Has anyone ever found any common denominators in guys with low T?

[anyman]

Curious-- seems that more and more guys are having issues with low T and host of other hormonal problems. I am beginning to wonder if our grandfathers & great grandfathers would even recognize us. While some of the increase in diagnosis no doubt reflects greater awareness, based on what I am reading the problem is growing at an ever faster rate.

Is anyone aware of any research or data analyzing the root cause(s) of these issues? What about common denominators, be they physical, mental or environmental or some combination thereof? Of course, I exclude issues brought on by steroid abuse, etc. I'm interested in the reasons for otherwise healthy guys get a figurative kick in the balls for no readily apparent reason. Factor in stories about fewer baby boys being born, lower sperm counts across the world and things start to look rather serious.

Any thoughts, ideas or data?

 

[yeahright]

1) Longer lifespans;
2) Greater access to healthcare (more diagnosis);
3) Societal expectation of staying vigorous and healthy longer (changing expectations of what it should feel like to get older);
4) Expansion of estrogen mimicking chemicals in the environment and food supply during the second half of the 20th century.

Because these things weren't measured until recently (and many still don't consider them to be "real" medical issues), there really is no longitudinal data to verify or dispute your anecdotal observation. My guess is that it's a combination of the items listed above.

 

[engival]

noone eats the foods we were designed to eat, everyone lives indoors now; our ancestors were outside working hard labor all day.

 

[anabolicrhino]

1) Longer lifespans;
2) Greater access to healthcare (more diagnosis);
3) Societal expectation of staying vigorous and healthy longer (changing expectations of what it should feel like to get older);
4) Expansion of estrogen mimicking chemicals in the environment and food supply during the second half of the 20th century.

Because these things weren't measured until recently (and many still don't consider them to be "real" medical issues), there really is no longitudinal data to verify or dispute your anecdotal observation. My guess is that it's a combination of the items listed above.

Right on yearight!, its just like water and air pollution nobody noticed until we started to measure it!

Although, anecdotally there seems to be on goinig pussifcation of the American male. I measure it by reality TV!!! and eyebrow waxing trends!

My father and grandfather were genetically gifted in terms of muscularity,..did not help them live longer though!

Here's to a short muscular life!!!

 

[JanSz]

Right on yearight!, its just like water and air pollution nobody noticed until we started to measure it!

Although, anecdotally there seems to be on goinig pussifcation of the American male. I measure it by reality TV!!! and eyebrow waxing trends!

My father and grandfather were genetically gifted in terms of muscularity,..did not help them live longer though!Here's to a short muscular life!!!

Wonder what was their body temperature, what is yours?

High performing thyroid, high energy, candle burns faster.
Just my theory.

 

[anyman]

Good points, but do estrogens explain the explosion of low T in younger guys?

1) Longer lifespans;
2) Greater access to healthcare (more diagnosis);
3) Societal expectation of staying vigorous and healthy longer (changing expectations of what it should feel like to get older);
4) Expansion of estrogen mimicking chemicals in the environment and food supply during the second half of the 20th century.

Because these things weren't measured until recently (and many still don't consider them to be "real" medical issues), there really is no longitudinal data to verify or dispute your anecdotal observation. My guess is that it's a combination of the items listed above.

Can estrogens alone explain what appears to be a dramatic rise in younger guys afflicted with what I am starting to call "acquired eunuch syndrome"? If no, what else is out there? If yes, then why aren't we doing more to address and fix the problem?

 

[yeahright]

Can estrogens alone explain what appears to be a dramatic rise in younger guys afflicted with what I am starting to call "acquired eunuch syndrome"? If no, what else is out there? If yes, then why aren't we doing more to address and fix the problem?

There is no data to support the idea that there is a "dramatic rise in younger guys afflicted with" low T. They simply didn't measure it so you can't look at a baseline of the average man 50 years ago and compare it to today.

What is happening is that people are now getting tested and we're discovering that many people have lower T levels than are (1) expected; and (2) optimal for health. This doesn't necessrily mean that we wouldn't have found the exact same thing in the population if we could get in a time machine and measure T levels 200 years ago.

