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Comment by Ancapistani | Hacker News Reader

Not directly relevant to the article, but I'm curious if anyone else has connected the fact that fathers are spending more time being close with their children at the same time average global testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation?

To be clear, I'm not trying to point a causal arrow here, or even say it's good or bad. I read a study the other day that asserted that fathers who spent more time parenting have measurably lower testosterone levels, and that the delta correlates to the amount of time spent.

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> testosterone levels have dropped without a solid explanation

There is a solid explanation.

First, before the adoption of mass spec, studies used a less accurate method of measuring testosterone that overstated testosterone levels.

Also, the studies showing the population level decline in testosterone generally controlled for obesity (which naturally lowers testosterone) using BMI. But BMI is a very crude measure.

When studies control with better methods like BMI + waist circumference, and only compare samples using the mass spec measurement method, the unexplained population level decline goes away. After fixing the measurement method, what remains of the decline can be explained by BMI + waist circumference. In other words, modern men are more prone to obesity and metabolic syndrome, which naturally reduces testosterone. Case closed.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22150314/

That study appears to be US only, while global studies have shown the effect.

For that matter, some _animal_ studies have shown declining testosterone as well. That doesn't seem to be well-studied, but if it holds up it would make me lean toward it being something environmental (e.g. microplastic pollution)

I linked that study because it is particularly interesting because they run the mass spec test on archived blood samples.

But there are other studies and meta analyses which cover other countries and come to the same conclusion.

I think many of the studies claiming to find significant population level decline are older and overstate the issue due to the methodological errors outlined in my previous post. If you are thinking of a particular one, please share a link.

I am not familiar with the research on testosterone levels in animals. In humans, while not conclusory, I do think the evidence suggests that increasing rates of obesity and metabolic syndrome are the proximate cause of testosterone decline.

I appreciate it, and will catch up on the current state. It’s been a couple of years since I looked into this.

Here is a short video explaining the situation: https://youtu.be/XT5TKf9Qfl4

If that's the case, that's not a bad thing. Maybe men who aren't properly bonded with their kids have higher than normal testosterone for some reason?

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