> Low exposure to gonadal hormones during early gestation and infancy predicts higher recalled childhood gender nonconformity in men, according to new research published in Psychological Science. The findings provide evidence androgens such as testosterone play a role in the development of male-typical gender role behaviors in childhood.
I know someone with a theory that the rise of "the pill" is a factor in male-typical gender role behaviors. Essentially, the pill is only 91% effective over a year in practice, the mother doesn't know she's pregnant, continues taking estrogen pills during the first trimester, and this impacts the development of the fetus. In the US, it wasn't really widely available to around 1970, so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality.
No idea if it's true, but the timeline and mechanism of action seem plausible. The rise of the pill also happened around a time of greater LGBT awareness, so overall awareness is also a factor.
You have to take "rates of homosexuality" with a huge amount of skepticism considering it was often illegal until recently and could even get you killed. You have to assume any data from the 70s or earlier is severely under-reported. Any research into the subject was also taboo, frowned upon, or even actively discouraged, or outright disallowed.
> so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of homosexuality
... but isn't it really hard to distinguish _actual_ rates of homosexuality from visible homosexuality? As public acceptance for LGBT people has increased, more people can feel safe coming out or identifying as gay.
Further, if the pill became widely available around 1970, and if this were an impactful factor, wouldn't you expect to see the corresponding change beginning in at least the mid 80s, as those kids grow up?
LGBT rates among zoomers is shockingly high to me. 20%, double that of millenials. Millenials are double that of Gen X. I tend to believe there’s a genuine biological phenomenon going on here. The next generation should be just starting to establish their sexual orientations. The data should be interesting…
> LGBT rates among zoomers is shockingly high to me. 20%, double that of millenials
I would argue that double of zoomers are more comfortable assuming they are homosexuals, or even, zoomers are less afraid to explore and discover their sexuality instead of "I'm not doing X because I'm obviously not gay, I'm macho" kinda of thinking, and are happier for that.
I'm not saying nothing genuinely biological is happening, and it's totally plausible, but I am saying one has to be careful about the available evidence and how it's interpreted.
The only thing we can really measure is what people say about themselves, often in a poll/survey/study context. More people are identifying as LGBT in the younger generations. We have no way of knowing how many people in each generation are some form of closeted. But people's increased rates of _identifying_ as LGBT have occurred in an environment where both cultural and chemical/biological factors have shifted. How could you disentangle their effects?
I think there's a risk when making claims about anything that has stigma attached to it. How prevalent has sexual assault been, over time? How many kids are raised with corporal punishment? If you expect that both their prevalence, and the willingness of people to report or talk about it changes over time, how could you know when rates go up or down?
Pick a Bayesian prior and roll with it. 20% of Gen Z is identifying as LGBT. Seems high to me. If we see another doubling for the next generation then something would seem to be obviously different. One doesn’t need to disentangle the effects per se
Yeah, mostly rich older dudes fucking young boys. Greece was not some idyllic free love society. It was just that being a top was super manly and being a bottom was not. You didn’t have wealthy men in openly gay equal relationships with other men.
> According to Plutarch, the 300 hand-picked men were chosen by Gorgidas purely for ability and merit, regardless of social class.[18] It was composed of 150 male couples,[15] each pair consisting of an older erastês (ἐραστής, "lover") and a younger erômenos (ἐρώμενος, "beloved").
Older dudes with their designated younger bottoms.
> During Plato's time there were some people who were of the opinion that homosexual sex was shameful in any circumstances. Indeed, Plato himself eventually came to hold this view. At one time he had written that same-sex lovers were far more blessed than ordinary mortals. He even gave them a headstart in the great race to get back to heaven, their mutual love refeathering their mottled wings. Later he seemed to contradict himself. In his ideal city, he says in his last, posthumously published work known as The Laws, homosexual sex will be treated the same way as incest. It is something contrary to nature, he insists, calling it "utterly unholy, odious-to-the-gods and ugliest of ugly things".[31]
The pill is probably responsible for a bunch of crap at the societal level just like any other group of hormone changing medications taken by such a wide chunk of the population would be. But it probably has little to do with homosexuality since we have good historical record of prevalence varying inversely with persecution.
Oh, I've wondered about the societal effects of birth control pills for a couple of decades. Stuff like the above theory, effects on difficulty conceiving when women get off of it finally.
Talk to a doctor sometime about the volume of 30+ year old women who are on some type of daily anxiety medication. My understanding is that it's approaching 50% or higher.
Was that level of anxiety among women common before birth control?
IMO there are a whole lot of questions that come from it.
There’s certainly plausible reason to wonder about it. Consider how many women take it, for many many years. Many women go through multiple different types of pills due to the effects certain pills will have on their body, from weight gain to period frequency.
You do that for 5, 10, 15…20 years…it’s reasonable to wonder what it will do longer term.
At the same time, as you age and have older friend groups it’s hard not to notice a correlation between the friends you have who never took birth control or minimally took it who also have no anxiety issues and those that don’t.
Maybe it could be something else but IMO it warrants further study.
It seems plausible. During the first section of this talk on transgender medical care Dr. Will Powers touches on exactly what you're talking about except in his example it was a highly potent estrogen prescribed to mothers who had had miscarriages to take during pregnancy.
That, and guys tend to medicate their hormones too these days (finasteride). Yes, DHT is "just" a parallel path -- but when is biology ever that cut and dry, especially when there's so much money to be made?
Does anyone actually start taking finasteride before the emergence of sexuality, though? As far as I'm aware, treatment is usually initiated at age 21 or later. In that case, changes in sexuality should be very hard to miss, and we'd know by now.
Yeah, it's after puberty -- but are you so sure it would be hard to miss? Small effects with lots of confounding variables and an enormous profit incentive to miss seem easy to miss.
