Understanding the "Law" of Testosterone Supply and Demand

[Another princess]

Atomic, thankyou soo much for this information. You explain things so well, and it all makes perfect sense in terms of swaying. Ive been so suprised and disappointed lately when ive checked in on IG that really excellent pink sways have failed. Many of which have included EGS. However all of these failed sways have been of ladies who have obsessed over their sway and hence achieved what looked like a perfect pink sway. Its very sad to think that all that time and hard work they have put into their sway has been spoilt by the obsessing and striving for perfection which is soo easy to get caught up in when swaying. Thankyou again for this very important info. xx

[lindi]

Wow atomic, this is really interesting.

I see myself so much in this essay- high cholesterol, check, high testosterone, check. I had never really realized that the testosterone was direct byproduct of the cholesterol- I knew the two things went together. Now, as a vegetarian for many years, I wonder a chicken and egg sort of question- is my "personality" really causing the cholesterol to turn to estrogen and testosterone (I have high both estrogen and testosterone, something that makes complete sense with high cholesterol) or is the high cholesterol causing my personality? Hormones are to blame for so many mood related things, right, it makes instinctive sense that it's harder to "change" your personality in order to change your hormones, than to understand *why* your body produces the hormones it does at the levels it does.
I tested high for cholesterol when I was 12 years old. 2 full years before I got my first period. My brother also had high cholesterol as a child, and my mother's family has a lot of heart disease. I am wondering...my body was set up to produce gobs of estrogen and testosterone before it even needed to be producing these at levels where I would ovulate.
The genetics that set this up are of course very complicated, but I wonder- at the root of what is causing this hormone level in my body is the "signal" you mention.
It makes me think there is something that hasn't been mentioned or figured out yet in swaying that can affect this mechanism- that can guide your body into at least a more balanced and middle ground hormone mix. I think I'll read that wikipedia link but I wonder if there is isn't something more than just behavior modification that can have a dramatic effect on the way a woman's body goes about turning cholesterol into sex hormones.
P.S. I find it so funny that I'm 9 weeks pregnant with a girl through HT and this puzzle STILL gets me!

[lindi]

Mmm, the wikipedia mentioned something about leydig cells in men but nothing in women.

[atomic sagebrush]

Wow atomic, this is really interesting.

I see myself so much in this essay- high cholesterol, check, high testosterone, check. I had never really realized that the testosterone was direct byproduct of the cholesterol- I knew the two things went together. Now, as a vegetarian for many years, I wonder a chicken and egg sort of question- is my "personality" really causing the cholesterol to turn to estrogen and testosterone (I have high both estrogen and testosterone, something that makes complete sense with high cholesterol) or is the high cholesterol causing my personality? Hormones are to blame for so many mood related things, right, it makes instinctive sense that it's harder to "change" your personality in order to change your hormones, than to understand *why* your body produces the hormones it does at the levels it does.
I tested high for cholesterol when I was 12 years old. 2 full years before I got my first period. My brother also had high cholesterol as a child, and my mother's family has a lot of heart disease. I am wondering...my body was set up to produce gobs of estrogen and testosterone before it even needed to be producing these at levels where I would ovulate.
The genetics that set this up are of course very complicated, but I wonder- at the root of what is causing this hormone level in my body is the "signal" you mention.
It makes me think there is something that hasn't been mentioned or figured out yet in swaying that can affect this mechanism- that can guide your body into at least a more balanced and middle ground hormone mix. I think I'll read that wikipedia link but I wonder if there is isn't something more than just behavior modification that can have a dramatic effect on the way a woman's body goes about turning cholesterol into sex hormones.
P.S. I find it so funny that I'm 9 weeks pregnant with a girl through HT and this puzzle STILL gets me!

Please understand that I am not suggesting anyone change their personality in any way. And YES there are things that can guide your body into a more "balanced" (quotes because I don't think having high testosterone is in any way a character flaw and in fact it can and does help people/animals to survive and thrive in certain circumstances) The entire Low-Everything diet, plus exercise/no exercise and weight loss, plus supps like pep tea and saw palmetto, are designed to do just that, but unless people address the demand side of the equation, the diet and supps will be less effective than they would be otherwise.

Could a potential for high cholesterol make you more likely to conceive boys?? Possibly, but there is a lot of data that indicates that there is NO boy or girl gene. My cholesterol is totally normal and I have 4 of the critters. It could very well be NOT your level of testosterone per se, but CHANGES in your testosterone that matter. So someone with sky-high testosterone who is able to reduce that, will still be swaying pink, even if their T stays higher than 80% of all other women.

