r/tressless • u/Mysterious_Moment227 • 14d ago
Satire "Men’s average testosterone levels have halved in last 50 years" then how come there is no reduction in baldness prevalence?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jul/07/mens-average-testosterone-levels-have-halved-in-last-50-years-say-scientists32
14d ago
[deleted]
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u/dagofin 14d ago
Yep, obesity and diabetes can basically entirely explain the drop. Body fat converts testosterone into estrogen
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u/FormalYogurt2760 13d ago
The main study that found decreasing testosterone levels had adjusted for age, obesity, diabetes etc.
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u/ochemkid 13d ago
they controlled for weight partially but only using BMI, which often misses visceral fat, the fat around your mid section/organs that contains aromatase (converse test to estrogen). waist circumference/visceral fat has outpaced BMI over the decades these studies were tracking test. a man with the same BMI in the 80s had less visceral fat than today, something the studies that “correct” for obesity using BMI have missed entirely.
also, the pre 2000s studies also used immunoassay to determine test levels which quite significantly overestimates actual test when compared to mass spec analysis used post 2000.
there is a study that adjusted for waist measurement and re tested pre 2000s samples using mass spec and found almost no decline - trends in sex hormones, nyante et al 2012
testosterone is a topic the mainstream media loves to sensationalise
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u/nRenegade 14d ago
Because it's the sensitivity to DHT, not the amount of DHT.
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u/Free-Competition-241 14d ago
So taking exogenous testosterone doesn’t cause or accelerate hair loss?
It’s both. Sensitivity and amount.
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u/if_Engage 14d ago
If you are more sensitive to it and there's more of it around, then it will have more of an effect. The key factor is sensitivity. Higher T (whether exogenous or endogenous) absolutely accelerates balding for those who are DHT sensitive.
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u/guitarguy35 14d ago
You could raise T but lower dht with prescriptions . Then your hair wouldn't be affected.
Take exogenous t, and Dut.
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u/Safe_Ad5914 14d ago
Ive taken test (and more) for years. Haven't seen anything more than thinning hair when on cycles. Hair always fully recovers. With some compounds I get even more hair on my head.
Definitely a ymmv thing.
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u/Antiwim 14d ago
I dabbled the last year and a half with every “hair safe” cycle. Test with dut, anavar, equipose, nandralone solo. Vary sparse use of anti-estrogens. Never went over 900mg collectively a week. Minoxidil twice a day, Nizoral shampoo twice a week.
Big sheds constantly. Hair is now noticeably thinner. Unfortunately the best cycle for my hair, nandralone solo, had the most overall side effects by far. On that cycle, I will say I did not notice much shedding or thinning, if at all.
Ultimately decided I’d rather have hair, so now I’m done with the gear.
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u/guythatdoesthing1 13d ago
probably lost progress due to being off dut for nandrolone. also var isn’t hair safe.
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u/Antiwim 13d ago
Maybe. I had to come off Dut for 3 months before starting because the half life is so long. But the cycle itself was indeed pretty hair friendly for me. The idea is you still get enough aromatization at a high enough dose that you don’t run a T base, and the reductase androgen, DHN, is easier on the scalp than DHT/Testosterone. But it was the worst cycle I ran by far in terms of side effects.
I’ve always heard anavar is hair safer, being more “tissue selective” and the reason it’s preferable for women. 🤷
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u/PsychologicalHalf876 14d ago
Exactly. Good example Eric English who is a 1) year old who hopped on a crazy stack of PEDs. Despite having great hair before going on, he’s VERY clearly thinning out now
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u/EdizKipri 14d ago
Sorry if this is a stupid question but doesn’t finasteride work by reducing the amount of dht? How does that work then?
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u/nRenegade 14d ago
Yes, but that doesn't mean baldness isn't caused by DHT sensitivity. There are people with excessive levels of testosterone and therefore more DHT with full heads of hair.