In order to do due diligence for this reply, I typed "finasteride" into Google Scholar, and the first suggestion was "finasteride side effects", which brings up 20,500 results, including highly cited papers dealing specifically with sexual side effects:
As I once read, the contraceptive is not eliminated by the body, so it
gets washed out by the kidneys and ends up via sewers in water
everywhere. No idea how long-lived it is though. I guess it would
break down naturally?
That might also fit with the fact that the youngest is usually the homosexual one. Mom started taking the pill to prevent anymore kids, but one slipped through.
So, I know this is anecdotal, but I've seen a number of my friends (mostly male engineers) have kids later in life (35+), and a higher-than-I-would-expect number of those kids have developmental problems. Some act out more violently than you'd expect from a little kid, some just have ADHD-seeming issues, and some are just not progressing at the "expected" rate.
Is this a real thing? Anyone else notice it? I'm not even sure how to google it.
> higher-than-I-would-expect number of those kids have developmental problems
My experience is that when you start talking to parents, you'll find that there are very few kids who don't have some kind of "problem".
My friend group has a bunch of parents who had kids in their 20ies, and I don't know of a single kid that doesn't have some kind of "issue".
Also, from talking to a friend who is a therapist for children, she says that with a lot of children in therapy she thinks that it would be better if the parents went to therapy rather than the kids.
Well yes having kids is a daily trigger for all kinds of childhood trauma. Even with good parents and a caring environment, growing up comes with so many painful, traumatic events, we learn to cope, to live with them, but kids make all of it surface, it can be overwhelming...
I'd advise any parent who has a first kid and is feeling all kinds of overwhelming or surprising things, to go and first get desensitised a bit, and then do the work...
The age of a man when conception occurred is a known (and not new) factor in determining the health of a child. Sperm from old men (after 30) starts to introduce all sorts of risks such as Aspergers and autoimmune diseases.
In fact the age of the father is one of the only variables that have been shown to correlate with the prevalence of Asperger in children.
It's 100% anecdotal, but I know a huge number of guys who have been divorced and have had perfectly healthy children in their 40s.
I'm sure there are studies to back it all up that it's super bad to have kids in 30s/40s but damn, a lot of people I know had parent in their 30s and they seem ok?
Edit: Actually I'd almost say that I'm envious by how well these older fathers children turn out. They just seem to be more chill, the kids sleep better, the parents generally have more money to deal with problems, they have more time for the children.
I think it is that parents are expecting perfect kids like these are normalized product you can buy from factory. They are panicking when their kids deviate from their perceived norms, and seek medication to fix the "problem".
ADHD, hyperactivity etc were non problems 40 years ago and got no treatment.
> ADHD, hyperactivity etc were non problems 40 years ago and got no treatment.
Lack of ADHD and hyperactivity being notable problems had more to do with the lack of medical study and treatment rather than the lack of cases. 40 years ago, physical abuse was still the norm and people believed you could punish bad behaviors out of a kid. Going even further back any boy thought to be "deviant" or "troubled" would be sent to mental institutions or bootcamps.
Dr. Campbell-McBride, "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" is worth a read.
You're not wrong in noticing that something is wrong. No doubt folks will come out of the woodwork yelling "anec-data!". Trust your gut and keep looking.
I think it's very difficult to know just from observation if there are more issues today. For one, it wasn't that long ago that many cities had ordinances that actually banned disabled people from being out in public. And things like autism were not diagnosed.
Well as a parent of one such kid, seems like it may be real thing. On other hand I see similar age friends' kids and they look fine. Also since I am dealing with physical disabilities so its more obvious from outside.
I heard (someone can correct me if I'm wrong) as the ages of both partners grows the risk of developmental issues in their potential offspring rises. With it being less likely to occur when peoplw have children younger (20s).
This euronews site is really weird. Majority owned by an advisor and friend of far right Orban. Pushing the same kind of anti-male conspiracy stuff as Tucker Carlson. Weird history of stories submitted for the domain.
"Any site attempting to measure the highly subjective issue of bias should be taken with a grain of salt, if not a heaping tablespoon. That appears to be the case with the popular Media Bias / FactCheck web site. The well-respected nonprofit journalism organizations Poynter Institute and the Columbia Journalism Review have raised questions about the site, its research credentials and owner Dave Van Zandt.
Most troubling is its lack of serious research methods or credentials. Owner and editor Van Zandt is a self-described “armchair media analyst. Van Zandt said in a response (below) that he has worked in a research-related capacity in the healthcare industry.
Media Bias / Fact Check's rankings are based on a scale that Van Zandt developed on his own; the research and reporting are done by volunteers. Use it at your own risk."
I wonder if lower sex drive is also caused by this sort of thing?
I'll admit, I don't think I've ever had a normal sex drive. My partner is very frustrated by this at times. Its not an attraction thing, I don't know the "why" per se here. I'd be interested to know if these things are correlated. I'd also be open to hearing about how to reverse it. (I'm 30 years old, supposedly I should be not this)
Speaking in aggregates, there have also been reports[0] of this happening across the world, including pre-pandemic[1]
Some people have this idea that they have to be "in the mood" to have sex, but like many other activities sometimes you start doing something and you find that after a few minutes you begin to enjoy yourself. If you physically can't that's another problem, but for some this can be solved by setting a reminder to initiate sex from time to time. Really as a couple you should set aside some time to be physically intimate (not necessarily have sex) with each other on a regular basis, if you did that you may find the problem sort of solves itself.
I think this is a big part. For spontaneous sex you need to have leisure time, together, where you can expect privacy, and you're not super tired. A lot of people don't have that.
Yeah completely agree. I’m not fantasizing about someone I’ve been with for 10 years. My wife and I just make time every week and once you start it’s a good time.