Testosterone is TOTALLY a chicken-egg kind of thing, a cycle where high T levels make you more likely to seek out stimuli that keep T levels high. Researchers have tested T levels and found that they do indeed rise before competition and winners T levels rise higher still after winning. So it makes total sense to me that by avoiding competition and confrontation, by forgoing making a lot of temp charts and checking your pH every 3 hours, people are doing a lot towards reducing their body's overall demand for testosterone.

[lola111]

The production of testosterone is an unbelievably complicated process described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testosterone Still with me? The good news is, we don't have to understand all that gobbeldygook to use testosterone (or lack thereof) to our advantage when swaying.

Nutshell version - cholesterol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholesterol is the building block of ALL steroid hormones. Your body makes most of its cholesterol and gets a smaller amount via diet (only 10-15% of your cholesterol comes through diet). You DON'T need to eat gargantuan amounts of cholesterol to have plenty of the stuff, your body makes it out of saturated fats and even animal protein itself. In turn, it uses that cholesterol that it made, to build ALL your hormones, progesterone, testosterone, and estrogen alike.

Consequently, you don't have to eat testosterone-producing foods to make testosterone or to have all boys. Some swaying diets have red meat listed as boy-friendly and chicken and eggs listed as girl-friendly, because red meat has testosterone and chicken and eggs have progesterone, but that doesn't matter. Your body MAKES cholesterol out of the saturated fats in ALL meats, eggs, saturated plant fats like coconut, and full-fat dairy foods, and then turns that cholesterol into testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone.

If your body decides to make less testosterone/estrogen and more progesterone, it's not because you're EATING less testosterone and more progesterone, it's because of other cues in your body that send the signal to your body to make less testosterone and more progesterone. In fact, your body produces progesterone BEFORE it makes testosterone, and testosterone is later turned into estrogen. The three are all part of the same process. You cannot divorce the three hormones and treat them in such a simple manner as, "More testosterone and estrogen = boys, more progesterone = girls" because SOMETHING is causing your body to produce these different levels of hormones.

That SOMETHING is the key to gender swaying.

When I talk about testosterone supply and demand, what I'm really saying is that there are (at least) two variables in the equation. One is the amount of raw materials you have available to make testosterone with. So we try and control this amount, firstly through diet. For blue swayers, by eating more saturated fats that raise the so-called "bad" cholesterol and also healthy fats that raise the so-called "good" cholesterol, in addition to other various nutrients that help with the process. For pink swayers, we eat less fat and protein and less of the nutrients that are proven to help your body manufacture testosterone (like Vitamins A and D, among others.)

We also take supplements that raise or lower the amount of testosterone circulating in our bodies, raise or lower the amount of cholesterol that our body turns into testosterone (you can have both high cholesterol and low testosterone if your body is not getting the "signal" to produce testosterone), and even raise or lower the amount of testosterone that our bodies make out of whatever raw materials are available (some foods that lower cholesterol actually raise testosterone, like oats).

But all this is to no avail if we do not address the second half of the equation - DEMAND. Pink swayers, if we do not convince our bodies that we need less testosterone in order to survive, it will carry on producing testosterone using whatever it can scrounge up. And blue swayers, if our bodies don't "think" they need testosterone, and in some instances may even survive better without it, it will salvage its energy for other things and continue on with less testosterone.

Our bodies produce testosterone for SURVIVAL. In nature, dominant animals (both physically and socially dominant) face constant challenges to their authority and need that testosterone to maintain their physical and social superiority and take on challengers. Submissive animals have a much better chance of survival if they are non-confrontational and so their testosterone levels tend to drop if they decline challenges, or lose.

It isn't hard to see how this translates into modern-day life. If you're always taking on challenges, both mental and physical, that you enjoy and you tend to succeed at them, your testosterone levels are probably higher than another person who feels doomed to fail at every endeavor, or who has to struggle and work constantly just to get by, or has been put down and persecuted a lot in life.

Taking it a step further to swaying...

(Note - No one needs to take offense at any of this, it's meant to be general observations and conjecture and not extrapolate to every person. Keep in mind that there are many factors that sway such as smoking and skipping breakfast, which have NOTHING to do with testosterone or dominance whatsoever.)

