Over the last 100 years, the average available testosterone in men has dropped by over 50%. The story is the same for sperm count. From my reading, there’s a lot of factors driving this change. Obesity, lifestyle, exercise, diet, microplastic exposure etc.
It feels like an epidemic that people aren’t really talking about, once you get down the rabbit hole you’ll see that there’s a tonne of really passionate people trying to raise awareness for this issue, they just aren’t getting much exposure.
Check out this snippet with Dr. Shanna Swan talking about the effect of plastics on hormone production.
I’ve never been one to overanalyse a situation, if something sparks my interest, I’d rather just use my own body as a test subject, and see if I feel any differences. You can argue the pro and cons of pretty much any dietary choice till the cows come home (and many people do).
I’ve just ordered a blood test, that will give me the measurement of my main hormone levels, including testosterone. I’ll also be apeing into the advice of people who are prevalent in the testosterone epidemic space, and see what the effect of following this advice is on my hormone levels.
Broadly speaking, these are the lifestyle changes I’m making:
- Eating more red meat, especially organ meat such as liver. The micronutrients in liver such as vitamin B and other minerals are widely shown to regulate healthy hormone production. I’ll be making sure this is grass-fed, cos why not.
- Getting at least 20 minutes a day of sun exposure, without sunscreen
- Removing plastics from the kitchen. No plastic containers, certainly no heating plastic contained foods in microwaves.
- Completely eliminating seed oils. Honestly the topic of seed oils is so fascinating. They are literally everywhere and have been touted as ‘heart healthy’ and a better alternative to animal fats such as butter or tallow. Take a look at this video which explains the financial incentive to pushing seed oils and how it can drastically affect your health
My sleep and exercise regime I feel are already pretty healthy, so I won’t really be making any changes there.
It’s going to be interesting to see the initial bloodwork I have done, and if this changes through time as I make these changes.
This post is purposefully vague, I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything - I have no idea if there’s any truth to this sperm count/testosterone epidemic being to do with seed oils or not eating liver, but I guess there’s only one way to find out…