Could be something in the environment, something in our diet.

I'm curious if it's porn. Supposedly masturbation reduces testosterone levels. [1] Maybe men are just wanking more because of access to porn?

For some reason I can't edit my comment to add the link to the study.

This study shows a 45% spike in testosterone after 7 days of abstinence.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12659241/

I see this study referenced frequently, and it's always seemed dubious. Why would there be a spike at exactly 7 days of abstinence, before returning to baseline? It's possible that the measuring apparatus was improperly calibrated on that day. Has this study been reproduced?

Maybe nobody could make it past 7 days.

They are not the masters of their domain.

Perhaps it also causes a commensurate increase in androgen receptors.

Yeah there's a lot of non-religious people who are finding the advantages of abstaining from porn (/r/nofap and /r/pornfree) or trying to limit its use. They say the T boost is temporary, but the behavioral factors make it worth it. Like they're more apt to be social with women, go on dates, etc, if they don't just relieve themselves, they actually have motivation.

> Yeah there’s a lot of non-religious people who are finding the advantages of abstaining from porn (/r/nofap and /r/pornfree) or trying to limit its use. They say the T boost is temporary

The T boost from refraining from masturbation is disputed, and AFAIK no one has even asserted that there is one from refraining from porn, as such.

“Some folks online claim that refraining from masturbation makes them feel more manly, more masculine, more assertive, more dominant, and more attractive to females. They allege that this effect emerges from a supposed increase in testosterone when they stopped masturbating.

“These claims are often supported by reference to a very small, un-replicated study from China, which involved a very small sample of 10 males. Being interested in this study and how the analysis was conducted, colleagues have attempted to obtain the study data to verify, but have been unable to. But better research finds that testosterone isn’t as simple as these claims would have it.”

— https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/women-who-stray/2020...

“In other words, while there is indeed some research finding that sexual abstinence is linked to higher testosterone in men, the evidence is—at best—very mixed. Also, if you look to the overall trend in the data, it actually suggests that being sexually active in general increases testosterone, with the most consistent finding being that looking at porn enhances T.”

— https://www.lehmiller.com/blog/2020/1/24/can-abstaining-from...

Thanks for sharing. It sounds like the claim is dubious then.

Exactly. Abstaining from porn made me super horny and restless.

If you need to motivate yourself to hit on women, this is a positive.

If you need to do something intellectual -- work or play -- it's a sharp negative, though. Evangelists tend to gloss over this point.

Actually as Joe Rogan is quick to point out, if you're confused about your feelings for a woman, or you're feeling tempted by someone who's not your partner. Rub one out and you'll be surprised at the clarity it brings.

The funny thing is, if you hold the line longer (months) and have something else to pour yourself into the restlessness decreases and you're left with _focus_.

Mmm-hmm.

Let me guess -- if I nofap for months and eat less, it will also help with weight loss? Whenever a fad needs to be combined with a well-known active ingredient in order to be effective, it makes me suspicious that the fad isn't effective at all.

The constantly receding goalposts are another sign. With nofap, first it was "before an athletic competition," then it was "for a week," then it was "for a month," and now that a significant number of people have given that a try it's multiple months? Not a good look.

By this point I've gone from 30% to 90% sure this whole thing is just christian sex angst rebranded for the web.

:shrug: Make of it what you will, I'm just providing my personal experience. I was celibate/nofap for 25 years (now married for 10).

Good lord man, 25 years. I feel like there should be category in the Nobel prizes for that. If I make it a week I feel like a boss.

With online porn and being alone, it's much harder to do that nowadays. If you told me that as a college kid that you didn't do it for 6 years in your teens, not even a single girl would believe you.

Its not christian sex angst, it's christians upset over the feminization of men. They cant cope with the new non hetero normative reality we find ourselves in, which is that men are increasingly turning to non binary forms of self identification without the pressure of gender roles.

I think this is a good trend because without the pressure to be masculine, the patriarchy's power is dismantled and we create a more equal, fair, and just society.

can we not link to toxic websites like Reddit?

I hate to tell you, but this website is functionally just a mini-reddit. And it exhibits as much toxicity as any semi-special-interest subreddit (perhaps even more, due to the many posts that are politically topical).

What's funny is I didn't even link to them, I just named the sub-reddits. I think Reddit has gone way downhill and far surpassed Eternal September (I refer to it as the new AOL), but that's largely the defaults and popular sub-reddits, I agree that niche sub-reddits are generally better and at least as likely to produce the same quality discussions you'd find here.

Is this study credible? I mean it was based on 28 men. Are the researchers and their institution, Hangzhou Normal College, legitimate in the field of medical research?

Huh, that actually makes a lot of sense. I guess then if you want gains, stop a-spankin’. Is that true?

Athletes famously abstain before a major game. I don't know if it's true or not, but there's some indication it could be.

