Jun 2, 2024 09:33 PM
(This post was last modified: Jun 2, 2024 09:34 PM by C C.)
https://www.theguardian.com/science/arti...researcher
EXCERPTS: Whether it is the fountain of youth or the elixir of life, men have travelled the world looking for the key to increasing their longevity... [...] When it comes to increasing the lifespan of any male mammal, “there is one way you can intervene”: castration.
Cat Bohannon, the celebrated author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution [...spoke...] at the Hay festival on Friday. Bohannon said castration was a “way to make male mammals live longer”.
This effect was observed in American men in the mid-20th century who were institutionalised, usually because of mental illness, and castrated, and in Korean eunuchs. The castrated men lived longer than their “regularly balled peers”.
[...] While it used to be thought that the average lifespan discrepancy was behavioural – “dumb boys doing dumb boy stuff” – it in fact “seems to have something deeply to do with the immune system and cellular repair”, she said. Males “get more infections” across their lifespan and “more cancer, and the prognoses in many cases tend to be a bit worse”.
A 2012 study published in Current Biology found that the average lifespan of 81 eunuchs born between 1556 and 1861 was 70 years, which was 14.4–19.1 years longer than the lifespan of non-castrated men of similar socioeconomic status. Researchers concluded that the study “supports the idea that male sex hormones decrease the lifespan of men”.
“So why is this? Why are so many men smuggling two little death nuggets?” Bohannon said. “I’m afraid we don’t really know. A lot of good science is being done in this space.”
Bohannon said that after discussing “killer balls” on The Daily Show with Sarah Silverman, she got “very intimate” questions from men about their “testicular situation”. “I’m now ball chick, it seems,” she said... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: Whether it is the fountain of youth or the elixir of life, men have travelled the world looking for the key to increasing their longevity... [...] When it comes to increasing the lifespan of any male mammal, “there is one way you can intervene”: castration.
Cat Bohannon, the celebrated author of Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution [...spoke...] at the Hay festival on Friday. Bohannon said castration was a “way to make male mammals live longer”.
This effect was observed in American men in the mid-20th century who were institutionalised, usually because of mental illness, and castrated, and in Korean eunuchs. The castrated men lived longer than their “regularly balled peers”.
[...] While it used to be thought that the average lifespan discrepancy was behavioural – “dumb boys doing dumb boy stuff” – it in fact “seems to have something deeply to do with the immune system and cellular repair”, she said. Males “get more infections” across their lifespan and “more cancer, and the prognoses in many cases tend to be a bit worse”.
A 2012 study published in Current Biology found that the average lifespan of 81 eunuchs born between 1556 and 1861 was 70 years, which was 14.4–19.1 years longer than the lifespan of non-castrated men of similar socioeconomic status. Researchers concluded that the study “supports the idea that male sex hormones decrease the lifespan of men”.
“So why is this? Why are so many men smuggling two little death nuggets?” Bohannon said. “I’m afraid we don’t really know. A lot of good science is being done in this space.”
Bohannon said that after discussing “killer balls” on The Daily Show with Sarah Silverman, she got “very intimate” questions from men about their “testicular situation”. “I’m now ball chick, it seems,” she said... (MORE - missing details)
