Beyond Estrogen: Testosterone, longevity, and the science of what comes next: Susan Dominus, New York Times (part 2)

I ran an article about it a few months ago in the New York Times Magazine.

And I will say that it first did come up when I was reporting the piece that I did about menopause.

But that really seemed far out there.

And that was maybe two or three years ago.

And I guess I started reporting it almost three years ago.

And the Menopause Society was... not ready to really encourage it or support it.

And it just felt like, let's get one thing under control first.

But in the UK, they were already very, very interested in testosterone.

And it was very much a part of the menopause conversation over there.

Even three years

ago, it was what we were advocating for.

So I got interested in it mostly because I was starting here bubbling up more conversations about it.

It was showing up more on social media.

And I had this sort of suspicion about it that it seemed a little bit like puritanical part of us that's just like, do the bare minimum that you need and not one little bit above and beyond that.

When I actually started looking into it, people I really respect started to tell me that they thought it was maybe one more piece of the puzzle.

And then it became an interesting phenomenon because it's not exactly mainstream for OBGYNs to prescribe it.

It's kind of gotten taken over by a lot of these wellness centers or longevity centers or compound pharmacists.

So some women are taking it in Very, very high doses.

And that's a totally separate and fascinating cultural phenomenon.

Yes, I can imagine that that would be.

We naturally produce testosterone.

So it makes sense to me that if we lose it the same way we lose estrogen and progesterone over time like anything else, if we want to replenish, we're going to have to replenish that as much as anything else, depending how much testosterone we make in our bodies.

And if I understand correctly, it's about a tenth of what men make.

But that the real issue wasn't that there isn't some use value to testosterone, which I want to get into, but really the delivery mechanism was an issue.

We have pellets, we have compounding in gels or lotions, things like that.