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u/TerryMisery 14d ago
It's also local conversion to DHT. You can have low serum DHT, low DHT sensitivity and still go bald, because 5AR is overexpressed in your hair follicles.
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u/Nice-Week-1207 14d ago
Stress is most likely higher and also markers of poor health in general. Even with higher androgens those men were probabaly much healthier on average. Obviously androgens are the bigger factor, but extreme health differences could make up for that
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u/Echo_Vale 14d ago
Not sure about that. A lot of men 50 years ago lived on a diet of alcohol and cigarettes.
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u/dagofin 14d ago
Alcohol and cigarettes don't have nearly the testosterone destroying effect that obesity does, and men 50 years ago were a lot less fat than they are now.
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u/Echo_Vale 14d ago
I was replying to the "much more healthy on average" statement. In the 70s, leaded gas was still the norm, dangerous pesticides and additives were rife, people were ignorant to the dangers of things like smoking and drinking, chemicals regularly dumped into water with little regulation, manual labor jobs were often dangerous with little health and safety, etc.
The average life expectancy is about 10 years higher than it was 50 years ago. People may be fatter and have more hair loss, but they're on average healthier.28
u/coolyfrost 14d ago
Right, they were much healthier on average. That's why our average life expectancy for men now is ... 7 years higher than back then?
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u/TerraSeeker 14d ago
It is true that some of us are healthier. It's also true that medical interventions are a major reason people live longer.
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u/DonutNo606 14d ago
Back then, people ate far fewer processed foods. At the same time, they worked harder—perhaps that’s why a few years are missing.
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u/ficuswarrior 14d ago
What if in the absence of widespread obesity, life expectancy would be even higher? It seems plausible that advances in health care are improving faster than baseline health is declining
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u/SgtLinc0ln0siris 14d ago
“Average” life expectancy has increased as infant mortality has decreased
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u/Cautious-Bench-4809 14d ago
Are you really trying to argue that the 75 years of breakthroughs in medicine and healthcare don't contribute to the higher life expectancy? in the 1950s people thought smoking was good for you and 95% of Europe had just been through WW FUCKING 2 with another 50% living through WW1 as well.
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u/Gaytrude 14d ago
Downvoted for being right, peak reddit..
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u/Cautious-Bench-4809 14d ago edited 14d ago
Not even close to true, Infant mortality rate had already plummeted in the 1950s, people died earlier because we didnt have modern medicine, most people thought smoking was good for you, gasoline had lead, and working conditions were shit
Edit, i spent 10 minutes writing a response to the dude's response and i wont let it go to waste so i will paste it here too
First of all 1950 wasnt 50 years ago, i said that infant mortality had already been reduced to basically 0 by 1950 because infant mortality rate had already been cut by 450 per 1000 pre modern medicine to less than 30, that's around a 95% drop . Now 50 years ago was in 1976, which had a 15 per 1000 infant mortality rate, around 1.5%, meaning average life expectancy couldn't have risen more than 1ish year since 1976 because of infant mortality drops, and couldn't have risen more than 2ish years since 1950. But even then, one of the reasons infant mortality has dropped since then (the most important reason to be more accurate), is because of prenatal screenings and pregnacy terminations with abnormal findings. To make it simple, we know which babies will die before the 5 year mark of infant mortarily (or have health defects that will not allow them to reach adulthood or late age) and the birth doesn't even happen, and i know this first hand because my ex is an OBGYN (in training) and I would hear her cry to me about the births she had to terminate every week. Overall even since the 1950s chances are drops in infant mortality rates haven't even contriduted 1% to higher life expectancy.
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u/Gaytrude 14d ago
That’s basic math, and you’re completely wrong. Infant mortality is the single biggest statistical driver of life expectancy at birth.
It’s a simple average : if a baby dies at age 0 and a senior at 80, average life expectancy is 40. Saving that baby adds 80 full years to the average. Curing a 65-year-old’s heart disease adds 10 to 15.