Have your testosterone levels checked. If they are low get on TRT. Massive quality of life improvement. Higher sex drive, more focus, more energy, etc.
"My partner is very frustrated by this at times" Respectfully this should be an alarm bell. Sex is an important driver in most relationships and if your partner is upset you should be actively working with your Dr. to root cause the issue.
This blanket advice is a bit dangerous. Once on a test cruise for longer than a couple months, it's a lifelong commitment. Low testosterone has a LOT of input variables. You need to know your cortisol, your LH, your FSH, your E2 and SHBG, your TSH, and T3/T4 levels as well.
Some men can be fixed with stress reduction methods, some can be fixed with interventions that increase gonadotropins, like clomiphene or HCG. Sometimes you need to inhibit aromatization into estradiol. Sometimes you just need to lift heavy weights.
Check all your hormones, because your HPTA is not a one-variable function. Then decide on a course of action.
Hitting up Big Mike in the locker room for 500mg test cyp because your testosterone is low is a bit premature.
"This blanket advice is a bit dangerous." Its a message board friend, I advised him to get his levels checked by a Dr. Doctor is not going to prescribe TRT based on my post. No one mentioned (except you) breaking the law and purchasing steroids from a black market dealer. The word dangerous is a bit of a stretch here.
Elsewhere on this thread you said you generally agreed with someone who said the medical consensus on healthy TRT levels was wrong and someone should shop around for a doctor with alternative views.
If the medical consensus is not wrong your "general agreement" about shopping doctors is probably at least a little risky.
In particular, get both free testosterone and total testosterone levels checked. Some doctors only order total testosterone. It's possible to be symptomatic because you're low on the free stuff even though your total testosterone concentration is fine.
Sorry. not quite sure what you are asking if I took a DHEA-S test or checked my Estradiol levels? Estrogen levels were high, currently taking 1mg of Anastrozole weekly for that.
Also consider Diindolylmethane (DIM) and Calcium D-Glucarate (CDG). Vigorous Steve (what a name) talks about these some on his YouTube channel.
Both are used to manage estrogens for those who run steroid stacks. They are likely useful for managing estrogens for normal folks too. Ask your endocrinologist, obviously.
TRT has its disadvantages, such as (1) you have to take it for the rest of your life, and (2) a higher risk of certain cancers. It sounds a bit scary, to be honest.
The "high-performance" doctors (for athletes/businessmen) I've seen tend to be very pro TRT. If you're low T, TRT will increase your energy, confidence, sex drive, serenity, and quality of life; and it'll also very significantly decrease your risk of heart disease and heart attacks even in old age. Even looking at the pure cost-benefit of TRT (without even considering whether it'll help GP's sex life) it's an easy decision to make.
Low testosterone is vastly underdiagnosed. Some tests define 240 ng/dL as normal testosterones levels for a 19 year old man. That's low even for a 70 year old. No man alive will even function at their real cognitive capacity at such low levels (brain fog is a low T symptom). Obviously, in a medical system that defines 240-300ng/dL Test as normal, TRT won't be the mainstream treatment. Its "controversialness" is completely unearned.
I am not going to argue on the pros/cons of TRT on life quality but this submission specifically describes lower sperm count in the general population.
Theoretically TRT would actually make a patient's sperm count worse.
sure, there are tradeoffs to everything. Your points are valid, but so is the view point of OP potentially losing his partner for the rest of their life if sex is that important to them. TRT can provide many other benefits as well both physical and mental. Increased cancer risk is probably greatly reduced just by eating a proper diet and being physically active which being on TRT may motivate. As for taking it the rest of your life, its not a big deal, you can pin yourself once a week or get a pellet implanted that has to be replaced every 4 months. I just inject myself once a week, takes less than 5 minutes all in. My mental health & focus has vastly improved and i have more energy to actually play with my kids after work. My Dr. also monitors my blood work every 8 weeks and just due to this, my liver function is healthy after having elevated levels due to fatty liver for the last 15 years.
If you're living sedentary and overweight/obese, I'd start with changing that to a more active lifestyle and maintaining a normal BMI. When I live more like a savage my sex drive tends to follow suit.
I actually experienced the complete opposite. When I was sedentary and overweight sex was probably the number one thing on my mind most of the time. After I fixed my diet, lost the weight and started a regular exercise regime my libido dropped like crazy. These days I generally don't think about sex at all.
Yikes, that's very much not consistent with my experience.
But I will admit that it's still much different in my 40s from say my late teens/early 20s. No amount of savagery in my mid-40s is going to make me the hornball that is my 19 year old self. That would probably require TRT.
Does that have any relationship to pornography usage? Porn usage affects those feelings but can negatively affect actual sexual performance, especially in monogamous relationships.
If by "fixing diet" you mean cutting out sugars/carbs or being in heavy deficit thats no wonder your libido plummeted. You could also be out of some micronutrients. You could be overtraining or you were into new lifestyle so much you werent bothering about females at all.
That depends, because a person can over do exercise and be drained, have a lot of demands on their time, or be in a high stress situation.
By contrast, someone who is living a more sedentary life could possibly have more time and less stress, thus possibly be more focused on greater sexual frequency. Their abilities, socio-economic status, or access to women are other factors.
Regularly being sweaty/dirty/exhausted from exertion and general outdoor shenanigans is probably a reasonable general description of my mental image.
But you can get a chunk of that just hitting the gym. Personally I find actually being out in nature and getting dirty while doing strenuous shit makes a difference WRT my vitality and vigor. An air-conditioned gym is still a largely sterile, low-risk comfort trap.