Personally, my guess is that estrogen mimicking chemicals in the environment are probably having an effect on developing fetuses and growing boys (because there is documented proof of these chemicals effecting some animal populations) but that's just a guess. We don't even have enough data to conclude that there is actually a problem any different from what men have always faced.

 

[fit4life05]

My father and grandfather were genetically gifted in terms of muscularity,..did not help them live longer though!

Here's to a short muscular life!!!

I'd rather live 40 energentic, happy years than 90 depressed, weak years. with sexual problems none the less

 

[spatch]

Does having low T really make you live longer? If it does, why would old men get on HRT?

 

[anabolicrhino]

This is the riddle...the only thing that makes you live longer is living longer!

We can only de-construct someones life after it has ended.

We can reasonably learn to remove death factors from living people
as we learn them from the deaths of others.(smoking drinking,getting hit by a car)

..but there is no way to test specific living individuals for what proactive factors are extending a specifc life.

The best we can do is monitor signs of organ death reversal, where there is time to add a proactive tactic (medicine,exercise,diet,ect)

 

[yeahright]

Does having low T really make you live longer? If it does, why would old men get on HRT?

Well, there's no easy answer. Low T means lower incidences of certain health problems but higher incidences of others. The converse is true as well.

IMHO what people should be striving for is an optimal balance so that the person will stay healthy and vital for as long as possible during their lifespan.....rather than necessarily trying to increase lifespan. I'd love to live to 150 but not if the second half of that is spent too ill to enjoy it.

 

[anyman]

I've read evidence that the incidence of Low T is indeed increasing.

There is no data to support the idea that there is a "dramatic rise in younger guys afflicted with" low T. They simply didn't measure it so you can't look at a baseline of the average man 50 years ago and compare it to today.

I mistakenly deleted my copies. but I recently read an article on msnbc on how fewer baby boys are being born which also noted a drop in both sperm counts and T. While I can't find the original, here is a link to a similar article:

Pitt Study Notes Decline In Male Births In The US And Japan

Did a quick search and found these on lower sperm counts:

They Can Sow But Can’t Reap: The Demise of Human Sperm by John Robbins

Discourse.net: More Evidence of Dropping Sperm Counts

I've come across other apparently credible articles and have seen the same patterns. Need to save them in the future.

Something is up--and it increasingly isn't us guys....

 

[SufferingEd]

I'd rather live 40 energentic, happy years than 90 depressed, weak years. with sexual problems none the less

I agree. At least I can look back and say I had alot of fun. Hopefully we will all get this fixed soon.

I think there is a lot of factors. Back when in the 50's I'm sure there where a lot of men suffering the same thing we are now. It's just back then medicine was not a far advanced (still not) as it is today. So they got the ol' your getting older answer. I'm sure there are more men today than then with hypogonadsim. I bet it's because of polution, the quality of foods we eat today, ect. I don't think there is any one element causing this.

 

[yeahright]

I mistakenly deleted my copies. but I recently read an article on msnbc on how fewer baby boys are being born which also noted a drop in both sperm counts and T. While I can't find the original, here is a link to a similar article:

Pitt Study Notes Decline In Male Births In The US And Japan

Did a quick search and found these on lower sperm counts:

They Can Sow But Can’t Reap: The Demise of Human Sperm by John Robbins

Discourse.net: More Evidence of Dropping Sperm Counts

I've come across other apparently credible articles and have seen the same patterns. Need to save them in the future.

Something is up--and it increasingly isn't us guys....

I appreciate the links. The first one is actually interesting because it's real data (less males being born over a period of time). This doesn't correlate to a supposed drop in T levels in men, but it's interesting (and they gesture at the estrogen mimicking compounds I mentioned).

The other two aren't very useful. The first is kinda silly with its prediction that "by 2002" there might not be any sperm donors who meet the requirements of the sperm clinic. The second is just not all that helpful because it quotes one study saying sperm counts are going down but then mentions that other studies contradict that finding.

When you search pubmed you find things like this:

MacLeod revisited: sperm count distributions in 374 fertile men from 1971 to 1994.

