54% less in under 50 years. That is how simple and how alarming the finding is from a team led by Hagai Levine of the Hebrew University–Hadassah, after combining six studies that followed 118.593 men in Israel, the United States, Brazil, Finland, and Denmark.
Each study, taken separately, showed the same trend: total testosterone declines by nearly 1% per year, and that decline accelerated after the year 2000. Levine is not talking about a curious statistic, but about what he himself calls a crisis in men’s reproductive health.
The reason? Between a quarter and half of the decline could be explained by obesity and metabolic syndrome: body fat produces an enzyme, aromatase, that transforms testosterone into estrogen. The rest remains a mystery that scientists are investigating in the endocrine disruptors surrounding your daily life, present in products you use without thinking twice.
