Testosterone and metabolism

 Testosterone is first a leading  hormone for metabolism.  Curiously, this concept is rarely considered in medical practice while it is of the most importance.

Testosterone is implicated in metabolism of all proteins of the body. It regulates sugar metabolism and through this pathway it influences the fat metabolism.

The main phenomenon of "male climacteric" is a lack of male hormone. The "sexual concept" is too restrictive because, in fact, when testosterone is missing, all structures of the body involve progressively through different biochemical and pathological mechanisms.

Universality of the androgens' receptor

Androgen receptor is identified in a variety of organs : seminal vesicles, hair follicle, sebaceous glands, foreskin glands and more generally all secondary sexual organs, testicles and epididymis, uterus and ovary, kidney, submaxillary glands, definite cerebral areas as hypothalamus, pituitary gland and the cerebral cortex, elevator ani muscle and skeletal muscle, and bone marrow. In reality small quantities of androgens' receptors have been observed in numerous organs.  

Protein metabolism

The trophic action of androgens upon the skeletal muscle is well known for many years. It is spectacular in body-builders taking androgens. According to several authors, experimental studies have proved the effects of androgens on the incorporation of amino acids into muscle's proteins. Research on rats treated with testosterone have shown a significant incorporation of marked leucine in proteins and of marked uridine into ribonucleic acid in some muscles of those animals.

Sugar metabolism

 Already in 1947, Giuseppe Pellegrini, director of the Institute of Pathology from the Univerisity of Pavia in Italy, described  the influence of androgens on the sugar metabolism of 68 patients in an topic : " L'azione antidiabetica degli ormonali sessuali maschili nel quadro della fisiopathologia del diabete". An  intramuscular injection of 5 to 25 milligrams of testosterone propionate provokes a significant decrease of glycemia within the two or three hours following the injection and its action lasts four or five hours. The reduction of glycemia is about 1 gram per litre with diabetics and glucosuria is reduced. In normal man glycemia falls to inferior plasmatic levels and not more because hormonal balance is normal. Regulation power of testosterone on sugar metabolism  acts for a long time : after an androgenic treatment glycemy of diabetics is reduced during a few days and rises after to the initial levels.

Fat metabolism

Through the pathway of sugar metabolism testosterone influences the fat metabolism . When there is too much glucose in  blood, it can't be burned enough through the Krebs' cycle (the capacity of burning is limited) and there is an overproduction of acetyl-coenzyme A which is the initial compound for making cholesterol and lipids. Because every man, some time or other, will have a lack of testosterone production after forty, values for triglycerides and of cholesterol  increase in blood during aging.