Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

The blood vessels in your body are a lot like plumbing. The body sends signals through the plumbing, called hormones, and they can go almost everywhere the blood goes. Testosterone and estrogen, the sex hormones, are the most famous, and control gender-related aspects of the body like muscle size and hair growth. Different hormones have different shapes, and as they flow through the blood vessels, cells grab onto them based on their shape, but sometimes hormones that do different things have similar shapes, and the wrong hormone can get snatched up and trigger events they weren't supposed to; for example, injecting testosterone-like substances, called steroids, to appear more manly affects the body in ways that aren't gender related.

Hormones can also be turned into other hormones; for example, testosterone can be turned into estrogen. Fat cells do this. Unfortunately, estrogen is the hormone that causes breasts, so overweight boys have that embarrassment to deal with; but that's not all, since fat boys are turning their testosterone into estrogen, they have lower levels of testosterone, and as more and more kids have gotten overweight, the average testosterone in boys has been nosediving. The hormone crisis in children affects society in a much more profound way than any outside influences like Climate Change, yet it's almost invisible to the public consciousness.