EA Forums

This subject has been discussed before, but it's worth discussing again. It's estimated that eunuchs can outlive intact males by 10-15 years. With that knowledge, would you willingly trade your testicles in for a longer life? I suppose the other question is, "When does one need to be castrated in order to obtain the extra years? I mean, do you have to get castrated early in life in order to get the extra years or can you wait until your 50 or 60?

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/castration ... LKjxoc8CSo

Pose the question to Prostate Cancer survivors.

moi621 (imported) wrote: Mon Nov 26, 2012 11:16 am Pose the question to Prostate Cancer survivors.

You know, one thing I hate is the way medical intervention interferes with the quality of the final years. I have two coworkers with family going through chemotherapy and from what I hear I'm not sure I would choose it. The choice of surviving is really surviving in horrible circumstance of pain, nausea, wasting, being a burden on the family, etc. and the management of the pain and nausea means you're drugged up constantly.

I think we often fall into a mode of increasingly invasive medicine until we linger in a drug addled state, tied to tubes, trapped in a hospital. I can barely stand visiting a hospital, not sure I want to spend my final days there.

If there is a good chance of just cutting the cancer out, if go for that, but a soon as I knew it was extensive I think you might a well just let it run it's natural course.

So to the initial question, if castration meant living with frail bones, lack of energy, lack of sense of masculinity, becoming physically less fit, I'd rather not have those extra years.

Be careful what you wish for.

But, no, the need to be a eunuch for me has nothing to do with longevity.

It is all about an overwhelming necessity to be void of sex drive and ability as I have never had any need for it, and thus have craved being rid of it.

Please be careful interpreting these results, there could be an important bias !

The 80 eunuchs from the Chosun Dynasty made a distinct population that did not participate on the daily things intact males had to do.

They ware/are also less aggressive and so they had less chance to die during violent encounters.

Whilst I'm not sure one could extrapolate this results towards present times, a big caveat, should be made.

As stated before:

Once castrated one is sure to have to deal with osteoporosis, fatigue, depression, possible obesity ...

One may live longer, but this is still to be proven with more hard evidence than some historical data.

Take care,

Vesal.

My life was spinning out of control so castration did lengthen my life. My behaviors were self destructive due to emotional pain from destructive people. Who knows if castration will lengthen my life but it has increased the quality of life I have left.

I agree with SplitDik that quantity of life without quality is not worth having. I am at a point where they, the medical profession, is all too happy to find cures before they have found a problem. I am keeping my eyes wide open and paying close attention to what my body tells me. I have known more people who died from chemotherapy than from the cancer they were fighting.

SplitDik (imported) wrote: Mon Nov 26, 2012 11:38 am You know, one thing I hate is the way medical intervention interferes with the quality of the final years. I have two coworkers with family going through chemotherapy and from what I hear I'm not sure I would choose it. The choice of surviving is really surviving in horrible circumstance of pain, nausea, wasting, being a burden on the family, etc. and the management of the pain and nausea means you're drugged up constantly.

I think we often fall into a mode of increasingly invasive medicine until we linger in a drug addled state, tied to tubes, trapped in a hospital. I can barely stand visiting a hospital, not sure I want to spend my final days there.

If there is a good chance of just cutting the cancer out, if go for that, but a soon as I knew it was extensive I think you might a well just let it run it's natural course.

So to the initial question, if castration meant living with frail bones, lack of energy, lack of sense of masculinity, becoming physically less fit, I'd rather not have those extra years.

I agree 100%. It's quality of life not quantity of life that matters. Did you think you were going to live 10,000 years?

Assisted suicide is legal in Oregon. If it came down to choosing chemo, with a dubious outlook if I took it, and I was in pain, I would choose to end it all on my terms. Death comes to us all, and in the long run, it's not going to matter whether it's next week or 20 years from now. Death is inevitable. Why fear what one can't avoid?

Right now, the good far outweighs the bad. When it doesn't, I'll think about checking out. If able, when the end approaches, I'll leave explicit instructions to make no heroic efforts to keep me alive a few more days. It's a waste of money, and it only tortures the one that will surely die anyway.

