As title says, it seems counterintuitive that a side-effect of steroids and other enhancing drugs is a shrinkage of the testicles when I always associate testicles with testosterone levels.
In: Biology
You’re body is getting an external amount of steroids so your testicles don’t need to produce as much. Like your muscles shrinking when you don’t use them
Your hormonal system is very very regulated. Testosterone level are very tightly maintained to a certain level to make sure everything goes well in terms of spermatogenesis but also for general bodility functions (hormones act on everything).
Anabolic steroids or taking huge amounts of testosterone fucks with your hormonal system. And when your body detect that there is too much testosterone in it, it stops producing. When your testicules stop producing testosterone, they shrink.
That’s why, sometimes on reddit, when I see stuff like “I’m feeling low, I think I have lower testosterone, where should I get supplement ?” it makes me a little upset. You do not take testosteron supplement just because you feel low and too much testosterone is basically the same as no testosterone because your body is set to brake on testosterone production when there is too much. If you feel low, go see a doctor.
Although I am not accredited officially with hormone replacement therapy knowledge, I CAN make the explanation a bit simpler:
A human body has to maintain stable internal conditions, and testosterone is one of them. A guy’s testicles produces testosterone at a regular level (depending on age as well as a variety of other factors that I will not explain on this post).
HOWEVER, if said guy starts introducing a significantly more amount of testosterone into his body via exogenous testosterone, the body recognizes the abrupt increase in testosterone. The body, unbeknownst to us, isn’t really aware that the guy is purposefully trying to increase his testosterone to such a high level. Following this, the body signals the testicles to stop producing as much or completely stop producing testosterone (which result in the testicles shrinking). Simply put, the body thinks that the testicles are not needed because somehow there is so much testosterone in the body (from the exogenous testosterone) that the body thinks the testicles do not have to produce as much/any testosterone.
Edit:
I should add that the body’s response of signaling the testicles to stop producing testosterone is the body’s way of trying to maintain stable internal conditions (homeostasis).
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