* Emanuel ER,
* Goluboff ET,
* Fisch H.

Department of Urology, Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY 10028, USA.

OBJECTIVES: There has been an enormous amount of interest as to whether sperm counts are declining over time. We sought to compare a contemporary group of fertile men to those from the MacLeod study of 1951 to ascertain whether sperm counts in fertile men have changed over time. METHODS: We obtained sperm count data from 374 fertile men who banked sperm in Minnesota prior to vasectomy from 1971 to 1994 and compared them to sperm count distributions from the 1000 fertile men of MacLeod's study. Semen analyses were performed as per World Health Organization guidelines using identical techniques in both the present and MacLeod studies. RESULTS: The contemporary group had a mean sperm count of 102 +/- 81 x 10(6)/mL (median 85 x 10(6)/mL) compared to 107 +/- 74 x 10(6)/mL (median 90 x 10(6)/mL) for MacLeod's data. There are no significant differences in mean or median sperm counts or sperm count distributions between the groups. CONCLUSIONS: We find remarkable similarities in sperm count distributions in cohorts of fertile men from 1951 and 1971 to 1994. Sperm counts in fertile men have not changed appreciably in the 40 years since MacLeod's report.

PMID: 9457294 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Now, sperm counts reamaining static don't mean that T levels aren't declining. They very well might be, there just isn't a coherant data set to do the comparisons with that I'm aware of.

 

[anyman]

Some additional articles-this time on low T

I appreciate the links. The first one is actually interesting because it's real data (less males being born over a period of time). This doesn't correlate to a supposed drop in T levels in men, but it's interesting (and they gesture at the estrogen mimicking compounds I mentioned).

The other two aren't very useful. The first is kinda silly with its prediction that "by 2002" there might not be any sperm donors who meet the requirements of the sperm clinic. The second is just not all that helpful because it quotes one study saying sperm counts are going down but then mentions that other studies contradict that finding.

Yes, I know the last 2 were "iffy"-Did a quick Google search and saw them. This next one, however is interesting. Purports to document lower T levels.

Testosterone Tumbling in American Males on Yahoo! Health

Here is another: (not sure how credible)

Testosterone Tumbling?

This one is weird- seems to say that heavy exercise LOWERS LH and thus T. Need to read it through, but here it is for now:

LH secretion and testosterone concentrations are blunted after resistance exercise in men -- Nindl et al. 91 (3): 1251 -- Journal of Applied Physiology

 

[yeahright]

Yes, I know the last 2 were "iffy"-Did a quick Google search and saw them. This next one, however is interesting. Purports to document lower T levels.

Testosterone Tumbling in American Males on Yahoo! Health

Here is another: (not sure how credible)

Testosterone Tumbling?

This one is weird- seems to say that heavy exercise LOWERS LH and thus T. Need to read it through, but here it is for now:

LH secretion and testosterone concentrations are blunted after resistance exercise in men -- Nindl et al. 91 (3): 1251 -- Journal of Applied Physiology

That yahoo one is interesting. I'd like to see some comparisons among other groups because they gesture at the fact that it could have been something they were exposed to.

Ideally, what I'd like to see if something like:

Average T levels of 40 year old male in 1910, 1960, 2000 to see if there is a variation there. It would also be interesting to see if the overall trendlines differ from each other in T levels over a lifetime between different generations.

 

[anyman]

Too bad there isn't a way for us laypersons to analyze all societal, chemical, (m)

environmental and physical factors. For example, are men experiencing earlier secondary hypogonadism more likely to be fit? Tall or short? Live in the suburbs, do their own lawn care w/ chemicals, etc? Do they eat alot of chicken or sweets? Are they exposed to certain chemicals or products? Did they ever use propecia? How about their personalities? Easy going or more highly strung? How old were their mothers when they were born? Are they genetic predispositions? The list could go on and on.

It might be very enlightening to see what factors we have in common. Of course, the range of possibilities may be nearly endless and worthy of a CDC inquest. Certainly more than I could ever hope to do on my own. Still---the possibiities are intriguing. Anybody have any thoughts?