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Comment by smallmancontrov | Hacker News Reader

Smells like astroturf.

I'm sure part of it is genuine bro-science dumbassery, though: over the years I have probably overheard a dozen gym conversations indicating that someone thinks TRT will reverse their balding or improve their hair. The truth is exactly the opposite -- male hormones tend to exacerbate male pattern balding, because of course they do. I think many people try to model the world by attaching a "good" or "bad" bit to everything and there are cases with steep tradeoffs where this goes very wrong. TRT is one of them, and once they've decided "TRT good" then "TRT fixes hair" and "TRT fixes aging" are compression artifacts.

I still suspect it's mostly astroturf.

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You've actually heard people say TRT fixes hair? I am doubtful because you can google that topic right now, "TRT effect on hair" and find an absolute abundance of reports that it does the exact opposite. Grows hair where you don't want it, loses hair on your head.

I feel really bad for anyone who is being served false info about TRT fixing hair on their head. If there's one confirmed possible downside, from what I can tell, that is it (there may be many more).

Google doesn't have big muscles, what would it know?

I kid, but only slightly: bro-science does not come from researching things on google or anywhere else. In theory it comes from personal experience, in practice it is usually made up on the spot or reverse-engineered from desires or self-interest.

I mean, I sort agree... My interpretation of "bro science" is a combination of some dude getting questionable advice from another dude at the gym, but also on Reddit.

That's effectively what I mean by "Google" in the bro science context. Even there you'll be hard pressed to find anecdotes from TRT supporters who claim it improved their head hair growth. I find a lot that note it increases hair everywhere ELSE but not the head.

Even the remote threat of being fact-checked does wonders to keep people from making up bullshit. I don't know that I've ever heard "TRT improves (head) hair" online, but I probably hear it roughly once a year in the gym. I work out less than an hour three times a week, so we are talking about a fairly high amount of presence for such a specific piece of bullshit.

Not astroturf. If you do a blinded study where some people get testosterone, most of them are going to report feeling better at first.

That situation changes as the body stabilizes, the testes atrophy, and the brain gets used to the new set point.

That's why the TRT forums and Reddits are filled with complaints about "my TRT stopped working" when the honeymoon period ends.

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