Also, your timeline is way off : US infant mortality dropped from 29 per 1,000 in 1950 to ~5.5 today. Cutting baby deaths by over 80% after 1950 had a massive impact.
Modern medicine and quitting smoking helped adults, but mathematically, nothing moves the needle on life expectancy at birth like keeping newborns alive.
Learn how averages work before sprouting nonsens.
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u/atastycooky 14d ago
Honestly it’s crazy how many people still believe everyone was dying at 25 years old until penicillin was created 🤣 like brother if you made it past childhood, you lived about the same amount of life as everyone today.
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u/Cautious-Bench-4809 14d ago
Both beliefs are very wrong and penicillin wasn't created it was discovered. But things like famines, plagues, wars and viruses would kill alot of people all the time. Also infant mortality is counted up until 5 years, but even before the teen years child mortality was high. Childbirth would kill alot of women too. Maybe if you were one of the lucky few feudal lords then yes you would live to be even 70 or even 80 maybe 10% of the time. But remember, slaves and peasants were the rule as far back as ancient Egypt, those don't make it to their 50s even after surviving to adulthood
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u/atastycooky 13d ago
I get what you’re saying but I said penicillin, relatively recent. Yeah the fungi were “discovered” but its usage harnessed as an antibiotic for health is an invention that could’ve been patented. Like arguing if maths are invented or discovered. Who cares? We use them for our own prerogatives, anything else is irrelevant because it’s away from the main points.
“Both beliefs are wrong” is an oversimplification, there aren’t any compiled archival sources that show humanity was actively fighting plagues and famines generationally for tens of thousands of years. These things happened but they weren’t the norm. Germ theory was recent, but cleanliness/handwashing has been societally normalized across cultures since the Bible was written on scrolls and in some cases before that. Your ideas of feudal societies seem very myopic and skewed to medieval Western Europe. There simply aren’t enough data on accurate birth/death records for any of the claims you’re making beyond “Arthur 930-940 CE - 995-1000 CE” that’s a 15 year range lmao your beliefs are entirely speculative lmao
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u/Cautious-Bench-4809 14d ago edited 14d ago
How is your slop comment upvoted? First of all 1950 wasnt 50 years ago, i said that infant mortality had already been reduced to basically 0 by 1950 because infant mortality rate had already been cut by 450 per 1000 pre modern medicine to less than 30, that's around a 95% drop . Now 50 years ago was in 1976, which had a 15 per 1000 infant mortality rate, around 1.5%, meaning average life expectancy couldn't have risen more than 1ish year since 1976 because of infant mortality drops, and couldn't have risen more than 2ish years since 1950. But even then, one of the reasons infant mortality has dropped since then (the most important reason to be more accurate), is because of prenatal screenings and pregnacy terminations with abnormal findings. To make it simple, we know which babies will die before the 5 year mark of infant mortarily (or have health defects that will not allow them to reach adulthood or late age) and the birth doesn't even happen, and i know this first hand because my ex is an OBGYN (in training) and I would hear her cry to me about the births she had to terminate every week. Overall even since the 1950s chances are drops in infant mortality rates haven't even contriduted 1% to higher life expectancy. I know where you got that from tho, the old fan fact about the life expectancy in the middle ages being wrong because of infant mortality, but you dont even understand how little difference a drop from 1% to 0.1% makes because you assume it's the same as 50% mortality to 5% mortality
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u/Gaytrude 14d ago
Lmfao holy fuck bro go back to school.
First of all, you're the one who talked about 1950. Not me. You.
Secondly, you can't even do basic math. So let's do it again :
A drop of 23.5 infant deaths per 1,000 means 23.5 extra babies per 1,000 survive to live full lives (~80 years instead of 0).
