At Rise Men’s Health, hormone evaluations go beyond just testosterone. When hormones are balanced, emotional resilience often returns naturally. Research has shown a strong correlation between low testosterone and mood disorders. Even a moderate decline can trigger noticeable emotional changes, ranging from frustration and low drive to depressive symptoms. Your hypothalamus and pituitary gland control the amount of testosterone your gonads (testicles or ovaries) produce and release. For adult females, testosterone enhances libido. At around week seven in utero, the sex-related gene on the Y chromosome initiates the development of the testicles in male infants. "Anabolic" refers to muscle building, and "androgenic" refers to increased male sex characteristics. Natural testosterone is a steroid — an anabolic-androgenic steroid. Low testosterone frequently impacts sexual health, including reduced libido, difficulty with erectile function, and decreased sexual satisfaction. Men typically begin experiencing a natural decline in testosterone after age 30, with levels dropping approximately 1% per year. Unlike the gradual wear of aging, testosterone decline can significantly impact your physical health, emotional well-being, and daily function—yet it’s often overlooked or dismissed as a normal part of aging. If you’re feeling more tired than usual, struggling to maintain muscle tone, or noticing changes in your mood and energy levels, you might be experiencing the effects of declining testosterone. During puberty, it's normal for levels of estrogen to rise. Menopause is a natural transition for all women in which their estrogen levels go down. Likewise, testosterone is referred to as the male sex hormone for the roles it plays in male sexual development and function. Statistical significance of the overall effect of total testosterone was tested with a Wald test.After fitting unadjusted models, we adjusted for the effects of age, BMI, alcohol use, smoking, physical activity (men and women), and pregnancy status (women). Participants with missing information on depressive symptoms (3372 men and 2825 women), or any covariate (133 men and 160 women) were also excluded, resulting in a final sample size of 9355 (4253 men and 5102 women). Participants with a testosterone level above the normal range (more than 1100 ng per deciliter (ng/dL) for men and 70 ng/dL for women) 18,19 were excluded (47 men and 186 women). Studies on other risk factors of depression—inflammation 12,13 and social risk factors for example—have shown that some risk factors may be more important for specific depression symptoms but not others. However, some studies have suggested that both low and high levels of testosterone might be related to elevated depression risk . Table 1 shows the sex-stratified demographic characteristics of the sample and descriptive statistics. We also assessed the sensitivity of our results to an alternative coding strategy where we used log-transformed testosterone values instead of raw concentrations. Statistical significance of the overall effect of total testosterone was tested with a Wald test.
