Odds are you’ve heard of “Low T.” That’s the pharmaceutical industry’s name for testosterone deficiency in men. There’s a lot of attention given to treating it. But far less emphasis on a national health crisis: mysteriously declining testosterone levels in American men population-wide. Today, we ask: what happens when a society’s males become—less manly with no firm answers as to why it’s happening?

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

For reasons unexplained something very big and potentially very bad is happening to American men. On average they’ve been losing an alarming amount of the crucial hormone that quite literally makes them men. And nobody has identified exactly why. Though it’s been the topic of much discussion and speculation

Web video: You want to know what the real reason why so many men are weak and feminine? It’s because we’ve been living in the good times. We’ve been in the good times for awhile.

Web video: This has coincided with a substantial drop in men’s testosterone levels in the U.S. since the 80’s.

Web video: According to Dr. Thomas Travison and his colleagues behind one such study, the average levels of the male hormone are dropping by about 1% per year.

Web video: Surgeons are also conducting an all time record number of operations to reduce man boobs.

Dr. Abraham Morgentaler: So testosterone peaks in the late teen years, in the early twenties.

Dr. Abraham Morgentaler, a Harvard testosterone researcher, says he began seeing patients with testosterone deficiency in the late 1980s. The men were desperate for help for sexual dysfunction. He treated them with testosterone replacements and has consulted for a company that makes a therapy.

Dr. Morgentaler says there are different ideas about what, exactly, is too low, and what treatment, if any, men should get.

But scientists say there’s no doubt that male hormone levels have shrunk in recent decades. And we’re not talking about common age-related decline. Men in their forties today, on average, have significantly less of the male sex hormone than their fathers did when they were forty.

Morgentaler: So the data are actually pretty clear that testosterone levels are declining over the last 50 years or so.

Sharyl: Can you give us in a timeframe of what we know or what the estimates are?

Morgentaler: Well, it depends on the study, and there have been several, but it ranges anywhere from 10 to about 20% to testosterone over the last 40 to 50 years.

Sharyl: So what age— let’s equate that to a man.

Morgentaler: So most of the studies are not in younger men actually, but middle-aged men.

Sharyl: Alright. A man 45 years old?

Morgentaler: Yeah. Right. So today the average testosterone level is about 450 nanograms per deciliter, we say. There’s a lot of variation from one person to another, but that’s an average of middle-aged, relatively healthy men. So what was it, 40, 50 years ago, it was probably around 500 or 550.

On top of that, it’s estimated that many millions of men have testosterone levels well below the current, lower average. The problem is reported elsewhere but is said to be much worse in the U.S. than other parts of the world.

Morgentaler: It’s hugely prevalent, affects about one out of three adult men over the age of 40. And not only does it cause symptoms that make the men not feel so good, but it’s associated with important health issues.

When testosterone is low, it means the testicles aren’t producing an adequate amount. That can lead to all kinds of signs and symptoms including: lower sex drive, erectile dysfunction, fatigue, brain fog, loss of muscle mass and strength, more body fat, weight gain, breast growth, sleep problems, mood swings, weak bones, and fertility problems.

Web video, online testimonial: The primary symptoms I was experiencing was mostly being tired, that’s the main one. Not maybe being as sharp as I was, not being able to think of things that I could previously do.

Web video, online testimonial: A little bit more irritable with kids. Feeling tired at work. Mind was foggy. Not as sharp at is used to be.

Morgentaler: So just by the fact of having a low testosterone puts a man at double the risk of later on developing diabetes, obesity, and what’s called the metabolic syndrome, which is a set of things that predisposes to cardiovascular disease. It’s a lot. And if we look at associations of low testosterone, we look at things like dementia, depression, testosterone is the single, in my opinion, the single most important blood test that tells us about the health status of a man.

Yet it’s noteworthy that a health issue impacting men on a societal level isn’t the topic of urgent research to pinpoint causes.

The answer as to why that’s the case might partly rest with the fact that a lot of money is made treating testosterone deficiency not so much figuring out how to prevent it.

There’s no shortage of doctors to treat men with what the pharmaceutical industry dubs “Low T.” And no shortage of testosterone replacement gels, injections, implants, patches, and pills. Treatments can run up to $1,000 per month.

Tv commercial: Hello welcome to T-Town. Like men over 40 everywhere these guys experience a drop in testosterone, don’t worry it happens to all of us.Can you believe this, Doug Flutie and Frank Thomas, you guys look great, once I turned 40Let me guess, less energy, less driveDefinitely.

Sharyl: Based on what you’ve described, I would say this sounds like a chronic urgent health issue. Something that’s not happening to just a couple of people, but something that’s population wide.

Morgentaler: Right, and where people are focused has been testosterone as a treatment and while that’s really important and extremely useful for men who are deficient in testosterone, what’s been ignored is that having the condition of testosterone deficiency and how much it reduces the human condition. Men are not who they were. They’ve lost something. They lose their sense of humor, they lose their ability to be great partners.

There are studies that point to pieces of the puzzle. But the researchers we asked didn’t want to do interviews about their work. They’ve found that countless things in our environment are hormone or endocrine disruptors and could be impacting testosterone levels. These include pesticides, additives, and other chemicals in our food, water, and medicine.

Morgentaler: People talk a lot about what are called endocrine disruptors, things in our environment that appear to affect not just humans, but other animals in terms of their sexual development and things like that. And then the latest thing is we got plastics everywhere, microplastics, nano plastics. That’s so recent in terms of sort of general awareness that I don’t think it’s been studied with regard to testosterone, but nano plastics and microplastics have been identified within the testicles of humans, and that’s where the source of testosterone is. So there certainly could be a connection.

Whatever the causes, the declining testosterone in American men could affect how society works.

Morgentaler: Anything with a backbone, fish, reptiles, mammals, they all have testosterone. So we’ve been castrating removing the testicles and the source of testosterone in domesticated animals for 10,000 years, right? And the observation is the same in every species, which is that the male tends to become more passive. Certainly men who have low levels of testosterone don’t have the get up and go to do often what they’ve done in their male, male positions, whether it’s within a family structure, whether it’s within a business organization or whatever.

For now, business is booming when it comes to treatment. Testosterone replacement therapy is raking in near $2 billion a year.

Sharyl: What are the implications in behavior of the male American species if testosterone levels have decreased that much over a short period of time? What do we expect to see in reality?

Morgentaler: Well, the doomsday scenario if things continue the way they are is not only the testosterone levels decline, but also sperm numbers. And there’s evidence that sperm numbers are declining too. They’re both made in the testicle.

We could have sexual problems that are more prevalent. And sex is actually about reproduction. So that if men can’t perform sexually to a certain extent, they may affect birth rates, which are already going down in the western developed world anyway. I think it’s possible, but I hope we never get there, that fertility will be reduced, that men will have more and more difficulty being sexual and active and physical, and that men will start feeling old before their time, and society will feel the impact of all of that.

Sharyl (on-camera): The same exposures disrupting hormones in men could be disrupting the hormonal balance in women. But there seems to be no major public effort to get to the bottom of that either.

Watch video here.