Hi all im a paramedic here in the UK and I have to say people are loosing their life younger and younger so all I can say is live it to the max every day as tomorrow may never come. I love being a eunuch but that's because it makes me happy to day and that's what maters, yes like us all it would be great to live longer and I hope all my friends on here do but one things for sure most of us wanted to be eunuchs and I know we are all happy now and free of our torments and stresses:)

Just read whats below its so true.

Thanks

Assuming that I was mentally healthy, I would like to live longer, as a eunuch. My children were born in my late 30s and early 40s and I would like to be around for the future grand kids' sake. My grandparents died too early to fully appreciate and learn from them.

My purpose in being castrated was to improve my chances of living long enough for my wife's and my daughter to finish college; I had, using biological pattern recognition, come to the view that I was a member of a family in which a very pernicious form of cancer was problematic, and I concluded, from a theoretical biology view, that testosterone was unacceptably likely to prevent my lasting long enough to be around when my wife's and my daughter finished college.

My brother died of such cancer before either of his, and his wife's, children finished college.

I did the biological pattern recognition and the theoretical biology astonishingly accurately, in retrospect. Of course, there is that sneaky hindsight bias, that makes people who do not recognize that form of bias think that the a-priori probability of an event is higher than it was if the event happens; I am very resistant to hindsight bias.

Meanwhile, once the cancer risk became high enough in my mind, the fact that I am conveniently transgendered made the orchiectomy far more welcome than I imagine it would ever be for a thoroughly macho male.

The average age of death from familial adenomatous polyposis, the main cancer genetic condition in my family, is 42 years. Thanks to castration and/or colon removal and other surgeries, I am thriving at age 73, and a fair share of my grade school age cohorts have died of old age while I find I am yet decently young.

Of course, I have to allow that I am so delusional that I am incapable of understanding how delusional I am!

I did get castrated so I could live longer.

So, to answer the question, "Would I get castrated so I could live longer?"

No, its too late for me to get castrated. It only works once, absent HRT...

So wie so.

I think your final question is the most important here. I have always suspected that most of any health benefits of castration that may exist (including the extended lifespan) apply mostly to eunuchs who were castrated before puberty. My thought is that once the body becomes dependent on sex hormones, depriving the body of those hormones can only negatively impact health.

Looking at this issue from a different perspective, one might want to consider the difference between low T and no T. Many studies out there indicate that men with low testosterone have a greater risk of various health problems. However, my guess is that most of the men in these studies had levels of T that were below normal but still well above that of a typical eunuch. Could it be that low T (but still above what a eunuch would have) increases health problems but no T (or the very little a eunuch would have) offers health protections? Might the body of an individual with low T still rely on T to maintain health, but the body of someone with no T find other means to stay healthy?

i'm more concerned about beingcastrated so that i might live eternally (since i believe that if i don't overcome my lust i'll be going straight to hell). Because it led me into THE most depraved situations imaginable i'm not so concerned with living a long time in this world though. To begin with, lust was such incredible fun. But then it got out of control, and it literally became my constant torment and nightmare. To me, the problem and battle going on in me is sex Vs love. i chose sex for years, and lost my heart along the way. i just became a heartless loveless bastard who only cared about pleasure. But nowi know that i'm NOTHING without love, so now i want to kill my love's greatest enemy, which islust. Imagine being able to love people without a sexual motive! Wow, that would be so cool. i wish i could look a woman rightin the eyes and love her soul, like Jesus to a child, instead of just drooling over her flesh and wanting to just pounce on her and ravish her. "when I became a man, I put away childish things". And it's high time i grew up, and put away the childish toys like porn, and start treating women right. The depraved sexual things i've done, and all the porn, has left my soul feeling so dirty and empty. A sort of spiritual bankruptcy. Lost my heart, lost my soul, lost my love, lost THE thing itself! i feel like pig really, thats spent its whole life rolling around in filth. But though i began the race of life so badly, worthy of many 'booo!'s, it's not too late to finish this race strong.

Yes, I am finished breeding and living longer would is a wonderful side effect I did not know about (I only wish it was true for real and there were more recent studies than the 14th century.)