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I don’t understand why obesity seemingly gets tossed aside when this subject comes up. It’s the one problem you can see in plain sight at any gathering of people.
I don’t understand why obesity seemingly gets tossed aside when this subject comes up. It’s the one problem you can see in plain sight at any gathering of people.
> Obesity was also not controlled for, which is known to be strongly correlated with low testosterone.
Testosterone is directly causally inverse to bodyfat in men (once above some very low baseline) Fat directly converts testosterone to Estrogen via a process called aromatization. Personally my Testosterone close to doubled when going from 25% bodyfat to 13%. I get blood tests regularly and can see the levels fluctuate pretty closely with fat levels
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Testosterone is directly causally inverse to bodyfat in men (once above some very low baseline) Fat directly converts testosterone to Estrogen via a process called aromatization. Personally my Testosterone close to doubled when going from 25% bodyfat to 13%. I get blood tests regularly and can see the levels fluctuate pretty closely with fat levels
My takeaway from this is that obesity... is the cure for baldness? xd
I don’t understand why obesity seemingly gets tossed aside when this subject comes up. It’s the one problem you can see in plain sight at any gathering of people.
Because it's too obvious. There needs to be some hidden, world encompassing conspiracy, so that people feel superior when they are one of the few enlightened ones that see through the matrix and start drinking raw milk to live like our testosterone pumped ancestors.
Option one: obesity and weight problems. Statistically 77% of your audience is either overweight or obese because 77% of Americans are either overweight or obese.
Option two: feminism, microplastics, anime, or literally any other thing than option one.
I don’t understand why obesity seemingly gets tossed aside when this subject comes up. It’s the one problem you can see in plain sight at any gathering of people.
That's literally the main point of the article, the stand-first: "Exclusive: Researchers warn of ‘major crisis in male reproductive health’ partly driven by obesity and diabetes"
It’s like we need something more interesting than “people sit too much and eat too much”.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because it's too obvious. There needs to be some hidden, world encompassing conspiracy, so that people feel superior when they are one of the few enlightened ones that see through the matrix and start drinking raw milk to live like our testosterone pumped ancestors.
If you are a podcast host that gives hot takes on news headlines, which one are you going to choose? Option one: obesity and weight problems. Statistically 77% of your audience is either overweight or obese because 77% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Option two: feminism, microplastics, anime, or literally any other thing than option one.
Poor headline writing around obesity is no excuse for deflective headline writing away from obesity!
Or if you prefer a different market’s take: “Corrupted food is feminizing men” and then diving into how Big Ag has a secret agenda to poison men everywhere and both political parties are in on it, as a way to introduce the issues of artificial sweeteners (HFCS, splenda, monkfruit, and others) would be stunningly effective. Yeah, it’s kinda exploitative, but when in Rome applies when it comes to public health messaging, and I’d rather that market learned to direct some of their rage at the corporations that deserve it while giving them a chance to decide for the better.
Point being, there’s no excuse for avoiding obesity in headlines if you want to write clickbait for an audience. And with #3 above, especially if you set “Thanks, obesity!” as the Subtitle that only shows up when you visit the page, as Vox and others do, then you can maximize clicks far better than either option #1 or #2 would.
Before the reactions to the headline get too out of hand, the article says the study couldn’t rule out that obesity and diabetes might drive this change. Occam’s Razor leads me to lean on this more than any other exotic explanation. Of course, PFAS and microplastics aren’t great for sperm health, but neither were leaded gasoline and DDT before they were curtailed.
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That is not how biology works
While I mostly agree with your statement there's evidence that testosterone is linked to social status and mental well being. A 50% drop most likely has a multifactorial explanation, being told that some traditional male traits are bad (and thus lower well being or social status) or medicated away (see e.g the rise in ADHD and Autism diagnosis) might have some effect. I'm not nearly knowledgable enough to give any re…
Snow might have some effect on the height a mountain, but most people believe geological activity is more important than weather.
The relevant question isn’t whether something or another might have “some effect” it is how to reduce the main factors which we already know damage men’s sexual health. And spending time on the long tail of factors which may or may not be relevant is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room for addressing the factors we already know are most of the problem.