Definitely endocrine disrupting chemicals. The food, even the clothes, the detergents, soaps, etc. Plastic for sure.

Also our minds and lifestyles. Get that sun, your vitamin D. zinc etc. Workout and practice no fap. Get adequate sleep and rest. Turn off the tv and the news. Never skip leg day and make sure to train them at least 2x a week.

For some it's sitting at a PC all day, letting your balls get hot. For most, it's a diet full of growth hormones, artificial additives and pesticides. Also ......

#Avoid soya products.
#Purchase local organic products.
#Exerscise; push your body to the limit as often as you can.
#Avoid antibiotics or medications whenever possible.
#Include pomegranate, celery and Moringa in your daily diet.
#Try not to let your balls get too hot for too long.
#Don't keep your mobile in your pocket next to your balls.
#Socialise and flirt with women. The mind will tell your balls that there's action ahead.
#Try not to rely upon instant fixes. They might impede your natural resources to produce test.
#Don't wank.

The above seems to work for me. Mid 50s, still mega horny. Of course, I can't perform like I did at 20, but still have morning wood, dirty thoughts all day, and explosive orgasms.

(05-10-2021 10:10 PM)metaltree Wrote:  If part of the problem is plastics, it makes me wonder about pheromones sold in plastic bottles. Endocrine disrupting chemicals could be leaching out of the plastic and into the alcohol. Then we could be spraying the chemicals right on to our skin every time we use the product.

I'm seriously considering not using any pheromone products in plastic bottles again.

If you don't like endocrine disrupting chemicals, stay away from pheromones.

I think there are several issues. A big thing, as eyeofra mentioned, is that people now do much less manual labor. We sit more and move less as part of our jobs.

There's also the issue of increased mutational load, which nobody wants to talk about for really good reasons. But the rate of diabetes is increasing in the US, as is birth weight. In the past, high birth weight births would be lethal but now we have c-sections.

Hopefully we find a way to select embryos for low mutational load sometime in the next few generations, and people are willing to run with the technology. Cuba seems to be doing something like that with testing and abortions now and it's dramatically lowered their medical costs, but that wouldn't fly with a big slice of conservatives in the United States.

I agree with everything you all are saying.
I’d like to add that Your emotional state plays a role in your hormone levels. If you cry a lot as a man you will produce less test and look more feminine.

(03-13-2022 12:18 AM)nickels Wrote:  I agree with everything you all are saying.
I’d like to add that Your emotional state plays a role in your hormone levels. If you cry a lot as a man you will produce less test and look more feminine.

I second this. Mental state reflects physical body.
Try and always think you're awesome. Watch how your body language changes and you'll act more masculine.

A very interesting discussion.
All points brought are well understood by the science:
- environmental toxins acting as xenoestrogens
- stress and chronic sleep deprivation
- less physical activity
- modern food and eating habits
- the mental and behavioral axis

I would also add, that in the modern world you can get away with being "less of a man" than centuries ago, which in turn would remove the evolutionary selective pressure from this aspect. So future men might have lower T levels even if they would have all external factors corrected.

On the other hand we get older, and T levels decline by age. A bunch of members of this forum are in their 40ies and 50ies, me included. 20000 years ago we most likely be dead since a decade. 4 or 5 generations ago we would be old men beyond their active mating period, while most of us mid-aged guys seem to be quite sexually active.

However the elephant in the room - imho - is food and exercise. The muscle and the adipose are not only metabolic but also endocrine tissues. High muscular activity increases T levels while high body fat decreases it via the formation of aromatase, the enzym that converts T into estrogen. Interestingly both effects are in a positive feedback loop which can lead to a vicious cycle, as estrogens drive fat accumulation while androgen drive muscle formation. So if a man gets fatter, the fat makes aromatase, the aromatase converts androgens to estrogens which remodels the body composition to become even less muscular and even more fatter.

If you understand this pathway and see the pandemic of obesity, no wonders that T levels are declining worldwide.

On a personal level I eat low carb and do resistance exercise to play the biochemistry in my favor. I monitor my stress level and sleep with a fitness watch and take in enough Zn and Se in. I avoid plastic bottles and cups. I actively avoid mass media news consumption as their addictive hook mechanism is fear. I also avoid all seed oils. The fat composition that we eat today is totally changed from the past. We have much too much n-6 polyunsaturated fats (soy, corn, safflower, sunflower, cotton seed oil) and too less n-3 (fish, pastorised meat). The sex hormones are fat soluble (that is why we have the mones in oil or alcohol) and derived from cholesterol, which is in turn made from saturated fat.

So there are many things in a bad state when it comes to T levels but I think one can actively drive it up by personal choices.

(04-06-2022 12:18 AM)Marcus Antonius Wrote:  On a personal level I eat low carb

Just curious if you are willing to share:
Are you low carb to the point where you are in ketosis? Do you regularly cycle carbs back into your diet to take yourself out of ketosis? How long have you been doing it for?

In our drinking water from the tap (highly developed European country):

- Plastics (they're everywhere nowadays - it was even found in biological honey)
- PFAS (technically no substance, but a group of techniques, where they make fluorine compounds, to coat raincoats and baking pans - far more hormonal invasive than plastics)
- Agricultural poison to 'help' plants grow
- Antibiotics from the livestock industry
- Medicine leftovers from humans
- Birth control leftovers
- Illegal drugs leftovers (yes, people apparently use so much that it's visible in their excretions)
- Many toxins, which are often not even defined yet

All with all their influences on our hormonal system.

Most people drink from the tap and use the water for everything in the kitchen.

Of course the government tells us that there's no problem. What else could they do? But still I'm quite often concerned about the influence of all this on our bodies.

You triggered me, typically I can't stop to spread the word :

I do low carb, not a real, more difficult keto diet. I do it in combination with intermediate fasting between 16 and 60 hours. After such fast, I measure 0.3 - 0.7 mmol ketones. If I do a 8 - 10 mile run fasted it's higher, up to 3 mmol, so than I'm in ketosis, but 2 - 3 hours later the values are back under 1.
There is a discussion in the low carb world how helpful the blood and urine keto tests are, because in a keto adapted state the body simply use these ketones. Only in a not fully adopted state they rise high because there are more made than used.
With the carbs in veggies and the gluconeogenesis from protein I'm not constantly in ketosis, but my blood sugar stays always below 6.5 mmol.
Body fat is down 20 pound in a year. With over 50 I would say I m back 'lgn'
I'm doing it for over a year now. Inflammation ant cortisol levels are down. The later should result in higher T levels, the test is on the way to the lab.