I am in a similar boat as you. I am one of the last DES babies and I don't know if I have ever had a normal sex drive; being flooded with estrogens in utero might just do that. I have always been able to stop on a dime, wasn't very motivated by sex, apparently come off somewhere in the "aloof to gay" spectrum to women because I don't have the reflexive "look a woman up and down" habit. Sperm count at eighteen was ... miserable and sad.
Due to another health issue, it will be complex to treat and I've considered Clomid versus just straight shots. And frankly, I am a little scared of what a normal sex drive would be like.
> Diethylstilbestrol (DES) is a synthetic form of the female hormone estrogen. It was prescribed to pregnant women between 1940 and 1971 to prevent miscarriage, premature labor, and related complications of pregnancy
What I understand is in the 1950's there was a theory that women would miscarry because of a lack of estrogen. So women who had had miscarriages would be given DES when pregnant. By the 1960's I think there was a realization that a) didn't work. b) miscarriages are often due to issues with the fetus. c) Common.
So use was stopped 50 years ago. And mostly stopped 10 years before that. Was a commonly discussed thing in the 1970's and 80's. But less after that.
Loads of people who lift (regular Joe's not athlete) don't any different. Most people who looks like they life take roids (and most of them loose all the gains after going off)
The claim was about testosterone levels not muscle mass.
It doesn't appear to be true that lifting has any impact on testosterone levels aside from the first hour after lifting. It goes up temporarily then returns to normal.
It appears scientists have studied such things. The biological concept of homeostasis could explain why that might be true.
The expectations of your partner are likely the main reason for lowered sex drive. You need to learn to let these expectations free and not be affected by those, or by your own expectations.
Only then you will, hopefully, rediscover parts of your sex drive.
In general - talk to a psych/therapist/sex therapist. Sex drive is weird, and the mind is weird :)
But also, there is no "I supposedly should not be this". You are who you are. There's an entire community of people who are asexual, and that is fine. If it bugs you personally, by all means, I recommend spelunking in your brain and finding out more. But please don't feel you have to conform to some sort of ideal.
Yes, there are your partner's needs. But if you just aren't that sexual, it is time for a (difficult) conversation - how else can they get their needs fulfilled. You can try to just make yourself be that person, but if it's truly not who you are, there's a price to pay down the road. (Hence, please talk to a professional - they're much better at helping you navigate this complex area than randos on the Internet)
Asexuality is fine in the sense that no one should be challenged or treated badly for their level of sex drive.
But in a context of falling sperm counts, testosterone levels, endocrine disruptors showing up in urine at high levels, SSRIs (some of these are male-specific but have female counterparts), I worry that just shrugging off low-to-nonexistent libido as just "ah some people are asexual and that's valid" isn't giving a complete picture.
Sex feels really good, relationships are important to most people, most relationships of the sort I'm referring to are going to be with a partner who wants sex. To reiterate, any ego-synchronic asexuals out there, if you're happy I'm happy, but it's also okay to treat a lack of libido as a medical issue and see if it can be alleviated, which is often the case.
If someone is genuinely asexual then they wouldn't be at all concerned about sex drive. But I know from experience you can have periods of low libido as a sexual man which are quite uncomfortable. You basically lose your virility and a big part of what makes you feel like you.
Seemed like the OP was making the point that lower sex drive could be caused by the same chemical effects that could be causing lower sperm counts. How would a mental health professional help with this?
OP is guessing based on reading a random article on HN. A medical Dr. is probably more equipped to root cause their issue and more specifically treat it.
Doctor are unlikely to help, since most medical societies consider 300ng/dL (incomprehensibly low) T levels acceptable. With this (and a sadly too large number of other conditions), doing research and being one's own advocate will fare 1000x better than naively expecting a doctor to correctly spot, and be willing to treat, low T. That just isn't how they're trained, and here, their training is wrong.
Generally yes, I agree with you. In this case though OP was doing nothing and in no way appeared to be motivated to investigate. A dr. is going to be better than nothing. With that said I specifically went to male hormone / TRT doctor because that is what I wanted after my own research.
if by OP you mean me, thats not true, I am motivated. I was being succient in my point and hoping to understand what others felt / do in my situation, if they have any similar experience. I'm extremely motivated to get to the bottom of this. I've been roadblocked by therapy in some ways, because they just say your sex drive is yours, her sex drive is hers, and it shouldn't define your relationship on one hand to another therapist telling me that women should drive sex in a relationship not men to yet another telling me that I don't exhibit a normal pattern of sexual desire but gave little recommendation in the way of action on what to do about it.
Doctors are even worse, they either don't see an issue, or just want to throw ED pills at me.
Its alot more complicated than you might think. I just didn't want to put all of this into one post like that, so it didn't augment peoples opinions.
I'm somewhat regretting this now, as I wonder if any potential employer might track down my identity now and see these posts and think lesser, but I'm willing to put myself out like this so I can hear from others, and I think thats worth the potential exposure
I misunderstood then and apologize. With that said I highly recommend going to a TRT doctor and getting your total and free levels checked. Your issue could be as simple as just having low T and that is a very easy fix.
I very much doubt an employer is going to go through the trouble of tracking your anonymous HN accounts down. You are likely safe :)
Note: personal unpopular opinion unrelated to anything in particular that will get me down voted, unless recovering from some incredible trauma (death of a child, sexual abuse, etc.) I have never understood the need for a psychologist / psychiatrist. Best advice I have ever gotten is just to get on with it. No need to talk things through with some person that has never been through what you have and is just making it up as they go along. Trudge On.
I sure hope not. Frankly I'm struggling with some of this stuff, and found your comnent refreshing, in that I see someone having Frank open conversation about things that matter.
I put a lot of effort in my life into getting rid of personal judgment of this kind. This conversation is why. We should be able to talk openly and frankly about these things. About a lot of things. We're better humans when we do.
