Hi Andrew (et al.),

I'm posting this here, as you suggested.

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Testosterone and Dreams

Does low testosterone rob one of dreams?

I have an observation/experience and am wondering whether anyone else has had the same.

I have noticed that now that I am off of testosterone, I don't have particularly interesting dreams any more. I am NOT talking about sex dreams. The loss of sex dreams with low testosterone was documented decades ago. But what I am talking about is generally complex, imaginative, and interesting dreams. Instead I now seem to hve mundane dream about whatever bothered me the most during the previous day. I can thus pretty well predict ahead of time what I will dream about.

Supposedly cancer patients taking castrating drugs, like LH-RH agonists, report problems with sleeping. But I am now wondering if they are really having problems sleeping or whether instead they are simply dream at night about what they worried about during the day. They may thus think they have slept badly (i.e., laid awake worrying), when they had in fact actually slept OK.

I do not feel sleep-deprived, which has me thinking that castration does not actually lead to less sleep--just less interesting dreams.

A PubMed search on "testosterone + dreaming" produced nothing useful on this topic. Thus I would like to know what other eunuchs think about this thesis. It would be particularly useful to hear from those folks who have gone off and on testosterone, such as those who have taken supplemental testostrone.

PS: Has everybody replied to G. Farrell Squires poll on why people get castrated, or why they don't? I think it is one the most comprehensive and valuable polls related to eunuchdom that I have ever seen. It is at:

<http://eunuchsurvey.dashdotdash.net/>

tadpole (imported) wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2002 5:44 pm Hi Andrew (et al.),

I'm posting this here, as you suggested.

-----------------

Testosterone and Dreams

Does low testosterone rob one of dreams?

I have an observation/experience and am wondering whether anyone else has had the same.

I have noticed that now that I am off of testosterone, I don't have particularly interesting dreams any more. I am NOT talking about sex dreams. The loss of sex dreams with low testosterone was documented decades ago. But what I am talking about is generally complex, imaginative, and interesting dreams. Instead I now seem to have mundane dream about whatever bothered me the most during the previous day. I can thus pretty well predict ahead of time what I will dream about.

Welcome, TADPOLE, and I hope we get some thoughtful replies.



I am not one of those who remembers his dreams much. I am quite sure that, like most normal people, I get several dreams a night, but not in a way that I would remember them much. And as you noted, I NEVER have dreams concerning sex. That part of my life is over. (And just as well.)

Since my castration, I have been in the habit of falling asleep whilst listening to tapes by Louis Hay especially designed for falling asleep to. She encourages her listener to have positive thoughts and affirmations as we fall asleep, and I think this sort of therapy helps me to get a good night's sleep.

Yes, I do sometimes wake up from a hot flash/night sweat, but I simply restart the tape, or play a different tape, and am soon asleep again.

Of course, sleping with Pearly, my cat, beside me also helps, as I can reach over ad pet her whilst falling asleep or after I wake up from a night sweat and start falling asleep again.

Hope this helps.

I don't recall any shifts or changes in my usual dream/sleep cycles. Of course, my problem - since childhood - is that I can't get to sleep and when I do, I wake up every 1 to 2 hours. I generally recall several vivid dreams, usually every other night and on the nights where I don't recall fully, I can usually call up a fragment or two. I don't know anything about testosterone levels affecting dreams, but the boys here who haven't started puberty yet don't seem to have a problem recalling theirs. I don't either. When I was on HRT for a few months in 1999, according to my journals, I wasn't having a problem recalling dreams then either.

:p

tadpole (imported) wrote: Sun Jun 09, 2002 5:44 pm Hi Andrew (et al.),

I'm posting this here, as you suggested.

-----------------

Testosterone and Dreams

Does low testosterone rob one of dreams?

I have an observation/experience and am wondering whether anyone else has had the same.

I have noticed that now that I am off of testosterone, I don't have particularly interesting dreams any more. I am NOT talking about sex dreams. The loss of sex dreams with low testosterone was documented decades ago. But what I am talking about is generally complex, imaginative, and interesting dreams. Instead I now seem to hve mundane dream about whatever bothered me the most during the previous day. I can thus pretty well predict ahead of time what I will dream about.

I was castrated three years ago, so I was on testosterone before that. Then I was hypogonadal for over two years. Then I started taking estrogen last November.

It seems that neither castration, nor the estrogen has changed my dreams. The only change I have ever noticed in my dreams occurred in 1998 before my castration. I used to have dreams in which others would catch me expressing my gender or I feared being caught. After I accepted myself in 1998, I quit having those types of dreams.

Sometimes I remember what I dreamed, and sometimes I don't. My ability to remember dreams was also like this pre-castration. I am most likely to forget about a dream if I wake up in the middle of the night, because after I fall asleep again and begin a new dream, I may forget about the first dream.

I keep a folder containing descriptions of my dreams here at my desk so that whenever I have some interesting dream, I can take notes about it shortly after I get up in the morning. Sometimes the dreams were interesting enough (as happened last Tuesday morning) that I don't get all the details written down before I have to go to work. I have written about quite a few dreams last week, so interesting dreams are not decreasing one bit.

My favorites are the dreams in which I go back in time and re-experience things from my younger years, only now I experience them as a girl. Family members or friends from my youth show up in many of these dreams. Some other dreams pertain to the present in which I am just doing everyday things, but as a woman with a transformed body including a full head of my own real hair grown back:)

Not all dreams are pleasant. Last Saturday morning I was a woman being pursued by creatures from Jurassic Park.

But I do like most of my dreams.

Sweet dreams everyone,

Actually, many spiritual philosophies do draw a relationship between sexual "energy" and dreaming. It is also common for people taking steroids to report "wierd" or "vivid" dreams.

It is hard to assess other people's experiences though because some people may not have had a high libido before they became castrate, some may not have been good a remembering dreams, etc.

As part of a protocol in the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis I take two CCs of Testosterone Cypionate about every five days. Prior to beginning this protocol I had very vivid dreams and still do. Nothing within the dreams has changed, there's no more-or less-sexuality than before. I tend to dream in story lines and,has been mentioned, as fascinating as I find some of them I don't write them down. What I can and have done is wake up, answer the phone, use the restroom whatever, go back to sleep and resume my dream pretty much where I left off.