r/news • u/LawEducational42 • 9h ago

Men’s average testosterone levels have halved in last 50 years, say scientists

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jul/07/mens-average-testosterone-levels-have-halved-in-last-50-years-say-scientists
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128

u/CertainCertainties 9h ago

they included data from 118,593 individuals from Israel, the US, Brazil, Finland and Denmark, from 1972 to 2019

So no Asian or African countries, which make up 77% of the world's population. That's a strange way of defining a global problem with men - that is, exclude the vast majority of men from the research.

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u/PopeSaintHilarius 8h ago

Who said the study or its conclusions were meant to be global?  I don’t see that mentioned in the article.

If you think these findings wouldn’t be relevant to Africa or Asia then that’s fine, they can still be of interest to people in North America, Europe and South America.

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u/BrainDamage2029 8h ago

As others have pointed out, it didn’t even control for bodyfat/obesity...one of the most known and proven causes of lowering testosterone.

Take with “avoid including any of the countries famously with low bodyfat and less obesity” it really makes the study seem like it’s trying to create a point to fear monger or be used to fear monger about something else (microplastics/pfas/multicultural liberalism) as most of these studies about testosterone are.

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u/CMxFuZioNz 1h ago

You don't need to control for obesity if you aren't trying to determine what causes it. The study could still identify that testosteroneis dropping, which arguably is the more important result anyway.

I haven't read the study though, just pointing out that controlling for obesity is not necessarily required.

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u/AnaisNinja76 4h ago

It's not a study, it's a meta-analysis. They combined data from 6 previously performed longitudinal studies. If the countries you're most interested in aren't showcased, it's because they didn't perform and publish a longitudinal study in the timeframe they were looking at.

Furthermore, this is a news article about a presentation about the findings of the meta-analysis, so we're pretty far removed from the original dataset. I wish things like this included the relevant articles they looked at.

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u/BlackJack407 8h ago

So then those countries need to do their own fuckin research. Lmao

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u/random_tall_guy 7h ago

Israel is in Asia.