(As regular readers know, my endocrine system is shot to heck, inspiring me to various musings on things hormonal.)
Why is it you cannot swallow hormones like testosterone or insulin (and have them have any effect), but you can take thyroid hormone orally? By definition, I think, hormones are proteins. If you were to swallow insulin, nothing much would happen. Yet every day, I pop a couple of micrograms of thyroid hormone.
How does that work?
A kind of oral testosterone does exist, available in europe (not in the usa) under the names Andriol or Pantestone, as far as I know this is the only kind of safe oral testosterone, safe for the liver I mean. (I had been taking it for close to three years, two times a day each day.)
Testosterone can indeed be swallowed. There are many forms of anabolics that are orally ingested but AFAIK the hardcore body builders tend to eschew them as they are very hard on the liver. Birth control pills are also orally ingested hormones.
Intramusclar injections of testoserone-based anabolics are safer, spread through the body better and are dispersed over time. Orals, such as anavar, anadrol, dianobol are going to take a toll on the liver. It comes down to working versus working better.
Well, first you need to double check your assumption that hormones are proteins. Some hormones are proteins, like insulin, HGH, etc. but others are steroids or based off of cholesterol. Although your body and degestive enzymes can easily degrade proteins, it has to endocytose and then put into a lysosome cholesterol to break it down. In other words, steroid hormones like testosterone or estrogen (part of the constituents of BC pills) are difficult for your body to break down and are absorbed through your digestive tract.
Here are some structures:
Testosterone, estradiol, etc, derived from cholesterol.
Insulin- protein:
http://arbl.cvmbs.colostate.edu/hbooks/pathphys/endocrine/pancreas/insulin2_6.gif
There exist hormone replacement pills for women who have had ovaries removed, that contain not only estrogen but a tidbit of testosterone. They are taken orally.
Upon further reflection, testosterone pills are widely used here. I think they are dangerous, and so prefer to jab myself with needles. (Also of course we have the testosterone patches. I think they are too expensive.)
Silly me.
What you really need is a nice car, some girly-posters on the office walls, or a high powered rifle or three.
Why?
It’s biology and hardware, not psychology and software.
Jokes, jokes.