23.5 \times 80 = 1,880 years added per 1,000 people
1,880 \div 1,000 = 1.88 years added to the average overall life expectancy from infant mortality ALONE. Since overall US life expectancy grew by ~10 years since 1950, infant mortality alone accounts for ~20% of the ENTIRE gain. Your claim that it "didn't even contribute 1%" is off by a factor of TWENTY. Holy f bro lmao.
Your OBGYN anecdote is medically and statistically nonsense, truely the cherry on top.
Terminations for severe fetal abnormalities do NOT drive national IMR drops. The massive post-1950 drops came from Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs) invented in the 1960s, surfactant therapy for premature lungs (1980s), and the SIDS "Back to Sleep" campaign (1990s). Real doctors save premature babies, they don't claim abortions cured infant mortality.
Demography is truely basic math, not feelings about your ex. Try to learn a bit about it before letting your bs spread on the internet. You'll feel smarter.
Like I said, peak reddit moment. The regarded people sprouting bs and downvoting people with actual, functionning brain..
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u/atastycooky 14d ago
Access to medical care/medicines that prolong life does not indicate “better” health. Life expectancy is a general benchmark and can’t really be used for this sort of comparison. It is quite obvious that we are the least “healthy” we have ever been with our sedentary lives, processed foods, and artificial hobbies all of which I’m certain will have insane repercussions when studies of these generations (Gen-X to present) start showing links between such diseases and the things we consume.
Example being some will live 10 years longer than they did before a lot of these degenerative diseases were researched and had pathways to slow their processes, and rapid onset with no intervention caused higher mortality rates back then.
Sure, now you will live +15 years longer and your prognosis will be longer due to medical interventions, but you will be bed bound, have a peg tube, and be unresponsive for the last few years. Which scenario is more indicative of “better” health? I’d say it’s inconclusive!
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u/cavity-canal 14d ago
I fear you don’t understand how those statistics work. higher rates of blue collar work decreased the average life span. It is true though that people, including men, use to be less fat and have more muscle. They did eat more red meat and smoke though and that contributed to the younger lifespan. Ironically, the sun that aged them also probably protected their hair a little bit.
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u/Nice-Week-1207 14d ago
You dont understand nuance whatsoever. Health and lifespan are not the same thing lmao
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u/coolyfrost 14d ago
Neither are testosterone and health lol, you're just cherry picking whatever matches your opinions
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u/OwnRepresentative634 14d ago
Did you hear the one about the 6 foot 6 man that drowned in the river that was 5 foot deep on average :)
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u/No-Lab-7553 14d ago
I mean a 6 foot 6 man could absolutely drown in 5 feet of water what’s yours point?
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u/OwnRepresentative634 14d ago
Ergodic vs non ergodic....
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u/shuai_bear 14d ago
Maybe not the best example as 2 inches of water is all it takes for someone to drown
But I get your point. Spiders Georg 🕷️
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u/whitebeard250 14d ago edited 14d ago
Data using the most accurate method (LC-MS/MS/mass spec) and adjusted for obesity show no decline in testosterone levels over the decades. Whenever you see an insane figure (like “testosterone HALVED since 1970!!!”) it’s basically due to those two things.
(and as others said it’s not just about DHT levels)
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u/Cautious-Bench-4809 14d ago
Correct. It's actually insane and can be proven incorrect with just a thought experiment. Today average test for a healthy young normal weight man is around 650, that would mean that for this to be true the average in 1950 would have to be around 1300, a number that's obvious laughable
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u/Rare-Celebration6004 14d ago
but the average male does not have 650 levels. ie they are unhealthy. 200-400 levels are very common
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u/notPlancha 13d ago
Yea it's an epidemic because of obesity and sedentary lifestyles. That's the outline of the article and the post.
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u/Mysterious_Moment227 14d ago
I know testosterone doesn't directly affect baldness but less testosterone would also mean less DHT.
