05/15/2026
Testosterone and women’s brain health had a fascinating development. A new preprint study came out looking at hormones and Alzheimer’s disease.
It showed a 12% reduction in Alzheimer’s in women with a higher level of bioavailable testosterone.
Testosterone mostly gets discussed as a hormone for libido when we discuss it as a hormone to replace in women. (It doesn’t escape my notice that the one reason we easily give it to women also affects men.). But it really is critical for muscle, bone, metabolism, energy, mood, and motivation too. Those are all very important in how we age and how WELL we age. But cognitive aging has often been mostly assigned to estrogen. But this study is showing it might be a group hormonal effort.
A new 2026 medRxiv preprint looked at shared genetic risk and possible causal relationships between sex-hormone-related traits and Alzheimer’s disease. It is not peer reviewed yet, but the signal is fascinating to me.
Especially because women already carry a disproportionate burden of Alzheimer’s and dementia. 2 out of 3 people with Alzheimer’s are women. This is why I keep talking about hormones as more than symptom management. Menopause is not only hot flashes, despite the fact that’s all most people ever hear about.
It is a MAJOR biological transition involving the brain, heart, bones, muscles, metabolism, immune system, and nervous system.
And the thing we are learning is that many of these conversations are somewhat time sensitive. Hormones appear to be most protective before major disease has already developed. They may help preserve function better than they can restore what has already been lost. That’s not to say there is no benefit to start later, but the earlier you start, the more benefits can be gained.
So no, of course we should not overstate preprint data. But we also shouldn’t ignore emerging signals just because the data isn’t perfect yet. Many of us are already on the clock in a world that doesn’t prioritize much research on female aging and hormones. Women do not have endless time to wait for a medical system that has historically under-studied us to finally catch up.
In a world where women experience more dementia than men this new research is so exciting.
Is this something you would show your doctor? Do you think this might help you access testosterone if your doctor is hesitant?
Yang C, Cook N, Zeng Y, Sivasankaran SK; FinnGen; DeCasien A, Andrews SJ, Belloy ME. Shared Risk Genes and Causal Relationships across S*x Hormone Related Traits and Alzheimer’s Disease. medRxiv. 2026. doi: 10.64898/2026.04.23.26351626.
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