You’re Not the Man Your Father Was
According to a new report from JAMA, testosterone therapy among American men is on the rise. From 2010 to 2013 alone, prescriptions more than doubled. Much of this surge can be chalked up to now-ubiquitous drug marketing campaigns urging older men to boost “low T” levels—campaigns that are aggressively pushed by Big Pharma companies like AbbVie (ABBV) and Eli Lilly (LLY).
The huge demand for this therapy is not a response to marketing hype. In fact, men’s age-adjusted testosterone levels really are on the decline. And much evidence suggests that they have been declining for decades, going all the way back to the Silent Generation born in the late 1920s and 1930s.
The most prominent study, a 2007 report in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, revealed a “substantial” drop in U.S. men’s testosterone levels since the 1980s—with average levels declining by about 1% per year. This means, for example, that a 60-year-old man in 2004 had testosterone levels 17% lower than those of a 60-year-old in 1987. Another study of Danish men produced similar findings, with double-digit declines among men born in the 1960s compared to those born in the 1920s.
The challenges to men’s health don’t end there. Rates of certain reproductive disorders (like testicular cancer) have risen over time, while multiple European studies have found that sperm counts are sinking—which some experts link to today’s low fertility rates.
These…