That's it, just throwing a little support your way.
Am I missing something? Here's a quote from The Penis Book by Aaron Spitz, MD:
"So what is a normal level? Good question. This has been the subject of a lot of debate amongst experts . Probably the best rule of thumb is if your total T is less than 200 nanograms per deciliter (ng/ dl) and you have signs or symptoms, then you are too low. Normal T ranges from 400 to 1,000 ng/ dl, and it will tend to be higher in young guys and lower in middle-aged men. This is not an absolute, and there are plenty of younger guys with T levels below 400 who are completely normal, so symptoms are key. The real fun comes when a guy’s level is between 200 and 400 ng/ dl— now what? Many experts feel that being above 300 ng/ dl is the real cutoff for normal, and as long as there are no symptoms, there’s usually no problem. On the other hand, we can do a deeper dive and check the free testosterone"
You found a doctor who said 1200 was normal? Are we talking about the same measurement?
I'm not a doctor but if we're talking about the same thing this makes me think you were treated by someone who is a recreational drug dealer who happens to have a medical degree.
That level is a fairly safe target for healthy active young males that remain asymptomatic, and show low levels of aromatization potential. Proper labwork performed often is a must regardless of dosage. Adverse effects obviously would mean it has to be reduced, but usually if there will be any issues youll see it in cholesterol, and ancillary hormone responses first.
High levels of activity can make it hard for certain esters to keep the levels stable if stable is what is desired. For some people longer release solutions are better, like testopel which is a pellet that goes in subq like a chip you put in a housecat's neck. Some prefer to taper over days, or even have smaller doses more often during the week. It's ultimately up to what the patient and doc arrive at that works best. Everyone is different, to an extent.
I respect your testimonial although it does not match what I've been told. Ultimately everyone's treatment plan will be different according to their needs and the recommendations of their endocrinologist. If you feel great, and your blood labs look great, then 200-300 is fine for you individually.
Unfortunately, it's not a one size fits all solution with a lot of different opinions as far as what constitutes therapeutic dose vs supraphysiological. 1200 is what a young adult male would have, sometimes more in certain populations. If someone is sedentary and does not engage in high intensity activities, or is overweight, I could see them being prescribed a low dose because of the risk of adverse effects.
Since you appear knowledgeable and passionate about the topic: In your medical practice, what dosages of which compounds are you commonly prescribing your patients to achieve what levels for TRT? Do you have experience with trans-males? If so, what levels are you trying to maintain with them specifically in your practice?
1200 is not what a young adult male would have as far as I can tell. (very much "citation needed" ).
I don't know what's going on here, if you are just talking about trans males I would never have responded the way I did, and you could have been clearer in your earlier posts.
Or maybe you just brought that up as some sort of bad faith attempt to change the subject from the fact you are posting misinformation on human anatomy without citation?
Given the sarcasm in your last paragraph that seems more likely.
Maybe they just measure testosterone levels and avoid the awkward conversation (and potentially depressing conclusion) of determining how fully developed you are from your time in the womb. Is there even much they can do about it other than TRT anyways?
If you have a concern about this, talk to your doctor.
Also keep in mind "sex drive" (aka "libido") can be easily affected by worrying about it. Talk to a psych about it because generally speaking psych-caused libido issues are super-easy to treat.
Lastly, if you are taking medications check for whether decreased libido is on the list of known side effects. Check in with your doctor anytime you have a well-known side effect to see if you can ignore it or not.
At the point where plastic particles were being found in the blood of unborn babies, and that was not enough to push governments into stronger actions to protect the populace, then not sure that reporting alarming lowered sperm counts will do much either.
How do these chemicals get into the body and into the sperm/urine?
If it's a matter of controlling what we eat, then hitting the gym isn't enough. We'll have to curtail and adjust diets as best as we can, start being more careful around what sprays/treatments are used in vegetables and what anti/pro biotics the animals are fed with. We'll need stricter nutritional breakdown on this. We might even need to cut out certain foods if, by default, they are harmful to us past a certain quantity. We will have to switch from using the plastics we use in bottles and food storage containers to safer ones. Would fasting help here, even?
If it's a matter of quality of air, we'll need to install better indoor filters (assuming we spend most of our time indoors). Outdoor air pollution is something we can't really solve on a dime, so to speak, as it would need greater intervention by Big Government et al to put into motion (good luck with this). So we'll have to do the best we can on our own, limited budgets, that we can to reduce the impact. For those who can afford it, living in an over all healthier outdoor-air-quality place is the way to go.
Does it permeate from/through the clothes and through the skin?
Feel free to add more of this sort of thing as a reply. At this point, having seen what I've seen, all bets are off that anyone other than ourselves will actually lift a finger to solve this, so we'll have to do it by ourselves, for ourselves.
I suspect an under-appreciated source of BPA and BPS is thermal ("receipt") paper. One receipt can contain 1000x as much BPA as a plastic-lined can[0], which is absorbed through the skin (especially when using hand sanitizer) or transferred to the mouth[1]. They can also contaminate objects in direct contact — cash, coins, wallets, clothing, food packaging, etc.
The official assumptions used to calculate the public's "typical exposure" are laughable[2]:
> For example, the European Food Safety Authority’s (EFSA) exposure model estimates one handling event per day for adolescents and adults as typical exposures, and 4.6 handling events per day as high exposures; each exposure was anticipated to last 10 seconds. EFSA also estimates that average exposure involves handling by three fingertips on one hand, and high exposure comprises handling by three fingertips on both hands (6 fingers total).
One behavioral change individuals can do is carry an envelope for receipts, and ask cashiers to place them directly in the envelope. If the cashier asks why, spread the word! Suggest that they ask their employer switch to non-phenol paper that doesn't contain BPA or BPS.
