Testosterone and sleep

This is very interesting for CPPS sufferers. As sleep is very important for health and for feeling well. And sleep disturbance is common in CPPS due to the need to void once or twice at night. Which can affect testosterone levels deeply.

Sleep is very important for testosterone levels. This is regardless of when you sleep as long as it is a good undisturbed period of about eight hours.(1) Shorter sleep in old age may be a cause of lower testosterone levels. Bad sleep, especially loss of REM sleep, will depress testosterone levels, but paradoxically high testosterone levels may cause bad sleep too by inducing apnea.(2) A vicious circle!

Individuals with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) are an extreme example.(3) Sleep disruption will disturb all sleep-controlled endocrine rhythms, not only testosterone. "In conclusion, testosterone increased during sleep and fell during waking, whereas circadian effects seemed marginal. Individual differences were pronounced."(4) "During fragmented sleep, nocturnal testosterone rise was observed only in subjects who showed REM episodes. Our findings indicate that the sleep-related rise in serum testosterone levels is linked with the appearance of first REM sleep. Fragmented sleep disrupted the testosterone rhythm with a considerable attenuation of the nocturnal rise only in subjects who did not show REM sleep."(5)

As nocturia is a common cause of disrupted sleep addressing nocturia in CPPS patients is an important issue. The figure below shows normal sleep (no nightly awakenings) and disrupted sleep (nightly awakenings indicated by blue bars).





The following diagram shows normal nightly testosterone rise (left: A,C) and absence with disrupted rem sleep (right: B, D). Time zero is from onset of melatonin (upper: A,B) and start of sleep (lower: C,D). (Luboshitzky et al, 2001.)



Andra bloggar om CPPS, prostatit, kroniskt bäckenbottensmärtsyndrom, nokturi, trängningar, sömn, testosteron, androgener
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(1) Axelsson J, Ingre M, Åkerstedt T, Holmbäck U. Effects of acutely displaced sleep on testosterone. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 90:4530-4535, 2005.
(2) Saaresranta T, Polo M. Sleep-disordered breathing and hormones. Eur Respir J 22:161-172, 2003.
(3) Luboshitzky R, Aviv A, Hefetz A, Herer P, Shen-Orr Z, Lavie L, Lavie P. Decreased pituitary-gonadal secretion in men with obstructive sleep apnea. J Clin Endocrin Metab 87(7):3394-3398, 2002.
(4) Axelsson J, Ingre M, Åkerstedt T, Holmbäck U. Effects of Acutely Displaced Sleep on Testosterone. J Clin Endocrin Metab 90(8):4530-4535, 2005.
(5) Luboshitzky R, Zabari Z, Shen-Orr Z, Herer P, Lavie P. Disruption of the nocturnal testosterone rhythm by sleep fragmentation in normal men. J Clin Endocrin Metab 86(3):1134-1139, 2001.