Why Men’s Testosterone Levels Are Plummeting - Dr Shanna Swan

What's happening to testosterone levels in men?

So that's a great question, and actually I work with a research group and have been for quite a long time now, since, um, you know, 10 years, uh, looking at trends. And, and the trend we're looking at right now is testosterone. And it's difficult. Uh, we haven't finished it. We're in the midst of it. Maybe I'll come back and talk to you when we get the results. Um, but there are a number of papers published that we think are pretty authoritative that talk about declining testosterone. But the, the other thing that we can look at, which is different from doing a literature review, you can say, "Well, how is it clinically?" And there's a lot of data, uh, showing that the use of testosterone, particularly by young men, has been climbing, um, alarmingly actually. Um, so from a lot of measures, we have hints that testosterone is declining. That's a long way from saying what we said with sperm count, you know, worldwide we see a decline. And we'll come back to that, I'm sure. We can't say that about testosterone at this point, but we can say there are a lot of signals suggesting that testosterone is in trouble.

Yeah, obviously one of the challenges we have here is, are young men taking testosterone because they're suffering with the effects of low T, uh, erectile dysfunction, low energy, low mood, et cetera, et cetera? Or is it because of increases in body dysmorphia or unrealistic representations of, of men in media and they feel like they need to use testosterone as a performance enhancer to become more masculine or to become more muscular and stuff? Uh, why is it the case that you have more verifiable data around sperm count than you do around testosterone levels? I would have thought that testosterone levels would have been more widely available. Uh, I know more guys that know their testosterone count than know their sperm count.

That's a good, good point. That's today and probably in the US. Um, but, um, sperm count has been under study for, uh, 65 years. So th- there's a, there's a long history of studying sperm count, and there's been very little on testosterone. Um, so I can't tell you why that is. I mean, men give a sperm sample for a number of reasons, not just research, right? They give it for pre-vasectomy. They give it, um, because they wanna be tested for possible infertility. They give it for a lot of reasons, and I think it's much more common. Uh, giving a testosterone, a blood sample, which you have to give for testosterone, is, um, I think less... I know it's less widespread 'cause there's much less literature on it. And it, when scientists-

Oh, interesting.

Yeah.

It's so interesting to me. You know, a- a- again, uh, maybe aga- you're, you're probably right. This is my not only weird bias, but also my Austin podcast bro, biohacker world bias coming into play, where all of my friends know that they're at 755 nanogr- nanograms per deciliter and, and they're gonna try and get up to 900 because blah, blah, blah. Uh, and I don't know who knows their sperm count. Um, just before we get onto sperm count, tell me, from the testosterone, i- it seems there are some, uh, sort of, I guess, uh, rough-hewn signals that indicate the testosterone is going down. Um, how important is testosterone? You know, there is a, uh, uh, somewhat in the media of a demonization in some ways of, uh, uh, of testosterone in men or, or some of the activities, I suppose, of, you know, high testosterone men. Um, how important is testosterone to function for men, for longevity, for health, for reproduction? What does it do-