This has been known for awhile, but this spike doesn't persist. It quickly levels back down.

probably why the ProudBoy jerks swear to abstain from it.

This study is why the Proud Boys practice abstinence, yes.

I was thinking it is due to porn as well. The availability, fidelity, and variety of porn that can be called up with a few taps of the finger is unprecedented in all human history.

Just a hypothesis.

Simple explanation: americans get less sleep today than they did 20 years ago.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americans-get-less-sleep-than-2...

Bingo. One aspect of this is sleep (quantity and quality). The drop in testosterone is likely multifactorial though: sleep, nutrition, movement, stress -> all contributors that have the potential to decrease testosterone levels and creat hormone imbalances.

Stress is also on the rise, especially among gen Z:

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2020/report-o...

Which shouldn't be surprising given the quality of life a typical worker enjoys today vs in decades past when cost of living was much more in line with wages.

Also, having recently watched The Social Dilemma, social media might be stressing people out too.

I read a hypothesis that it's birth control going to waste water facilities, and then getting back into the drinking water supply. From what I read a charcoal filter lessens the effects - which I believe gets filtered through a normal refrigerator filter. Please verify this information first, it's all conjecture and hypothesis.

We don't directly recycle treated wastewater into drinking water much in the US. The closest you get is treated water being released into a river, and a city downstream uses it, there's a lot of dilution going on in-between. You'd also expect someone to notice it not affecting cities with water supplies that aren't downstream from wastewater treatment.

Birth control pill usage is slowly but inexorably declining as younger demographics start to favor IUDs more; IUDs were virtually unknown circa 2000 but today they're about equal in popularity. If true then we would expect the above trend to reverse within 20 years.

Modern IUDs release hormones.

They release progestin, not estrogen. And even then they seem to release a 3-7x lower volume of hormones per day than pills.

I also would ask for a source on the relative popularity of the hormonal IUDs vs the non-hormonal copper ones; I haven't seen any source provide that sort of breakdown.

Progestins suppress testosterone too. I don't have stats but I believe hormonal IUDs are the most popular form nowadays.

Copper IUDs still exist for several reasons and they work pretty well without hormones.

Birth control pills these days are a fraction of what they were back in say the 50's.

Women on HRT take 20,000 times the estrogen that is found in a estrogen birth control for example.

Possibilities:

- stress/anxiety/depression

- sleep deprivation/disruption

- high-speed internet access (—> overuse of porn)

Another possibility:

- Internet access (and better telecommunications in general) means you're competing with the whole world. Every day you see many people who are more successful than you, which lowers your perception of your own social status. Testosterone is believed to increase status-seeking behavior. If such behavior persistently fails, maybe testosterone production is reduced to avoid pointless risk.

That's an interesting hypothesis. I do feel that as the amount of content online increases, it becomes harder and harder to feel like any output you have matters. Be it writing a blog or open source software, there's competition everywhere. It's also harder to make it a say, a musician, when you consider the amount of music that everyone can access on Spotify for example. Any amount of creative output that someone can output is somewhat diluted.

I find it much harder to motivate myself to produce anything than I did 10 years ago. I might just be older, but I do think that content dilution has something to do with it as well. How do you free yourself from that?

I struggle with similar feelings as an aging amateur musician, particularly in genres like jazz where it sometimes feels like there is almost no point putting something out there unless it's world-class technically... which I'll never be.

Something I realized recently - and admittedly this hasn't changed any behaviors for me yet, but maybe it will help you - is that a lot of the music I listen to is objectively not the best in the world in terms of technical skill, originality, popularity, etc. and yet I enjoy and appreciate it anyway. So maybe it's OK for me to make music that's also not the best in the world - someone might find it and like it anyway. And if not, no harm!

Go offline I suppose? Talk more openly to people in real-life, to build a real-life community of like-minded people? Easier said than done, I know.

But we have kind of inadvertently let the internet shape our lives. There is nothing stopping us from living like it is the 80s + using the internet only where it makes our lives actually better.

That might be especially difficult right now with the government mandating that people shouldn't leave home.

i personally chime in my antidote towards stress and sleep deprivation. a year after significant reduced stress and better sleep hygeine I'm seeing better test levels and performance in the gym.

I think if the phytoestrogens found in soy-based foods had an effect on testosterone levels anywhere close to estradiol, we'd see feminine transgender people using them as part of hormone-replacement therapy. It tends not to happen though, as soy-based foods aren't really effective at feminizing men.

The fear of phytoestrogens is completely unfounded.

Funnily enough, some men that are concerned about estrogen intake through food do stop stop eating cow meat.

A female mammal that, unsurprisingly, produces tons of estrogen.

"Soy Boys: A Measured Response" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8dfiDeJeDU

> sleep deprivation/disruption

Add to that an extremely unhealthy work trend. 50 years ago, an ordinary factory employee could feed on a regular full time wage a wife that could stay home, two kids, have a simple house, health insurance and go on a vacation once a year.

