This is a lazy post. You can easily find papers on this in google scholar.
See e.g. doi: 10.1210/jc.2006-1375
“A Population-Level Decline in Serum Testosterone Levels in American Men”
There has also been a large decline in sperm counts. The declines seem to have started about mid C20.
At one point, sceptics were quite vocal in their view this was not real but they have gone quiet of late e.g. Professor David Handelsman.
It is interesting that because “normal” levels are based on population samples, the normal levels have been reduced in some places as a result. Levels considered normal now would have been considered seriously low not too long ago.
There is little or no interest in finding out why this is happening. Theories abound.
Estrogen mimics in foods (soy. industrial milk, grains and grain and soy based oils), pesticides, water supplies (excreted estrogen from women taking birth control). My own suspicion is that it is due to a combination of factors
Note in this space be aware that many of the studies have been industry funded and seemingly rigged to produce a desired outcome that product X “has no [statistically] significant effect.” Which result is not surprising given that the study was seemingly made so small and of such a short duration that only a huge effect would give the magic p<0.05.
You will run across many orders of magnitude more plastic lechate, pesticide, and herbicide than you will of pharmaceutical estrogens unless you are taking them. They don’t even double the quantity excreted by women taking them as contraceptives, so the main exposure route is barely affected.
For the record, it wasn’t my intention to antagonize anybody with my tongue-in-cheek phrasing. Nostalgic macho cowboys have feelings too =)
From Waveman’s article:
These findings indicate that the past 20 yr have seen substantial age-independent decreases in male serum T concentrations, decreases that do not appear to be the consequence of the contemporaneous trends in health and lifestyle considered here. It remains unclear to what these apparent population-level decreases in T are attributable.
This is a lazy post. You can easily find papers on this in google scholar.
See e.g. doi: 10.1210/jc.2006-1375
“A Population-Level Decline in Serum Testosterone Levels in American Men”
There has also been a large decline in sperm counts. The declines seem to have started about mid C20.
At one point, sceptics were quite vocal in their view this was not real but they have gone quiet of late e.g. Professor David Handelsman.
It is interesting that because “normal” levels are based on population samples, the normal levels have been reduced in some places as a result. Levels considered normal now would have been considered seriously low not too long ago.
There is little or no interest in finding out why this is happening. Theories abound.
Estrogen mimics in foods (soy. industrial milk, grains and grain and soy based oils), pesticides, water supplies (excreted estrogen from women taking birth control). My own suspicion is that it is due to a combination of factors
Note in this space be aware that many of the studies have been industry funded and seemingly rigged to produce a desired outcome that product X “has no [statistically] significant effect.” Which result is not surprising given that the study was seemingly made so small and of such a short duration that only a huge effect would give the magic p<0.05.
I STRONGLY suspect it has a lot to do with xenoestrogen and endocrine disruption effects from plastic and rampant pesticide/herbicide use.
Retracted
You will run across many orders of magnitude more plastic lechate, pesticide, and herbicide than you will of pharmaceutical estrogens unless you are taking them. They don’t even double the quantity excreted by women taking them as contraceptives, so the main exposure route is barely affected.
Thank you Waveman.
For the record, it wasn’t my intention to antagonize anybody with my tongue-in-cheek phrasing. Nostalgic macho cowboys have feelings too =)
From Waveman’s article:
Isn’t the current consensus that fitoestrogens from soy and grain do not affect male fertility or testosterone level?