Testosterone: Are You High T or Low T?

By Jed Diamond, Ph.D.

Contact: Jed@MenAlive.com

Web: www.MenAlive.com
 We live in a time where many believe that “bigger is better,” that going fast beats

going slow. We never seem satisfied with what we have. I have a client who has an

addictive personality. He’s had problems with everything from alcohol to drugs, from

gambling to sex addiction, from overwork to overeating. He tells me, “My drug of

choice is more.” Living in the world we live in, it is not difficult to get caught up in what

I call the Bigger-Better Syndrome.

It shouldn’t surprise us to find that this often applies to testosterone as well. If high T

is good, well higher T must be even better, and why not go for the highest T possible. In

fact this seemed to be the attitude of many men in a study conducted by Robert S. Tan,

M.D. He asked the men this question—“If the doctor told you that your testosterone

levels were normal, would you still want a testosterone shot?” Tan said he was surprised

by their response. “Almost half (48%) said YES, implying that there is never too much

of a good thing!”

Given all that I have said about the benefits of testosterone you may wonder why I

would suggest that lower may be better. Well, in our high speed, high tech world of big

business where we are told that the latest pharmaceutical is just what we need, it may turn

out that we shouldn’t mess with father-nature. It may not be an accident that young men

often have testosterone levels exceeding 1000ng/dl. while men in their 80s average

200ng/dl.

Look at it from an evolutionary perspective. Young men need all that testosterone to

be able to compete with other testosterone driven males for the right to mate with the

most attractive females. The joke about men thinking with our penises serves the
evolutionary mandate to reproduce. After menopause women can not reproduce.

Although men can have children past 50, most of us don’t.

I’ve heard many post-menopausal women say that they are happy to be out of the

“mating game” where every minute of every day some man is looking at her and thinking

“I’d sure like to have sex with that one.” The woman’s focus shifts in new directions.

Although many men don’t want to admit it, we too are glad to be driven less by our

one-eyed friend. “It’s nice not to be led around by my cock,” one 60 year-old man told

me. “It seems that my whole life has been driven by my need to succeed so that I could

get an attractive woman to pay attention to me. Once I had one, I felt I had to keep

driving myself to prove to her I was worthy of her attention. Meanwhile I was always

being drawn like a magnet to younger and prettier women. I know it may seem unmanly

to say it, but I’m happy to feel less sexually driven. I can finally think about what I

really want to do with my life.”

Science seems to back up this view that there are considerable advantages to having

lower testosterone. One of the top researchers in the field is Dr. James McBride Dabbs,

Professor of Psychology and head of the Social/Cognitive Psychology Program at

Georgia State University. For over two decades he has conducted cutting-edge research

on the effects of testosterone on the lives of males and females. According to writer

David France, “Professor James M. Dabbs is to testosterone what Oliver Sacks is to

madness. Champion. Iconoclast. Philosopher. Friend.” Dabbs covers what we know

now and speculates about what we may learn in the future in his highly informative book,

Heroes, Rogues, and Lovers: Testosterone and Behavior.

 In his research he found that there are actually two kinds of people who differ in their

normal levels of testosterone. “Frank Sinatra sang, ‘I did it my way,’ and the Beatles

sang ‘I get by with a little help from my friends,’” Dabbs reminds us. “These are the

ways in which high- and low-testosterone people approach the world. Sinatra’s song is

the self-congratulatory, high testosterone way. They are opposing strategies, one based

on dominance and the other on cooperation.”

When I think of higher T and lower T, I often think of the Rolling Stones and the

Beatles. They started at about the same time, dominated the music world, and will leave

a lasting legacy. In contrasting the two groups writer Tom Wolfe said, “The Beatles Want

to Hold Your Hand. But The Stones Want to Burn Your Town.” Can you guess which

one might be the higher T group?

Frank Sinatra wasn’t a better singer than John Lennon and The Beatles weren’t a

better band than the Rolling Stones. They are just different. Some people tend to prefer

one over the other. I don’t suppose anyone has taken blood samples of Beatles fans and

compared them with blood samples from Stones fans, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they

found that their testosterone levels differed.

Dabbs found a number of interesting differences between higher T and lower T

people. “High-testosterone people seem to be unhappy when they are alone and happy

when they are with people…Low-testosterone people, on the other hand, seem to be less

compulsively social.”

We can see this in the testosterone levels of various professions. Dabbs and his team

measured the testosterone levels of physicians, firemen, football players, salesmen,

professors, ministers, and actors. He found that ministers, as a group, had the lowest
testosterone levels, actors the highest, and the other groups in between. My father was an

actor and in the early years of his career he was a very ambitious, highly sexual, very

social, and often irritable. “Actors want to be stars,” Dabbs says, “while ministers want

to help.”i I chose not to follow in my fathers footsteps and went into the helping

professions. (I must say, though, that when I toured for my book and did my first major

T.V. show, I felt the rush of being on stage.)

Even though high T people are very social, they can also be more irritable and

confrontational. “On the average, high-testosterone individuals are tougher, and low-

testosterone individuals are friendlier,” says Dabbs.

This difference may have evolutionary advantages in how we reproduce and raise

children. Higher testosterone may be important in securing a mate, but lower

testosterone may be better for being a good parent and caregiver. Dabbs in fact found

that married men are lower in testosterone than single men and that testosterone levels

dropped when men get married and go up when they get divorced. He also found that

men have higher levels of prolactin and lower levels of testosterone immediately after

they become fathers. “Perhaps these hormonal changes set them up for the gentler

activities of parenthood,” Dabbs concludes.

i
By Jed Diamond, Ph.D.
Contact: Jed@MenAlive.com
Web: www.MenAlive.com