Boys and Men in Crisis. Biology? Culture? Both!

Posted on March 16, 2013 by INTJ

This is the last of a series of five blogs.  In chronological order they are:

Shrinking penises, dropping sperm counts and bigger heads:  What’s going on here?  

Temperament, Testosterone and 21st Century Culture:  More on “What’s going on Here”? 

Sperm, testosterone and penises:  Male reproductive health in crisis.                                       

Temperament, Final sperm comments and the Declining Male Brand.

Boys and Men in Crisis.  Biology? Culture?  Both! 

 

Part I:  What physical and social forces affect testosterone levels in men?

We have  known for awhile that male testosterone  levels have  a lot of variability.  There is a circadian rhythm, with T highest in the morning and dropping slowly through the day.  There is even a seasonal pattern with T lowest in the spring.  Midline obesity (waist and belly) produces its own testosterone disruptor in the release of estrogen from fat cells. (Strange but true, and not true in other areas of fat accumulation). This  type of fat reduces adult levels of testosterone in many men.  T also drops slowly with age and with decreasing muscular fitness.

More relevant here is the fact that adult levels of testosterone are also vulnerable to events in the social environment.  For an obvious example, sexual arousal increases testosterone in multiple circumstances.  Watching an explicit movie is enough to raise the level 35% and this does not peak until 60 to 90 minutes later.  T even increases when men have brief conversations with women.  Wikepedia reports that “Men who have sexual encounters with unfamiliar or multiple partners experience large increases the morning after.”*  They also note that “Men who watch sexually explicit films also report increased optimism and decreased exhaustion.

That last finding about increased optimism is interesting and important. We naturally think of testosterone as simply a sexual hormone, but studies of men with low T have shown a number of other important functions supported by it.  Maintaining good muscle/bone mass and strength is one important role.  However, quoting again from  Wikipedia*  “Literature suggests that attention, memory and spatial ability are key cognitive functions affected by testosterone in humans.  Preliminary evidence suggests that low testosterone levels may be a risk factor for cognitive decline and possibly for dementia of the Alzheimer’s type.”  More recently, good new research indicates that testosterone may be protective against depression in men.**  A large scale study in 2008 found that  older men with low levels of T were 271 % more likely to have “clinically significant signs of depression” than those with normal levels.  In general, women are far more likely to have serious depression than are men and this continues to about age 65, when the difference fades away.  It is thought that this action of testosterone may explain at least part of this difference. Continue reading →

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Temperament, Final sperm comments and the problem of the declining male brand.

Posted on March 11, 2013 by INTJ

Preface:  Final comments on declining sperm

I finished my recent blog on sperm decline and related reproductive horror stories by coming to  the strange conclusion that  the “end of men” could be in sight but no one is screaming.

The question is why?  Very briefly, I want to suggest several reasons.  One is that there have been negative studies as well as positive ones, and with that there have been  (much like global warming) believers and deniers.  In 2008 a study was published entitled Declining World Wide Sperm Counts:  Disproving a Myth.*  The author had found more studies finding no change than those showing a decline and concluded that “The evidence accumulated to date showing no decline in sperm counts or sperm concentration in populations through the developed world should be accepted.“  No real explanation for the positive findings was given.  He also totally rejected all evidence for endocrine disruptor theories (plasticizers, pesticides, etc) as supporting human or animal effects on sperm count and advised that “this leg of supposed evidence for proposed legislation is weak to the point of breaking.”

From that point on to 2011, other skeptical articles appeared including one in a New York Times column, but the 2012 study from France that I reported earlier has tipped the balance strongly back to sperm decline.**  This research involved over 26,000 men over a period of 17years (1989 to 2005) whose partners had fallopian tube problems and were being tested  in government reproductive centers throughout France (126 different centers). Data were collected in this circumstance  for 17 years from 1989 to 2005 under very careful conditions.  The trend showed a continuous decline of approximately 1.9% per year for a total drop of 32% over this period.  It is a truly impressive study.

France already has a fertility rate that is slightly below human replacement level, as does much of Europe.  If the 2012 study is accurate, and the decline continues at 1.9% per year the Frenchman’s average sperm count should be approaching the sub-fertility level of 20 million in 45 years..

So, once more, why isn’t anybody screaming?  The fact that contradictory findings have appeared is no doubt part of this.  It is hard to get upset about a potentially terrible, but unclear danger, and human to push it aside, mentally.  That is part of it, but still, assuming this may be global or even just in the Western world–shouldn’t we be organizing a massive international program to get to the bottom of this?  Shouldn’t we be examining all the flaws in any past studies and trying to do very up-to-date, coordinated, world-wide research?  Now?  With all possible speed?