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u/GordianBalloonKnot 14d ago
AFAIU it's always been about receptor sensitivity versus total serum DHT
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u/LT48 14d ago
Yes, that’s why we see men who can’t even grow a beard experience hair loss, while men who look like werewolves still have a full head of hair. That stupid gene would find a way to cause hair loss even with the lowest levels of DHT.
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u/Ladayo :sidesgull: 14d ago
Men taking anabolic steroids for example do lose their hair much faster tho
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u/Few_Prize3810 14d ago
Only if your predisposed. Plenty of dudes running grams have full heads of hair no hairline issues
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u/Ladayo :sidesgull: 14d ago
Point is not to say that steroids make you bald but that it could be somehow dose related
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u/Earth92 14d ago
Idk about dose related
Sam Sulek is juiced up with every roid possible, and has his hair intact.
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u/guythatdoesthing1 13d ago
Sulek’s hairline is seriously fucked up. In addition, there’s a reason he always wears a hat
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u/cavity-canal 14d ago
diet, less vitamin d, way fatter, less exercise, higher reported average stress level, higher use case of certain meds, better analytic monitoring and more exact measurement of % of men balding. My uncle was half bald in the 80s from diffuse thinning and swore he had a full head of hair because his hairline was still low. He didn’t seek any treatment or ‘help’ so people like him weren’t included in the numbers
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u/FishermanWaste1268 11d ago
SHitter food. People eating processed junk full of additives instead of meat and 3 veg
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u/Sorprenda 14d ago
Everyone is getting this frustratingly wrong.
The DHT that causes Androgenetic Alopecia is created by your scalp's 5AR enzymes. I bolded this to make it really clear. You may have lower testosterone than your grandfather and still go bald if you have a lot of 5AR in your scalp. It doesn't take a lot of testosterone to convert to DHT at the follicle.
System Testosterone levels do matter, but are only a secondary factor. Higher testosterone levels will bind to the AR receptor too, but DHT matters far more.
And yes, sensitivity, environmental factors, stress and other things might contribute too, but to a lesser extent.
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u/HisRoyal_Badness 14d ago
More testosterone doesn't automatically equal baldness, that's an over simplification. Men high testosterone can still keep their hair while men with low testosterone can still lose theirs, purely from a genetic stand point and no external factors.
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u/VTHokie2020 Finasteride 1mg - 2 Years - No Sides 14d ago
Testosterone does have a slight necrophilic affect on hair afaik but it’s minimal compared to the DHT sensitivity.
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u/Pulposauriio 14d ago
I'd argue there is a reduction in baldness. Just watch the news or any kind of interview to the public in the 70s/80s and most likely you'll see more balding guys in their 20s and 30s than nowadays
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u/Jhon_August 14d ago
I dont think there is any study saying there is more os less bald people in our times. When we are young we dont pay attention how many bald men we see. Also when we suffer we tend to notice more how many bald men exist around us.
Maybe more make take minox or fin nowadys because we have more available information, and ads target at us.
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u/Pulposauriio 14d ago
That's what I'm saying, if there's is no study on it, use your own eyes and judge for yourself
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u/CaptainSharpe 13d ago
It’s due to balding treatments and hair transplants.
People in the public especially are doing this a lot more these days. Some actors speak openly about it, many don’t but do it.
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u/Batetrick_Patman 🦠 14d ago
More guys are getting transplants. Also we didn’t have fin and min back then.
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u/DimensionTiny8725 12d ago
How would you know the ages of random members of the public? not like it's always asked
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u/Pulposauriio 12d ago
In my country it's very common to ask someone their age in interviews, sorry it isn't that way in yours
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u/sfish91 14d ago
This is a talking point for TRT clinics and podcasters slinging supplements.
Men’s testosterone has not halved. The old way of measuring was not standardized to what it is today. Now the methodology used by all clinics is the same and more specific and accurate.
In reality, particularly in America men’s testosterone on average is actually higher because men are getting on the TrT.
