Men's average testosterone levels have halved in last 50 years
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Of course, PFAS and microplastics aren’t great for sperm health, but neither were leaded gasoline and DDT before they were curtailed.
Random aside: is there a correlation between GLP-1 and vaccine acceptance? As in, given enough time, would one expect to see an obese, diseased, low-T population concentrating in on itself?
I'm an obese american (lost 10% of my body weight in the last 7 months, so almost not obese anymore) who is 30+, but my testosterone has measured between 850 and 1400 in the last 7 months.
That probably helped with my weight loss, but I have a full head of hair still and am somewhat likely to keep it.
We'll likely spend longer measuring what the hormonal effects of PFAs and microplastics are than we'll have pfas and microplastics to deal with.
[1]https://www.cremieux.xyz/p/why-are-testosterone-levels-risin...
Fat directly converts testosterone to Estrogen via a process called aromatization.
Personally my Testosterone close to doubled when going from 25% bodyfat to 13%. I get blood tests regularly and can see the levels fluctuate pretty closely with fat levels
It’s the one problem you can see in plain sight at any gathering of people.
It’s like we need something more interesting than “people sit too much and eat too much”.
Option one: obesity and weight problems. Statistically 77% of your audience is either overweight or obese because 77% of Americans are either overweight or obese.
Option two: feminism, microplastics, anime, or literally any other thing than option one.
Poor headline writing around obesity is no excuse for deflective headline writing away from obesity!
Or if you prefer a different market’s take: “Corrupted food is feminizing men” and then diving into how Big Ag has a secret agenda to poison men everywhere and both political parties are in on it, as a way to introduce the issues of artificial sweeteners (HFCS, splenda, monkfruit, and others) would be stunningly effective. Yeah, it’s kinda exploitative, but when in Rome applies when it comes to public health messaging, and I’d rather that market learned to direct some of their rage at the corporations that deserve it while giving them a chance to decide for the better.
Point being, there’s no excuse for avoiding obesity in headlines if you want to write clickbait for an audience. And with #3 above, especially if you set “Thanks, obesity!” as the Subtitle that only shows up when you visit the page, as Vox and others do, then you can maximize clicks far better than either option #1 or #2 would.
Interesting…
After a series of tests, it was determined that my Testostrone levels well below normal.
My urologist prescribed HCG after I insisted that I wanted to have children someday. It has been a life changer and the best part is that my sperm count has doubled.
Unfortunately, HCG Mono will not treat all forms of Hypogonadism, some patients have to take Testosterone Cypionate which comes with serious side effects like hair loss, infertility, etc
HCG also shares some of those side effects but it saves your fertility and prevents Testicular atrophy.. Also it doesn't shut down your natural production albeit it does suppress LH receptors by default..
My point is this: if you suspect having Testostrone issues, don't randomly inject yourself with hormones.. go see a urologist and get a serious treatment.
One class of doctors thinks roughly 250 is enough for a middle aged guy - anything over shouldn’t be medically treated. Of course, the “men’s clinics” don’t rest until it’s over 1000...
With the standard range so wide (even after age adjustment), why isn’t it measured annually, like the CBC and others?
Sure, it’s easy to point at obesity, but statistical ranges completely fail the individual.
The two sigma range is something like 300-900 with std being 150 and median 600. This is for what is labeled as healthy 18-39 men. It doesn't include obese men.
If you want to take something away from it, just get yourself measured a few times over a few years. Then later if you have issues that relate to low T or whatever you can flag it with your doctor. In my case, it was super important because I found out I am in the top 0.01% of (healthy) total T producers. If I had "low T" type symptoms and went to my doctor without that information - they'd be like, "no, your T is amazing actually."
Everyone has a different baseline. I only wish I started measuring before I was in my mid-30s because I feel my levels before were even more ridiculous.
Also, the reference range is defined by an age span that is too wide to be useful, something like 21-59. The reference range is completely meaningless for a 25 year old man. Also the level varies drastically throughout days and weeks, so that one test is not a useful indicator of anything unless it's off the charts.
Basically, if you have low-T symptoms you should probably just get on T regardless of what number the test says. Find a doctor who agrees.
some of it might also be social media (fear of public embarrassment) but one thing its definitely not is any kind of large scale hormonal change. culture beats biology almost every time when it comes to social behavior and there is no evidence that its different in this case.
Lead Paint elimination started in the Early 70s IIRC, so the same time period :)
This study has more to say in comparing adult men today to their grandfathers.
So if levels are falling, is prostate cancer lowering a little bit ? But that will be hard to determine due to the advancement of Medical Treatment over the past 50 years.
> Rising levels of obesity and diabetes
Plastic Bottles also replaced glass starting in the early 70s too. I remember reading some type of plastic can leak estrogen into the food. So seems a lot of things happened of the past 50/60 years that will impact ones health negatively.
There's a larger proportion of older males in the population now than there has been in most of history. Testosterone decreases as we age. The average is across _all_ males, even those outside of reproductive years. I assume if we controlled for outliers, that the results would be fairly comparable across time.
Wither Ozempic? I've seen several friends and family members use it to great effect and thought it might sweep the nation. But I imagine most of the same barriers that keep people from eating better or moving more are also in play when trying to engage with any new habit.
the industrial revolution has been a disaster for the human race.
You should be highly skeptical of any claims of drastic variance in human biology over short time periods.
I wonder if men nowadays don't move around or lift things as much.
Others are trying to regulate pesticide, junk food (obesity, diabete). For instance nutriscore in Europe, also the recent change on pesticide allowed.
I'm not sure it will be enough, but at least they are attacking to the root cause. You're not just adding even more problem, like the increased cardiovascular event or erectile dysfunction with overdosed TRT.
Same for the semaglutides that everyone and their mother take in the usa, people wouldn't need them so much if they didn't eat absolute crap all the time.
We know that semaglutides have also side effects, and that rebound happen when you stop, but I guess it's better than just fixing the food lobby ?
Endocrine function can still be normal despite obesity. There are plenty of fat guys with solid testosterone levels because they work with their hands all day.
I'm not saying that's all there is to health, far from it, but what kind of bubble does one have to live in to not see this counterexample? Do we just casually ignore them because they fit undesirable stereotypes of "toxic masculinity" or what? You don't have to become that guy just to lift weights.
I'm fairly sure _vastly_ more people lift weights today than in the 70s. At that point it was, well, not niche exactly, but you didn't have anything _remotely_ like the number of gyms around. Can't offhand find figures for back to then, but apparently it's up ~60% in just the last two decades.
You're looking for an answer via a really poor proxy. Lifting weight is lifting weight. Gyms are more popular because of the lack of sensible alternatives for a comprehensive workout. Any data you find about them will also be biased towards the recent decades of office work and working from home. Is there any way to tell if gyms are even picking up the slack? My guess would be overall exercise is down, even for those who go to the gym regularly.