Jerry: For many years, the standard advice given to males taking
testosterone is that they need to also take an aromatase inhibitor
such as Arimidex. It is now known that it is critical to MEASURE
estrogen levels before taking any aromatase inhibitor.

The best estrogen to measure is estradiol. There is increasing
evidence that estradiol in adult males needs to be kept in a very
narrow range around 30 pg/ml. A relatively small excess or
deficiency of estradiol in males can be very dangerous to one's
health.

For more than 90 percent of males, aromatase activity increases with
increasing age, resulting in estradiol levels that are too high. For
3 to 6 percent of males, however, aromatase activity decreases with
increasing age, eventually resulting in estrogen levels that are too
low to sustain adequate bone density.

If you are in the 3 to 6 percent of males with decreasing aromatase
activity with increasing age, you will eventually end up in a nursing
home with osteoporosis if the hormonal situation is not corrected.

For people, like me, who are in this small percentage, taking Arimidex
would simply accelerate the osteoporosis.

Free testosterone and estradiol levels need to be tested at least
every 5 years because they do change with time. How they change with
time depends upon the variations in your aromatase gene.

There are a large number of common DNA variations in the human
aromatase gene on chromosome 15. A DNA scan that I had in May
alerted me that I have a polymorphism in both copies of my aromatase
gene that often results in osteoporosis in men.

A blood test revealed that I had an unusually high ratio of testosterone to
estradiol. (This wasn't always the case.) My estradiol was becoming dangerously
low, although I have been using supplementary testosterone for years.

You can see the details of my case, as well as direct links to the
relevant scientific studies on aromatase and estradiol in males at:

http://www.futurescience.com/dna/je-comments.html

Information like this is one reason that I have recently become such
a strong advocate of DNA testing. One of the major DNA testing
companies recently made a huge price drop in the cost of their
testing.

- Jerry Emanuelson

Ellis: Hello Jerry!

Thanks for your post. Jerry is an electronic engineer, and an expert
on super-conductors, and DNA testing. (a super conductor is a
conductor that operates at extremely low temperatures... for reasons
which I don't know this eliminates almost all friction. This allows
an electrical force to create an extremely powerful magnet, which
has many uses...)

I did not know that aromatase DROPS in a small percentage of men.
In any case, my advice is that when we monitor our estradiol, it
will tell us if we are on target, or too high, or too low, and we
have to adjust the dose of Arimidex accordingly.

I must admit that I have not taken this seriously enough, and I
have not monitored my estradiol in a few years, because I thought
I had found a fairly good dose, for the fairly small amount of
testosterone that I inject. (I inject 200 mgs of testosterone
about 30 times per year... and I take one pill of Arimidex every
time I inject... that is enough to keep me a Dirty Old Man, and
looking pretty good, too... but it is not enough for me to compete
in the local body building contest, which I have no interest to win
anyways.

Please tell us MORE about DNA testing! Where can we get
a DNA test done...? What will this show? How does this
benefit us? I see from what you wrote above that it alerted
you that you might have low estradiol, which a blood test
proved to be true. That is amazing... What else can it
do? Can it help us to FIX something, to prevent any of the
signs of aging?

What about TELOMEREs and TELOMERASE? How can we test to
see what is our situation of telomeres? I wonder if using
growth hormone every day for 10 years, I wonder if it has
affected the SIZE of my telomeres, or if it has affected the
rate at which my telemeres are supposedly getting shorter,
at the end of which presumably the cells will not renew anymore.

All that is so darn theoretical... I like what I can see and
feel and measure. I want to be able to test what is going
on with my telomeres, today, and then compare it with what will
be the situation 5 or 10 or 30 years from now.

Thanks for your post. Three stars, of course, for this great
post. - Ellis