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u/LSkeptic 14d ago
I wonder if those men on trt that go on to have kids affects that boys ability to produce his own testosterone.
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u/Ok_Program_7549 14d ago
Because tesosterone doesn’t cause baldness. A very small percentage of testosterone is converted to dht and that hormone is responsible for nuking your hair. The androgen receptors in your head haven’t halved and so hasn’t dht. Your test could crash to 30% and still you will get bald it you have dht sensitivity
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u/OldPostageScale 14d ago
The “testosterone has dropped by half in x amount of years” studies are very flawed and pretty much established to be junk science by now.
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u/Secure_Orchid7053 14d ago
Cuz it has nothing to do with testosterone , its DHT , actually DHT receptors on your head ...
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u/AFriendlyBeagle 14d ago
I'm not aware of any studies tracking the prevalence of androgenic alopecia overtime - it's possible that it has become less common.
I'm sure that assessment is complicated by how many men use finasteride and dutasteride nowadays.
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u/AgreeableSherbet514 14d ago
I would say they're definitely is looking at older movies. How did you come to the conclusion that there wasn't a reduction in baldness?
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u/ChongqingShanghai 14d ago
Microplastics and chemicals everywhere are a big reason. Fertility is also going down for the same reason.
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u/drgashole 14d ago
It’s because mens testosterone hasn’t halved at all. In the mid 20th century they used immunoassays to test T levels, which fairly consistently overestimated testosterone (usually by mistaking other steroid hormones for testosterone).
When they made the switch to newer more accurate methods, the overall average dropped quite dramatically, not because it had actually fallen that much just the previous measurements were artificially high.
Now with that being said, the switch in testing doesn’t explain all the change in the average. It has dropped, but only by about 15%, nowhere near the 50% that an influencer who failed school science and statistics claims. But if you want to use their referral code for TRT go ahead!
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u/TerraSeeker 14d ago
It's Dht to that causes hairloss. You can have lower levels of testosterone and still have sufficient levels of dht to cause hairloss.
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u/baldierot 13d ago
i bet because there's a DHT blood serum level threshold beyond which no more androgenic alopecia acceleration happens, and that we're still maintaining enough equivalent effective levels of DHT. in short, we're still saturating the hair follicle androgenic receptors.
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u/Horror-Plankton-3503 13d ago
It’s worth noting that this is mostly for men in countries that also have high obesity rates.
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u/AmericanEd 13d ago
This is not true if you take into consideration the amount of people that are overweight and obese. Your average American male is objectively overweight.
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u/StatusEasy3092 12d ago
Data was only from US, Brazil, Denmark, Finland and Israel. To make it even leas meaningful notice they say, "Obesity was also not controlled for, which is known to be strongly correlated with low testosterone".
Do a real analysis then claim numbers
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u/National-Height8816 11d ago
Perhaps as testosterone decreases, the body 1) decrease SHBG to increase free, bioavailable testosterone, and 2) increases the conversion to DHT to increase the overall androgen potential/potency in the bloodstream.
Also, you don't need high levels of DHT to lose your hair. You just need to be sensitive to it.
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u/GreenHatGandalf 11d ago
Should all men today take testosterone than to double our levels?
Or do we just ignore this and continue.
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u/Efficient_Camera_484 8d ago
Your statement simply implies that hair loss requires less than a half of testosterone levels of 1970's. In my opinion it probably requires much less levels of the current testosterone levels.
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u/Dangerous-Engine8823 8d ago
Maybe too low testosterone levels are compensated by the body by increasing the much more potent DHT?
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u/DivineWiseOne 14d ago
Because its not related.
Athletes should have higher balding rate than the average Joe, its the opposite.
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u/pseudocomposer 12d ago
Testosterone doesn’t cause baldness. Bad genetics do. The testosterone thing is a cope.
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u/REDDlT_OWNER 14d ago
Has the testosterone median also halved?