A lot of boy-moms (aka pink swayers) have tended to be very much go-getters with a tendency to get SUPERobsessed with the details of everything in life, and having the "perfect" sway is just another thing to obsess over. I have seen some boy-moms even say point blank that the reason their GD was so bad is because getting a daughter was the only thing in life that they hadn't "accomplished" and they view swaying as a challenge to be overcome and a prize to be won.

Some of the blue swayers, on the other hand, have been more easily overwhelmed by swaying and feel that they literally CAN'T conceive a baby boy because something is wrong with them or they are being punished in some way. I have also noticed (and this is just a generalization and in no way meant to be offensive to anyone at all) that ~some~ of the girl-moms desperately want sons not for themselves, but for others - their husbands, fathers, or society at large.

Going back to the idea of an equation, it is GREAT for our sway if we do everything we can to increase or limit the supply of raw materials for our body to manufacture into testosterone. But unless we address the demand aspect and work on changing our habits and attitudes as well, our body may simply continue on as it was. Swaying can even aggravate this by making blue swayers feel terribly pressured and discouraged and lowering their testosterone, or making pink swayers focus too much on details and obsessing over every aspect of their sway and raising their levels.

Supply + Demand = testosterone. Even if your supply drops to ZERO (which is impossible because your body will do ANYTHING to keep you alive, even down to making testosterone out of your last cubic centimeter of body fat), if your body senses that you need testosterone, it will continue making it. And even if you have sky high cholesterol, if your body thinks that high testosterone will reduce your overall odds of survival (animals who are physically less able to defend themselves are ill-suited to getting into a lot of fights or even just asserting themselves socially)it will not use that cholesterol to raise your testosterone levels.

Non-diet and supps ways of increasing demand and raising your testosterone levels - Weight training and moderate exercise (they emulate taking on and overcoming physical challenges) - possibly even something that involves fighting like kickboxing or TaeBo, getting enough sleep, taking on and overcoming challenges (these don't have to be big things, even something small like driving to a new part of town or playing board games with your kids can help), and putting yourself in a position of authority over others can help to raise your testosterone levels. Above all, try to focus on the positive...you CAN conceive a son and if swaying begins to feel overwhelming and undoable to you, take a break and regroup.

Ways of decreasing demand and lowering your testosterone levels - Either NO exercise or extreme exercise, minimum 60 minutes a day, 6-7 days a week (makes your body think you're either keeping your head down and avoid notice, or you're having to work very hard just to survive), getting less sleep than normal, and walking away from arguments and declining challenges that you would ordinarily take on. Above all, you must NOT get obsessed over swaying. If you know you're prone to that kind of thinking, do not include any of the more nitpicky swaying aspects like timing that take a lot of constant monitoring and tracking, because it just keeps it in the forefront of your mind constantly.

Aside from sheer bad luck, testosterone levels are the number one reason why good sways fail. It's not enough just to affect your supply, you must also address demand, in order for your sway to succeed.

Hello atomic

You mentioned you were on low testosterone diet. I have got my results back looks like I have high testosterone. What foods did you eat and which foods did you avoid? Did you take any supplements?

Any help would be much appreciated )

x

[atomic sagebrush]

Hello atomic

You mentioned you were on low testosterone diet. I have got my results back looks like I have high testosterone. What foods did you eat and which foods did you avoid? Did you take any supplements?

Any help would be much appreciated )

x

First of all hi and welcome! Glad you found us! Please check out these links, they'll get you started on all the info on the site. http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...COMPLETE-Index!!!

If you really, truly have clinically high testosterone, you'll need to get medicine from your doctor that will lower it. That is GOOD news if you want a baby girl!

Whenever you lose weight on a low calorie (1500-1800), low protein (40-50 g), low fat (20-30%), low nutrient diet (avoiding big doses of nutrients in vitamin supps and lots of colorful fruits and vegetables, though you can have some), you will be doing a lot towards lowering your testosterone levels. And by keeping your sodium and blood sugar low, while lowering your husband's sperm count at the same time, that is the "Low Everything" sway in a nutshell. You'll find more info about this in the index above. I have begun to write a diet plan based on this info and it's available in the Dream Members section. Or, you can do one of the other diets (we also have the French Gender Diet which can also help lower your testosterone, in the Dream Members section, the IG diet which is available on the In-GEnder site, or even just becoming a vegetarian/vegan will help lower your T levels.)