Today? Two jobs (and/or extreme overtime) for both people to make rent, home ownership rates dropped because even simple homes run up for well over a million dollars, 2008ff/corona have caused an immense wage depression, and people regularly go to gofundme for medical issues or go bankrupt.

Add to that: highly processed, unhealthy food is way cheaper than fresh, selfmade food, and people living paycheck to paycheck can't afford bulk purchases or Whole Foods. The effect of food on health is more than sufficiently documented.

That is an immense mental toll, and not just in the US but worldwide.

Diminishing role of strength and aggression as a factor in reproductive success?

Definitely not a worldwide phenomenon.

Excluding all confounders in a study like this is statistical error. You cannot do that stuff mathematically with such noisy data.

Similar mistakes happen when someone tries to show meat is cancerous or increases all cause mortality.

traces of plasticzers, which can act as endocrine disruptors, are found basically everywhere in modern civilization

Plastics?

This is a common theory. https://www.npr.org/2011/03/02/134196209/study-most-plastics...

time spent outdoors?

Low vitamin D (i.e. low sun exposure), has been shown to reduce testosterone levels:

> Compared to baseline values, a significant increase in total testosterone levels (from 10.7 ± 3.9 nmol/l to 13.4 ± 4.7 nmol/l; p < 0.001), bioactive testosterone (from 5.21 ± 1.87 nmol/l to 6.25 ± 2.01 nmol/l; p = 0.001), and free testosterone levels (from 0.222 ± 0.080 nmol/l to 0.267 ± 0.087 nmol/l; p = 0.001) were observed in the vitamin D supplemented group. By contrast, there was no significant change in any testosterone measure in the placebo group. Our results suggest that vitamin D supplementation might increase testosterone levels. Further randomized controlled trials are warranted to confirm this hypothesis.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21154195/

Spending time behind a screen more than with people. Compounded with more desk jobs too.

There's apparently also a slight decrease in body temperature during the 20th century (not sure if it's men only or all people)

Related?

I believe that the reduction in temperature is generally attributed to lower levels of inflammation, which in turn is likely caused by reduced exposure to disease

Wouldn't a decrease in temperature result in more testosterone? Since sperm production is optimal at 35C.

> Environmental toxins?

Almost. It's the plastics.

There's the cellular modem constantly in our pockets, inches from the gonads responsible for producing testosterone.

Is 'wealth' one of the confounding factors they controlled for? In inflation-adjusted terms, most US workers saw a reduction in net wages after necessary expenses over this ten year period.

That relative reduction in wages happened over the same time living standards skyrocketed (turns out if you offshore everything the newly poor people can afford slightly better material conditions because everything is so much cheaper) so you're gonna have a hell of a time separating the effects.

Yes. I ask because relative reduction in wages would decrease access to foods with a high density of unprocessed and non-fortified nutrients, regardless of the quality of the non-edible materials in their life. When combined with the tendency of US food to decrease in total non-fortified nutrient value over time, it could influencing the human body's hormone production.

Why the downvotes? There's been a skyrocketing increase in consumption of junk food in low-wage worker class who often can't find the time to cook and cannot afford more expensive healthy food.

lower real income for working class.

plastics and estrogen similar molecules they let off

Why does it have to be toxins? What about diet?

would need to be dietary changes that don't also change BMI, since that was controlled for.

Which I think is a bit of a gaping hole.

As a male who has been around 70kg for all of my adult life, I have consumed many different "diets". All from eating whole foods to eating more processed foods and easy packaged meals/junk food, all not impacting my BMI.

I wonder if soil depletion of minerals and vitamins due to over farming couldn't also be a suspect here. It's a problem I haven't heard much about lately.

Genetic degradation of the human race?

I don't know why this was voted down. We've been performing in vitro fertilisation en masse since the 1980s. All of a sudden, men with non-motile sperm are fathering children.

So as a single cause it's not that massive, but at 1% of all births, the effects will soon stack up.

Also that reducing infant mortality rate and other early death rates means the weak ones live long enough to breed. Unlike IVF, this just stalls genetics. IVF actively selects for fertility issues.

How about natural selection putting men with physical traits like body hair at a disadvantage due to modern beauty standards?

child rearing and geopolitcal conflict i.e War and conflict.

whole point of testosterone, being tad reductionist here, is, atleast in the wild, to make you alpha male - agressiveness to defend.

and if you look at 1900s, it was mired with geopolitial conflict, probably causing men to lead universally aggressive life.

now to post 1990s, things have dramitcally changed.

What if the geopolitical climate is a result of testosterone levels in the population?

That’s where you get into interesting territory. It’s not a wild suggestion, is it?

this is where you get into the conversation about chicken and egg. my hypothesis was geoclimate could have led to increased level of testosterone in Men, not other way around. What you asked will lead us to ask the the first origin of increased T