INDCJournal: Freakaendocrinology: Follow-Up Report

November 01, 2006

Freakaendocrinology: Follow-Up Report

Posted by Bill

A study finds that men's testosterone has declined dramatically over the past 20 years:

A new study has found a "substantial" drop in U.S. men's testosterone levels since the 1980s, but the reasons for the decline remain unclear. This trend also does not appear to be related to age.
The average levels of the male hormone dropped by 1 percent a year, Dr. Thomas Travison and colleagues from the New England Research Institutes in Watertown, Massachusetts, found. This means that, for example, a 65-year-old man in 2002 would have testosterone levels 15 percent lower than those of a 65-year-old in 1987. This also means that a greater proportion of men in 2002 would have had below-normal testosterone levels than in 1987.

"The entire population is shifting somewhat downward we think," Travison told Reuters Health. "We're counting on other studies to confirm this."

Heavily caveated theories as to why?

They hypothesized that the rising prevalence of obesity as well as the sharp decline in cigarette smoking might help explain their findings, given that testosterone levels are lower among overweight people and smoking increases testosterone levels. But these factors accounted for only a small percentage of the observed difference.
It's likely that some sort of environmental exposure is responsible for the testosterone decline, Travison said, although he said attempting to explain what this might be based on the current findings would be "pure conjecture."

Now let's flashback to a report from June of this year:

The number of rapes per capita in the United States has plunged by more than 85 percent since the 1970s, and reported rape fell last year even while other violent offenses increased, according to federal crime data.

This seemingly stunning reduction in sexual violence has been so consistent over the past two decades that some experts say they have started to believe it is accurate, even if they cannot fully explain why it is occurring.

In my Levitt-inspired "Freakaendocrinology," I suggested two explanations for the per capita drop in rapes: an aging population and the lowering of testosterone through environmental estrogens. Since rape is overwhelmingly committed by young(er) men, the demographic shift of our aging population would have an obvious influence on per capita rape statistics. And as the authors of the recent study hesitantly mention as a possible factor in lowering testosterone levels, environmental exposure (my specification: xenoestrogens) may play a part.

Just for kicks, we'll throw two more avenues of investigation on the table:

"Study: Extensive Cell Phone Use Could Lower Sperm Count"

And Slate's much ballyhooed "How the Web Prevents Rape: All that Internet porn reduces sex crimes. Really."

Someone get cracking on a regression analysis accounting for all of the factors mentioned above; your John Bates Clark Medal is waiting.

Posted by Bill at November 1, 2006 09:28 AM | TrackBack (1)

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Comments

I tried commenting here but couldn't yesterday. I got some message about moveable type.

Anyway,
After 20 years of making "being a boy" a mental disease, is this really surprising? Any boy who acts like a boy is put on Ritulin. I recently saw a stat that claimed that 10% of boys are on some ADHD drug. That ain't right.

And don't forget about metro-sexuals and other assorted types like that.

Testosterone is a controlled substance anymore, is there any surprise that's it down?

When I saw that headline, I had a mental image of Gloria Steinheim, in a flight suit standing in front of a "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Posted by: Veeshir at November 2, 2006 08:45 AM

Heh.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at November 2, 2006 09:00 AM

Ok how about this. The actual act of talking and more verbal nature of society causes an increase in estrogens and decrease in testosterone.

Posted by: aaron at November 2, 2006 03:20 PM

And for the cellphone study, I suspect than a man who spends 4 hours a day talking on the phone probably had low testosterone before he got a cellphone.

Posted by: aaron at November 2, 2006 03:22 PM

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