone.

The proper lesson isn't "men play life on easy"; it's "healthy people play life on easy". Incidentally, I've experienced very similar symptoms to those that you've described--poor sleep, fatigue, brain fog, impaired speech, introversion, and more--and my testosterone levels were fine. For me, it was caused by a combination of low iron, sleep apnea, environmental allergies, and other factors. When I had trouble concentrating at work, or gathering the motivation to exercise, I thought that I was being lazy. When a *single* iron pill alleviated all of my symptoms within 24 hours, I knew that I wasn't to blame.

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The irrationalist's avatar

To other readers: the symptoms of low testosterone are pretty non-specific. I am a guy and got finally my testosterone levels tested after a thread by Cate (https://x.com/catehall/status/1875744698754809994).

It turned out my testosterone levels are higher than that of 85% men. Which on one hand surprised me and on the other hand it triggered a form of self-acceptance of some of my personality tendencies (like competitiveness, status-seeking, etc). Alas, my issues with brainfog and sleep remain unfixed.

To Cate: your later points about biology remind me of Scott Alexander's post "Society is fixed, biology is mutable" (https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/10/society-is-fixed-biology-is-mutable/)

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