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Estrogen becomes a real problem for people experimenting with anabolic steroids or even taking some of the TRT regimens which go past replacement doses and into performance enhancing territory.

Testosterone is converted into estradiol by aromatase, so people who boost their testosterone up to high levels get more estradiol as a result.

As an aside: Aromatase is present in body fat, so higher body fat will produce more sites for testosterone to convert to estradiol. This is one reason why higher body fat is correlated with lower testosterone. It’s also one reason why the decline of testosterone levels are correlated with the rise of obesity and you shouldn’t trust anyone who rants about declining testosterone levels without acknowledging that major correlation.

Back on topic: The increased estradiol production from excess testosterone can go above the normal range in men, which can cause a wide range of mental and physical problems. It can even promote growth of breast tissue that when left unchecked needs to be surgically removed later. Surgeons who deal with gynecomastia are seeing booming business right now due to all of the men going to TRT clinics and getting blasted with crazy doses of testosterone.

There are medications which reduce aromatase activity but they are very hard to get right. It’s a common story for men to suffer from excess estradiol after manipulating their testosterone, so they assume they can fix it with an aromatase inhibitor. They take slightly too much (which is very easy due to the dosing and duration of action) and crash their estradiol levels too low. Between the sudden swing in levels and the low level they can find themselves feeling a different kind of terrible. Someone I know become suicidal after taking an aromatase inhibitor at the ‘normal’ recommending broscience dosage. It took weeks to clear due to the dynamics of how everything returns to equilibrium. Very scary time.

Estradiol is highly active in the brain including regulation of key functions like MAO (the enzyme inhibited by MAOI antidepressants). One of many reasons why out-of-range levels or sudden fluctuations can make people feel bad in various ways.

Re #2, in the mtf trans experience high estrogen and low testosterone are correlated with low libido, with some individuals even temporarily stopping antiandrogen medications in order to get some back

What should be done to keep it on the right level forever ?

We need a synthetic or phytoestrogen that provides some (or all) of the benefits of natural estrogen, without at all stimulating Er/Pr receptive cancer.

Any remedies to reverse this?

At the time, there was also real concern about what that estrogen was doing to other people too, people around women who were on supplements. I used to be a competitive swimmer. There was a real debate in the 90s/2000s about how much of that estrogen was ending up in pool water. The question was whether it was healthy for children, boys and girls, to be literately swimming in a not-insignificant amount of supplemental estrogen. Testosterone patches were also an issue in pools, but they were much less common. With the change in treatment the debate is now largely moot.

The exposure for lap swimmers was significant. A competitive kid would regularly spend 10+ hours a week in that water (at my peak it was closer to 20+) not to mention the amount of water swallowed and inhaled as vapor/droplets.

There is a line in a Doctor Who episode (Torchwood?) where a character comments that he could recognize 20th century earth because he could taste estrogen in the rain. In real life, it was detected in rainwater.

The institution of science?

US life expectancy in 2024 for women was 81.4 years; for men, 76.5 [1]; “non-early” symptoms of Alzheimer's typically begin after 65 [2]. I don’t think that the life expectancy average offset of ~5 years is the main factor here.

1. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db548.htm 2. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/alzheimers-di...

Well, I went out to disprove your thesis, thinking we can easily look at countries where men live longer than women in another country.

For example, women in the US have a lower life expectancy than men in Australia (go figure). Now women are less than 1.4 times more likely than men to get dementia in australia, but about 2 times more likely to get alzheimer in the US. So that kind of points in your direction, but that is of course wildly inaccurate, cause one is mentioning dementia the other only alzheimer and whatnot.

https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/ https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/dementia/dementia-in-aus/con... https://www.alz.org/getmedia/ef8f48f9-ad36-48ea-87f9-b740346...

Edit: qwen and glm seem to also agree with parent. "Age is the dominant risk factor".

Eh, are you citing sone peer-reviewed research or are you making stuff up?

> baldness, and the downside of the condition for sexual attractiveness of its bearers

Just a guess, and I highly doubt there are any reliable statistics on this, but perhaps balding men are less likely to be tempted to abandon their family unit, thereby making it more likely that their children will thrive and carry on their genes?

I base this theory on my own experience, which is that I went completely bald in my early thirties and haven't had a second look from a woman ever since. Even if I were the sort to want to cheat on my wife, there wouldn't be any takers![0]

[0] I'm not claiming that bald men are necessarily sexually unattractive. I just know that it didn't work for me, looks-wise.

I think you’d want to reconsider the assumption that there is a big downside to baldness for sexual attractiveness.

> The part that makes no sense for me is men ending with smaller rates of dementia, given they had much less estrogen to begin with. Men have less incidence of dementia.

My understanding was that they have lower incidence specifically of Alzheimer's, but greater incidence of other forms of dementia.

Men have significant estrogen:

Men: roughly 10–40 pg/mL Women (not at ovulation): roughly 30–40 pg/mL

At Ovulation, women spike. Hence, libido changes. If you know, you know.

> I suspect we will still discover some strong unexpected upside to explain why this trait was selected for regardless.

Its not selected for, it merely isn’t selected against

anything that occurs after reproduction starts isn't given the opportunity to be weeded out of the population

in this case, genes are passed into new humans overwhelmingly by men in their teens and twenties and thirties (with some stark outliers)

This fails to control for the fact that women, on average, live to older ages before dying.

Eh, have you seen any research on this or are you quoting own experience?

And for me - total stomach mess too.