Is there an active attack on your testosterone levels and on your manhood? There most definitely is one socially, as men are taught from a young age to be soft, emotional, more passive, less aggressive, and less dangerous by a soft, extremely feminine and left-leaning education system.
There’s also the rise of identity politics, where victimhood is prized and applauded and the honorable virtues of manhood, competition, aggression, dominance, self-reliance, and winning, are condemned.
But is there an attack on our hormones, those building blocks of manhood that make men, men? The main hormone is testosterone, it’s responsible for our increased muscle mass in comparison to our wonderful female counterparts, as well as our body hair, aptitude to take more risk, and even aggression, you know, the things that serve us well when we’re standing at the city gates or our doorstep keeping those who are inside safe and ignorant of the battles being waged on the periphery.
Something is making men produce lower testosterone levels, and it doesn’t appear to be an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, though it’s a factor, that can explain the massive decline found in a Massachusetts Male Aging Study where they found an age-independent decrease in male testosterone levels of about 1.3% each year, with the total testosterone levels of an average male independent of his age in 2004 were found to be 17% lower than those of an average man who was the same age in 1987.
This steep decline in manhood, in the hormone that makes men, men, is absolutely shocking and has to be seen as an epidemic, though it’s not being given nearly enough attention.
Why You Need High Testosterone Levels
From a young age young men, otherwise known as boys, display very different ways of entertaining themselves. We like battle. We like guns. We like danger and adventure.
Boys don’t like tea or talking on the phone about emotional issues, we prefer to be outside always nearly injuring ourselves in the pursuit of something that feeds our soul, makes us feel alive, and makes us feel like men.
Testosterone both helps us be better at being men, and it acts as a reward system for being better at being a man.
You get a boost in testosterone when you compete, another increase when you win. You get increases in the short term and in the long term from working out with heavy weights. You get an increase in testosterone from having sex. You also see in increase in testosterone when you make money.
High testosterone also helps you burn more fat by recruiting more fat as a fuel source, repair muscle tissue, helping you build more muscle, and it greatly impacts your libido and sex drive. High testosterone also reduces your likelihood of experiencing depression, certain cancers, and heart disease.
Men are better when their testosterone levels are high. Society is better when our men have high testosterone levels.
Yet, this important hormone is on the decline in men. In this article we’ll look at the society-wide factors, not just the individual ones like poor diet, inactivity, incorrect training that we’ve already covered at length on this website.
FACT: Your Grandfather’s Testosterone Levels Were Double Yours
At the aforementioned 1.3% decline in testosterone, my grandfather’s testosterone levels at my age would be 74% higher than mine.
What has led to this? What are the factors in our society that have dramatically degraded male testosterone levels across society and age?
We’ll go through them, from a real desire to effeminate men, to innovations that are having a negative effect on our hormones.
Radiation
If you look at the two main culprits (your laptop and cell phones, but mainly cell phones), our testosterone levels have nearly halved since they became popular.
From a correlational standpoint, this deserves a ton of attention. Cell phones become popular, testosterone levels in men plummet.
But is it causational or is the cause, the increasingly sedentary life we live as a result of technology more the culprit of this decline, or something else all together?
There is evidence that testosterone levels plummet when exposed to radiation, and that sperm count does the same.
From faradays.co — a company that’s created a boxer that limits radiation exposure to the testicals (just bought my first pair) — this image shows the correlation between an increase in both cell phone use and the power of the airwaves used to transmit data, and the decline of both sperm count and testosterone levels in men.
Again, causation, or mere chance that the two would align so dramatically?
When it comes to sperm count, radiation definitely has an effect.
In this study, cancer patients saw a 35% reduction in testosterone after treatment.
The radiation from cell phones and laptops is particularly concerning. Radiation emitted from laptops can be measured using a device called a gaus meter, with the 0.3 milligauss level being considered safe, and many laptops have readings higher than 200 milligauss level.
Don’t rest your laptop on your nuts, where the majority of your testosterone levels are produced and all of your sperm resides.
In this study 32 healthy men with normal semen levels gave a sperm sample that was then divided into two equal portions (A and B).
“Portions A of all involved men were placed for 5 hours in a thermostat, and portions B were placed into a second thermostat for the same period of time, where a mobile phone in standby/talk mode was placed. After 5 hours of incubation the sperm samples from both thermostats were re–evaluated regarding basic motility parameters. The presence of DNA fragmentation in both A and B portions of each sample was determined each hour using a standard sperm chromatin dispersion test.
The number of spermatozoa with progressive movement in the group, influenced by electromagnetic radiation, is statistically lower than the number of spermatozoa with progressive movement in the group under no effect of the mobile phone. The number of non–progressive movement spermatozoa was significantly higher in the group, which was influenced by cell phone radiation. The DNA fragmentation was also significantly higher in this group.”
Electromagnetic Fields
“A study from Zhejiang University compared 77 men who work at a power plant that generates electricity with 77 controls with low occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields.
The power-plant workers, compared to the controls, had statistically significantly lower levels of testosterone (β = −0.3 nmol/L; p = 0.015), testosterone-to-estradiol ratio (β = −15.6; p = 0.037), and NF-κB (β = −20.8 ng/L; p = 0.045).