I expect endocrine disrupters to play a big role in low sperm counts, low testosterone, increases obesity, specific cancers, probably many other things.
They have outsized effects at very low levels, and we aren’t very good at regulating exposure to them. See for example the whole BPA thing (along with many other plastics), PFAS, etc.
Yep. And a cursory search, because I hadn’t heard of this one, shows that BPS also has pretty significant effects on animals that are not humans. Maybe we’re special though!
I’ve read that the EU is more proactive about banning chemicals: companies there have to prove that they are safe for humans, vs the US where companies can go wild unless and until the chemicals are proven to be unsafe for humans. I don’t know if that’s true though; I haven’t looked deeply into it.
Some things worth bearing in mind. These studies come from the field of epidemiology, which is notorious for low quality studies that rely on flawed assumptions to create apocalyptic scenarios. Everything coming out of this field has to be assumed to be suspect until thoroughly vetted by outsiders.
At least, that's my personal belief. Let's do a quick literature review to check if there's disagreement with the claims of the researchers.
Firstly, are sperm counts actually falling at all? The article says:
"Sperm quantity and quality have dramatically declined across Western countries in recent decades, with research suggesting sperm counts have been more than halved in the space of 40 years."
But Tong2022 [1] says:
"Concerns regarding declining sperm counts have existed for over 50 years, and even predate the use of a standard means to assess semen characteristics ... in the field of reproduction, the contention that sperm counts are declining is not universally accepted and has been a hotly debated topic over the last several decades.1,5-9"
If they are falling, does it actually matter?
"... our review suggests that a decline in sperm counts does not necessarily translate to a decline in male fertility"
A New York Times report [2] on their study stated:
"Now a group of interdisciplinary researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contend that fears of an impending Spermageddon have been vastly overstated. In a study published in May in the journal Human Fertility, they re-evaluated the 2017 review and found that it relied on flawed assumptions and failed to consider alternate explanations for the apparent decline of sperm ... even the data that passed muster was geographically sparse and uneven and often lacked basic criteria like the age of the men. Moreover, its authors took for granted that a single metric — sperm count — was an accurate predictor of male fertility and overall health ... no one knows what an “optimal” sperm count is ... as methodologies for counting had improved and been standardized since the 1980s, sperm counts had appeared to fall. In other words, it may simply be that earlier scientists were overcounting sperm."
A lot of this stuff originates in a 2017 meta-study by Dr Swan et al. Tom Chivers reviews Swan's book on the "spermogeddon" [3]:
"the book does not seem sensible. Because for Swan, everything causes fertility problems, not just phthalates. Sugar, beef, cycling, stress, watching TV, doing too much exercise, doing too little, eating the wrong diet; you can barely get out of bed in the morning without sabotaging your chance of having a baby ... I half expected her to say we ought to wear ray-shielded underpants ... She even suggests that the growth in intersex conditions and perhaps the rise of gender dysphoria, and even changes in gender identity, could be because of EDCs (and taking paracetamol in pregnancy!)
This hyperventilating about human extinction, and rolling everything bad into a ball labelled “fertility and phthalates”, makes no sense if you think Swan (a respected epidemiologist) is trying to give a dispassionate assessment of fertility issues. But she’s not. This is a polemic."
A key problem with Swan's argument is that she and others like her define fertility as how many babies women have. This makes it easy to draw a correlation between falling sperm counts and falling fertility, but eliminates the impact of free choice. Women prefer to have fewer children as their countries get richer and child mortality falls, but as far as these "respected epidemiologists" are concerned that's apparently out of scope.
Even if sperm count doesn't impact overall male fertility, the fact that sperm count is declining potentially indicates some type of endocrine disruption. Also, your comment kind of glosses over the fact that though-to-be cause hormonal interference were found at levels 17 times what is considered safe in the median sample from the study.
The point of the scientists quoted above is that those aren't safe assumptions.
1. Sperm count might not be falling at all.
2. If it is, that might be some sort of natural variation, or an effect rather than a cause (maybe sperm counts fall if you aren't regularly impregnating women, which is to some extent a social choice).
3. Even if there is a natural cause, it might not be chemicals.
4. Even if it is, that might not actually be a problem worth worrying about.
Did you read the paper? The authors specifically chose chemicals that have been shown to reduce male sperm counts. The hazard levels they chose were based on the observed effects on sperm production from those studies.
We know these chemicals reduce sperm count and they are being found in high quantities in urine, so it doesn't seem likely that the measured decrease in sperm is due to measurement error or some other cause.
"The authors specifically chose chemicals that have been shown to reduce male sperm counts"
No, they chose chemicals that predictive modelling claims would reduce male sperm counts. This is epidemiology remember, they hardly care about real experiments. From their cited paper Kortenkamp2020:
"combinations of chemicals with different mechanisms of action are predicted that should result in cumulative effects. These predictions are then mapped against evidence from experimental mixture studies with relevant combinations"
If we check the Table 2 RfD data to explore the citations, e.g. for the very first entry in the table, we find:
"Due to variations in the no-observed adverse effect levels (NOAELs) in high confidence studies, possible reference doses ranged from 0.0001 to 0.0099 μg/kg/d. In choosing 0.003 μg/kg/d we struck a balance between caution suggested by studies at the lower end of the doses and the weight of evidence from studies with higher NOAEL. BPA exposures currently experienced by European populations and beyond are in excess of 0.003 μg/kg/d ... The precise mechanisms by which BPA affects semen quality are not resolved"
So their figure for safe BPA exposure level is made up. The evidence gave them an enormously varied range of possibilities, and they picked one of the lowest values allowable given that evidence because they wanted to incorporate "caution", and - totally coincidentally - because that level would let them say that most Europeans are being exposed to dangerous levels (according to their made up estimate).