[lindi]

Could a potential for high cholesterol make you more likely to conceive boys?? Possibly, but there is a lot of data that indicates that there is NO boy or girl gene. My cholesterol is totally normal and I have 4 of the critters. It could very well be NOT your level of testosterone per se, but CHANGES in your testosterone that matter. So someone with sky-high testosterone who is able to reduce that, will still be swaying pink, even if their T stays higher than 80% of all other women.

Testosterone is TOTALLY a chicken-egg kind of thing, a cycle where high T levels make you more likely to seek out stimuli that keep T levels high. Researchers have tested T levels and found that they do indeed rise before competition and winners T levels rise higher still after winning. So it makes total sense to me that by avoiding competition and confrontation, by forgoing making a lot of temp charts and checking your pH every 3 hours, people are doing a lot towards reducing their body's overall demand for testosterone.

Well, no the idea wasn't that all boy moms have high cholesterol, since clearly all women with high T don;t even have high cholesterol- but there could be several factors- the way your body converts the cholesterol you do make into T is interesting to me. I did some reading on people who are genetically prone to high cholesterol, and the genes responsible basically make it very hard for your body to rid itself of LDL, so you just have too much circulating that can't be cleared out. Now this could be a swaying boy factor in *some* women, and clearly not all women who have all boys would have this gene, but its interesting because the high T and high estrogen so perfectly create the boy friendly environment so perhaps something could be learned from this?
What are all the various mechanisms in the boys that would result in high estrogen and high testosterone? One could very clearly be the *choice* to follow an obsessive, detail oriented or confrontational path, watch sports, etc. Another could be high cholesterol, another could be something that causes what cholesetrol you do have to convert to estrogen at a higher rate or to testosterone....
I am a huge fan of the low everything diet as it makes the best sense in terms of a swaying tool. I was just curious about what mechanisms in the body are creating the boy friendly body which aren't lifestyle choices.

[atomic sagebrush]

Sorry, I'm not trying to be argumentative and dissent is ALWAYS welcome on this board. I know you are just thinking out loud and I think you bring up an intriguing idea.

Personally I hesitate to attribute gender ratio to genetic factors. There are real logical reasons why it's unlikely that genetics play much of a role at all in gender ratio (I need to do an essay on why this is but nutshell version it's because genes are more likely to survive when your body can somewhat control the gender of your offspring for maximum survival...the woman who is "genetically predestined" to have only, or even mostly sons, is going to be at a major disadvantage when Og the Caveman takes over the tribe and kills off all the other males, or during the years when food is scarce and all the boys born either die or grow up extremely puny. Mother Nature does not want us to put all our eggs in one basket, literally and figuratively.

Plus, it is very discouraging to people to think that they are genetically programmed for only one gender and since I don't think the facts support it, I tend to argue against that viewpoint, even though it gives me some measure of peace of mind to think that maybe I have 4 boys for some hardwired biological reason rather than that God hates me LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

[lindi]

Sorry, I'm not trying to be argumentative and dissent is ALWAYS welcome on this board. I know you are just thinking out loud and I think you bring up an intriguing idea.

Personally I hesitate to attribute gender ratio to genetic factors. There are real logical reasons why it's unlikely that genetics play much of a role at all in gender ratio (I need to do an essay on why this is but nutshell version it's because genes are more likely to survive when your body can somewhat control the gender of your offspring for maximum survival...the woman who is "genetically predestined" to have only, or even mostly sons, is going to be at a major disadvantage when Og the Caveman takes over the tribe and kills off all the other males, or during the years when food is scarce and all the boys born either die or grow up extremely puny. Mother Nature does not want us to put all our eggs in one basket, literally and figuratively.

Plus, it is very discouraging to people to think that they are genetically programmed for only one gender and since I don't think the facts support it, I tend to argue against that viewpoint, even though it gives me some measure of peace of mind to think that maybe I have 4 boys for some hardwired biological reason rather than that God hates me LOLOLOLOLOL!!!!

Yeah, for sure- I can see this is a defeating kind of line of thought. If your body's genes are steering you towards one gender, how can you compete with that? And you're right- how nonsensical would it be if a woman could only make one gender? Especially since if the boy friendly environment in her body was caused by something that's actually not healthy like plaque filled arteries? And especially since there is so much evidence that environmental factors affect gender ratio.
I wonder if there is something we could control in this though.

[atomic sagebrush]

Diet, weight loss, and supps CAN lower cholesterol and testosterone.