From this article on MDMag.com: “The researchers then analyzed how each of the power plant workers used electronic devices in private life, and they found still more evidence of the effects of electromagnetic fields. Higher mobile phone fees, more years of mobile phone usage, and higher home electric bills were all found to have significant effects on testosterone levels and testosterone-to-estradiol ratios.”
The thing that hasn’t been studied is the effects of radiation in general, as it increasingly surrounds us on a daily basis. I’m on my desktop as I write this, with my cell phone a few feet away, and a couple more feed away from that, my wireless modem or whatever they call those things.
As the technology gets stronger and our use increases is this decline in both testosterone levels in men and overall sperm counts going to continue to fall?
Is removing ourselves from technology all-together going to be the solution that will bring back our manhood?
While radiation and electromagnetic fields are a concern, chemicals seem to be an even greater concern as many of the chemicals we use, touch, clothe ourselves, lather ourselves with, and even consume on a daily basis have been conclusively shown to increase estrogen in men, which is one of testosterone’s arch enemies.
The Biggest Culprit is Likely Chemicals
We’ve become not only dependent on, but surrounded by and filled up with chemicals that lower testosterone and increase estrogen in men.
These chemicals that increase estrogen levels in men are found everywhere, including:
- In the pesticides used on fruits and vegetables
- Deodorants
- Shampoo
- Cologne
- Sunscreen
- Cleaning products
- And plastics.
We have plastics in our clothing, we brush our teeth with plastic bristles and brushes, with toothpaste filled with chemicals that increase estrogen. We lather ourselves with deodorants so we don’t stink, and shampoos, and soap.
The good news is that for most things there’s now a natural alternative – thanks to capitalism doing its thing. The problem is that most people don’t know what to look out for.
Being that these chemical estrogens are everywhere, in our food, on our food, genetically integrated into our food, and so on, it’s tough to rid them completely from our lives, but we can come relatively close.
A few steps to take:
- Never carry or heat food in plastic, always use glass or metal.
- Buy your produce from a farmer you know, a farmer’s market that actually doesn’t use pesticides, or buy organic. The problem, not all ‘organic’ is actually organic and devoid of chemical estrogens, and the fastest growing sector in organic produce is coming from the shady land of China. If you can grow your own, with good seeds, do it, otherwise, just do your best and don’t worry about this too much.
- Buy good clothing that’s made out of cotton or real materials, not polyester (common in workout clothing).
- Buy natural deodorant, shampoo, soap, and toothpaste. There are options for all of this very readily available today.
- Filter your water with a carbon filter.
For the full list of chemicals that increase estrogen levels in men, check out this article.
The more you can move away from the chemicals that we’ve adopted more and more, and from the radiation that’s a relatively new addition and coincides with this decline in testosterone we’re seeing across all ages in men in the West, especially, the greater chance you have to create the high testosterone levels you need to live at your best.
There are other factors, of course.
You need to cut body fat, get in shape, eat the right foods, and lower your stress levels (bad stress, not the stress of improvement and achievement), all of which is covered in my book, The Man Diet, you can get a FREE copy delivered to you here.
The Fall of Manhood
From the journal Human Reproduction Update:
“Researchers – from Israel, the US, Denmark, Brazil and Spain – said total sperm count had fallen by 59.3 per cent between 1971 and 2011 in Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand. Sperm concentration fell by 52.4 per cent.”
“Sperm count and other semen parameters have been plausibly associated with multiple environmental influences, including endocrine disrupting chemicals, pesticides, heat and lifestyle factors, including diet, stress, smoking and body-mass index… Therefore, sperm count may sensitively reflect the impacts of the modern environment on male health throughout the life course.”
Researchers all over the world are waking up to the fact that sperm count and testosterone levels are declining, yet they’re not fully certain as to what the cause of the decline is. It’s likely a number of factors.
That is, modern life is detrimental to male sperm counts. That is, modern society is detrimental to male sperm counts. Thus, men have to de-modernize, we have to do the non-modern.
What’s ‘modern’? Being surrounded by plastics and chemicals that lower our testosterone levels. Sitting inside all day. Watching TV. Worrying about things that don’t need to be worried about. Whining and complaining. Spending more time on our butt than on our feet. Spending more time inside, with central heating and the ease that is modern life.
The fall of manhood, this decline is sperm count, in testosterone, in the manly virtues that made western nations so great, so free for everyone, so powerful, and so opportunistic, are failing and falling because we’re living in a way that is not human.
Live Like a Man
To ask an alpha male chimpanzee to not aim to be the alpha is asking him to be something that is not in his nature. To live a sedated, easy life, is to ask men to do something that is not in their nature.
Being fat is not a natural state for a human, especially a human male. You just didn’t get fat 10,000 years ago. It was impossible. Other men wouldn’t go out and hunt so you could sit there gorging yourself. To eat, as a man, you had to hunt.
The chemicals, the pesticides, the cleaning products, the radiation, all of this goes against our nature. To not compete, to not adventure, to not dare, goes against the masculine soul, and our bodies, our societies suffer by us not living manfully.
So, get off your ass.
Get outside.
Lift heavy things, push your body.
Surround yourself with natural things as best you can.
Eat animals, lots of them. Saturated fats are vital for testosterone levels, as are the non-pesticide latent fruits, potatoes, and carbs that help you lower cortisol.
Let’s reclaim our manhood even while our modern society aims to crush it.