They also have no idea how this is meant to work biologically, which raises the risk of a correlation=causation fallacy, and their direct evidence comes from studies on baby rats. They exclude experiments on adult rats because, well, who the hell knows, they don't explain that, and they then go to include epidemiological studies on adult men so it's not like there's anything meaningful behind that choice.
One might ask whether this evidence tells us much about humans given the frequency with which cancer has been successfully cured in rats. So what about the evidence from people?
"In adult men, the best timing of exposure measurements would be around 90 days before taking a semen sample, because spermatogenesis takes approximately 75 days, with an additional 12 days of maturation
as the sperm travels through the epididymis. However, none of the eligible studies adopted such a timing. Instead, most studies collected urine samples for BPA measurements at the same time, or near the time of semen analysis"
So their studies aren't measuring sperm counts at the right time and they know this, but use the data anyway. Where do they find these men?
"These studies are case-control, cohort or cross-sectional with participants drawn from the general population, occupational cohorts, or couples from infertility clinics"
Infertility clinics!
With epidemiology papers it's always like this. We learned that from COVID. You don't actually need to read the work of these sorts of 'scientists' to know they're going to be filled with wild suppositions, unverified assumptions, garbage quality data and nonsensical methodologies. It's just a totally corrupt field. Life is too short to double check everything coming out of public health research; at some point we have to learn to stop listening.
This has been brewing for the last 50~ years. The average testosterone level found in men is drastically lower than our ancestors. Testosterone is a man's primary hormone, and being deficient in it can cause a multitude of issues including depression, little to no sex drive, and even sperm count. Yes, diet and exercise play a role in overall health and T production, but this goes deeper than that.
I know the article isn't about testosterone, but I believe this is all connected in some way or another.
Endocrine disruptors, diet, plastics, reduced exercise (exercise absolutely causes more testosterone to build muscle in response to stress), less violent and physical environment/society, other pollutants.
Heck, sitting in chairs puts your testes closer to your body, which reduces sperm count.
There are tons of reasons that probably add up. The scary part might be the pollutants though.
Women also change their level of testosterone preference based on the stress level of environment. Civilization is by definition a less stressful environment regardless of inflation/unemployment rate.
> The average testosterone level found in men is drastically lower than our ancestors.
I'm curious -- how far back do we have good data on that? When did we learn enough to measure it? Are there techniques to estimate it for people in the far past, or is this the kind of thing where you really need to collect / process samples at the time of interest?
Cigarette smoking increases testosterone levels in men [0]. With the decreased prevalence of cigarette smoking in many countries, we should expect average testosterone levels to fall as a result. The hard part about historical data would be to disentangle the smokers from the nonsmokers and then find a way to measure testosterone to see if there is yet another factor at play. I'm not aware of any easy methods to conclusively preform that analysis.
We need to ban entire categories of chemicals, if they are ever going to be in contact with food or potable water, including at end of life: phthalates, bisphenols, PFAS.
We also need to ban polyester clothing, at least for categories washed frequently: socks, tshirts, underwear. Polyester clothing is made from discarded plastic and inevitably degrades into microplastics inside your own house, bed, washing machine.
I'm sympathetic, but I'm afraid people don't realize just how incredibly difficult this would be. Polyethylene terephthalate, colloquially "polyester", has completely transformed the textile industry. You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen towels? Polyester. Water-resistant lightweight warm clothes? Polyester. Ultra-light athletic clothes? Polyester. Bathing suits that don't chafe? Polyester. Durable, stain-resistant upholstery? Polyester. Fuzzy blankets? Polyester. Cheap suits? Polyester. Gore-Tex? You bet it's on polyester.
Lyocell can pick up some of the slack in terms of durability, and if we ever nail down artificial silk it can insulate pretty well, but for water and mold resistance, pretty much everything else you can use will also leave behind microplastics. We're talking big downgrades in the quality of everything. Rumplestiltskin never seemed so real.
> You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen towels
Ugh, synthetic towels. They don't absorb anything, just push it around. They burn and/or melt if you try to use them as a substitute oven mitt. They're beyond awful.
Get white cotton ones and bleach them. They actually function as towels, which should be the minimum standard for, you know, a towel. You don't need mold resistant towels.
As for the rest:
The cost problem's the main issue. Take away the cheapest materials, demand goes up for the next-cheapest and pretty soon it's not cheap anymore (yes, they can make more, but only to a point). Our society's totally adapted to clothes so cheap they're not worth repairing, that don't need special care because, even if extra care would make them last longer, they're so cheap it's not worth any time or materials, et c. Given the modern cost of labor in the developed world, a large chunk of the population would be doing a lot more DIY clothing repair than they do now.
I've looked into this myself. I've moved to as many plastic-free and sustainable options as I can, but I just can't give up my preference for things like tri-blend shirts. Additionally, cotton is a very resource-intensive crop.
It's not a perfect solution, but you can get filters for your washing machine to capture microplastics put off by clothes (though it's more for preventing it from going into the water supply; uncertain if it would help for those inside the house)
I think recent research showed that microplastics are caught by waste management processes, and I think dumped in land fills so not much of a threat to the environment if they get into the sewage.
Really hard to do. Better get used to gardening—a lot. Produce? Often wrapped in plastic. Anything canned? Those cans are lined in plastic, so goodbye canned tomatoes. Frozen veggies? Plastic bags. Anything that comes in an apparently paper sack? Probably a plastic liner layer on the inside.
If you go extreme with it, you can't even use stuff that comes in glass jars or bottles—the inside of the lid is plastic.
I thought the plastic mostly leeches out with heat. So cans with plastic lining: bad, the canning process uses heat.
