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Men's average testosterone levels have halved in last 50 years

45 pointsby samizdistoday at 8:36 PM38 commentsview on HN

Comments

janalsncmtoday at 10:15 PM

Before the reactions to the headline get too out of hand, the article says the study couldn’t rule out that obesity and diabetes might drive this change. Occam’s Razor leads me to lean on this more than any other exotic explanation.

Of course, PFAS and microplastics aren’t great for sperm health, but neither were leaded gasoline and DDT before they were curtailed.

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idleplanttoday at 8:49 PM

> Obesity was also not controlled for, which is known to be strongly correlated with low testosterone.

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BoggleOhYeahtoday at 10:17 PM

I don’t understand why obesity seemingly gets tossed aside when this subject comes up.

It’s the one problem you can see in plain sight at any gathering of people.

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littlexsparkeetoday at 10:12 PM

High cortisol lowers testosterone - some adaptogens like ashwagandha modulate the HPA axis and lower cortisol release, increasing T levels

OldSchooltoday at 10:01 PM

I'm old, but I get this subjective read: of my friends and even family who had sons, they seemed smaller and less bold than we were 50 years ago.

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xvxvxtoday at 9:05 PM

“The solution that’s being promoted is that we give you testosterone,” he said. “But if you give a man testosterone, you switch off his sperm production. I’ve seen that in the clinic.”

Interesting…

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mellosoulstoday at 10:04 PM

Can't help wondering to what extent the decline is directly and/or indirectly influenced by both the positive changes (eg increased women's rights and power) and the negative (presumption of masculine "toxicity" and fallibility) in socio-culture over the period surveyed.

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ThinkingGuytoday at 10:02 PM

Could this be a possible factor in the reduction in violent crime (at least in some countries)?

aucisson_masquetoday at 10:05 PM

America found the solution, put everyone on enhanced TRT and cash a shit load of bucks in the process :)

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 ?

bolangitoday at 9:59 PM

Sperm counts, too, have dropped precipitously.

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thot_experimenttoday at 10:16 PM

Half way to utopia.

jmclnxtoday at 10:16 PM

I wonder how this correlates to Prostate Cancer. From what I heard, high testosterone can be one of the causes of Prostate Cancer. But that is over a long time.

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.

standardUsertoday at 10:10 PM

“Obesity and diabetes could easily account for all of this,”

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.

pembrooktoday at 10:07 PM

I'm playing with fire going against the narrative, but I'll just say this:

You should be highly skeptical of any claims of drastic variance in human biology over short time periods.

DANmodetoday at 9:24 PM

Endocrine disrupting compounds.

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greekrich92today at 10:09 PM

It's just our shitty food system and sedentary lifestyle but everyone is projecting their weird hangups on it

aaron695today at 9:19 PM

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