Uncertainty is one problem here and if the environmental toxin theory is correct, there are also very serious problems ahead for both manufacturers and users of industrial chemicals and pesticides,  but I wonder if there is something more to this.  Is there a male branding problem here?  How many years can you describe testosterone as a social toxin without seriously disparaging its carriers?  This may be made worse by the fact that the men studied are those from highly developed Western countries–Great Britain, the Scandinavian countries, much of central Europe, the United States, and Australia. Are people consciously or unconsciously pushing it aside as a problem of economically comfortable, mostly white males (and their partners) who are not one of the populations of concern in the world?

That opens up a broader thought–could all these male problems–declining sperm, shrinking penises, and dropping testosterone levels–perhaps even dropping achievements in education and the world of work–be at some level the reflection of society’s rejection of maleness?  This is not to disparage the endocrine disruptor findings, but rather to ask if there may also be a cultural cause?

Has something really happened to the male brand? Continue reading →

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Sperm, testosterone and penises: Male reproductive health in crisis?

Posted on February 28, 2013 by INTJ

In an earlier blog I focused on reports of declining penis size in human males, declining sperm count, and even increases in brain size and changes in head shape. A follow-up blog explored reports that men are falling behind in a variety of areas including academic achievement, careers, and even parental choice of newborn gender–a possible change to preferring girl babies.

I had expected to close this small series out with some reflections on what all this might mean.  However, I made the mistake of digging a little deeper into the research on sperm count and penis size and found a sea (or maybe it is a swamp) of related research.  This blog was designed to focus on temperament, but I hope that interested readers will bear with some biology today.  Next week I will follow up on the various ways that all of this might be related to temperament and personality at least in men.

The first major study of sperm health reported that sperm counts in healthy males had dropped in those surveyed by over 50%, from 1938 to 1990, going from 113 million sperm per milliliter in 1940 to 66 million in 1990.*  This might still sound like overkill in the sperm department, but it is not.  A great many sperm in any sample are damaged or dysfunctional and thus unable to impregnate. (This problem is thought to be increasing also.) For this and other reasons, a count below twenty million/milliliter is considered to be somewhere between subfertile and effectively sterile. (It apparently takes an enormous number  of strivers to produce one winner.) Continue reading →

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Temperament, Testosterone and 21st Century Culture: More on “What’s going on here?”

Posted on January 11, 2013 by INTJ

Part I:  Men/women and more odd findings

Last December I blogged about three odd research findings, mostly related to men:  Shrinking penis size, shrinking sperm counts, and increasing head/brain/skull size.  There is nothing new to tie the growing head size to the shrinking genital size/count;  it is a dead end there for the moment.  However, I went back and reviewed Hanna Rosin’s book on The End of Men and  the Rise of Women* and gave some thought to what she found so ominous in the recent behavior of boys and men.  In an article published prior to the book** she noted that a long time sperm expert was finding that couples were more frequently asking for girls than for boys and quoted him as saying “Women live longer than men.  They do better in this economy.  More of them graduate from college.  They go into space and do everything men do, and sometimes they do it a whole lot better.  I mean, hell, get out of the way–these females are going to leave us males in the dust.”

Rosin’s book seems to agree with this assessment and go beyond it.  She says, for example, that preference for sons is not only changing in the United States, but is completely disappearing in South Korea, and rapidly falling in such surprising places as China and India.  She notes that “Earlier this year, for the first time in American history, the balance of the workforce tipped toward women [in the US], who now hold a majority of the nation’s jobs…..Women dominate in today’s colleges and professional schools–for every two men who will receive a B.A. this year, three women will do the same.”  Later, she comments that “According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs–up from 26.1 percent in 1980.  They make up 54 percent of all accountants and held about half of all banking and insurance jobs and hold about half of all banking and insurance jobs.  About a third of America’s physicians are now women, as are 45% of associates in all law firms. Continue reading →

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Shrinking penises, dropping sperm counts and bigger heads: What’s going on here?

Posted on December 5, 2012 by INTJ

Several fascinating but perplexing science reports have turned up in 2012, mostly concerning men.  A September 19th report indicated that an Italian study had found a 10% shrinkage in “the average male penis” in the past 50 years.*  This threw American radio commentator, Rush Limbaugh into a minor (for him) fit, in which he said, “I think it’s feminism…If it’s tied to the last 50 years–the average size of [a male's] member is 10% smaller than 50 years–it has to be the feminazis, the chickification and everything else.”  The researchers suggest weight gain, smoking, stress, and environmental pollutants.  Then again, the social expectations for male behavior have changed a great deal in the last 50 years, so that would be one form of stress! Continue reading →

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