Raw vegetables in a plastic bag? Not so bad, you can wash them and then cook them yourself (but avoid non stick cookware which has PFAS coatings - use stainless steel and cast iron instead).
Commenter asked how to ‘avoid’ BPA, not eliminate it entirely. Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I also think you’re overstating the difficulty of avoiding major sources of BPA. Most cling wrap doesn’t contain phalates. Buy fresh food and cook as much as possible.
I don't have much to back it up, but I think adding heat to the equation is the biggest catalyst to how many chemicals leech into the food. Basically, avoid heating up food in anything plastic.
The so-called disinformation-prone conspiracy-theorists have been strongly emphasizing the problem of plastics and chemicals in the water having a negative affect on testosterone and sperm counts for many, many years. So why is this being reported on more just now?
And beyond the science, what are the real social consequences of lower testosterone and sperm counts? You could look at lower birth rates particularly in developed nations, and less natural male aggression leading to a more docile and controllable population. Just an observation.
There's a huge difference between "they're putting chemicals in our water to make us more docile" and "technologies and products which revolutionized food production and made it affordable for an increasingly larger population have now been shown to be harmful, but corporate interest acting on local monetary optimization coupled with government corruption (also acting on local monetary optimization) are preventing policies to be made for the sake of global human health". The latter is boring but useful. The former sells more books.
1) To be precise, I've heard the water quality concerns from some conspiracy theorists for many years, but I don't know which of them have specifically said why this is happening. That comment about a docile population was solely my speculation on its effects, and not a quote from anybody.
2) Certainly it's fair to point out that mind-reading isn't a thing and you can't prove why anybody does anything. Thoughts and motives of others are internal to their brain, and while they can be in evidence, they cannot be fully known. This idea that you can mind-read is something that virtually every media entity, whether it's a mainstream corporate outlet or some indie conspiracy theorist, gets wrong. Many news headlines are literal mind-reading headlines that are impossible to verify. Once you start looking for this, you'll see media mind-reading everywhere.
3) I'd like to point out that you arguably committed the same mind-reading error in your post that you're critiquing. By saying that that "the former sells more books", you're stating an assumption that their motives are fiduciary and not driven by a genuine desire for human freedom and quality of life. Your statement may or may not be accurate, but certainly isn't a provable summary of their motives.
4) A lot of the ivory tower crowd likes to scoff at the conspiracy theorists, saying they always get things wrong. That can be debated until the cows come home, but I'd like to point out one small thing. There's no war in my lifetime (other than Ukraine, imagine that) that a large chunk of the corporate media weren't hooting, hollering, and cheerleading for, and I can't think of many conspiracy theorists who ever supported the constant random wars. Just think about that when deciding if contrarian voices are needed or not.
I think a lot of people think that men are naturally aggressive and can't get over. I suggest this isn't necessarily true. Furthermore, I think countries that have exceptionally low violence from males (like Scandinavian and (some) European countries) point out what -can be- and that this violence that we see in America and a lot of 3rd worlds countries is more societal and learned than innate. Aka nature affects it more than nurture. Given that just accepting this poisoning of male potency "as a good thing" is a really dumb move. Lowering what are basic biological functions and quantities of sperm and testosterone can not be a “good thing” as your post seems to imply.
> I think a lot of people think that men are naturally aggressive and can't get over.
How high or low male aggression is is certainly an interesting discussion, but I think is missing the most important point.
All other things being equal, a man with a higher testosterone level may tend to be more aggressive and less docile than the same man with a lower testosterone level.
If chemicals/plastics are reducing testosterone, the average man today might be less aggressive than he otherwise would have been.
> Furthermore, I think countries that have exceptionally low violence from males (like Scandinavian and (some) European countries) point out what -can be- and that this violence that we see in America and a lot of 3rd worlds countries is more societal and learned than innate.
Do Scandinavian immigrants come to America and start a crime rampage either in the first, second, or third generation? Have any American newspapers made note of the Scandinavian crime problem? If the American experience was the biggest variable in American crime, then the crime rate from American immigrants from Scandinavian countries should be noticeably higher than the crime rate in Scandinavian countries? You need to isolate for the right variable and compare the same kind of apples-to-apples populations to make the determination.
> Aka nature affects it more than nurture.
You can have any opinion you want of course, but I think you meant to say that nurture matters more than nature because you're making the argument that violence is societal and learned.
there are also plenty of things that the disinformation-prone conspiracy theorists think that are clearly falsifiable. A stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. It doesn't actually matter what some crank thinks without evidence to back it up.
This is a very mean-spirited response to people who are on the lookout for the safety of themselves and those around them, distrustful of believing everything they're told because "so-and-so said and they know better so you should listen."
Especially on HN, it's a particularly shrewd assessment where we ought to be critical of every single thing we are told, and told to believe - because we've been burnt before, we've learned our lessons, and we ought to know better. The part of the play is to assume that everyone who is labeled a "conspiracy theorist" automatically believes in far out things like the planet being flat. It's a very good disqualification mechanism, and people buy into it easily. Lets not bring that to HN.
> The researchers acknowledged some limitations to their research.
> For example, the data used dated from 2009 to 2010, and exposure to BPA may have decreased since, while exposure to other chemicals may have increased.
> Another uncertainty is whether women of reproductive age have the same levels of chemical exposure as the men in the study.
Even the researchers suggested a wider time frame and a larger comparison group.
It's good to be sceptical but this is a pandemic of sexual dysfunction that needs a working theory as soon as possible, and these results are in line with our current understanding of pollution endocrinology.
> Low exposure to gonadal hormones during early gestation and infancy predicts higher recalled childhood gender nonconformity in men, according to new research published in Psychological Science. The findings provide evidence androgens such as testosterone play a role in the development of male-typical gender role behaviors in childhood.