Here is a chart of agricultural chemical (like pesticides) use by country, compared to testosterone in that country. There seems to be a strong relationship! Testosterone is much lower in the countries that use a lot of agricultural chemicals.
This might help explain the very severe and mysterious drop in testosterone in most but not all parts of the world since about 1980. The other connection I’ve identified is PUFA consumption from the rise in seed oils in people’s diets around the world.
Here’s a chart that shows that places in the USA with many cornfields nearby generally have low testosterone. The few places in the USA that have testosterone that isn’t too low, generally don’t have cornfields nearby.
We think that it is cornfields specifically that correlate with low testosterone. Some of the locations on the map have many crop fields nearby, but testosterone wasn’t as low. It was only when we focused on cornfields that we found this pretty strong correlation. We think that it is because of the use of the pesticide atrazine, which is used mostly on corn and not so much on other crops. (Source)
You can start to protect yourself from pesticides lowering your testosterone by filtering your water. Pesticides get into water runoff from farm fields, and from there into the water supply. It’s probably worse if you live in an agricultural area.
There’s a comprehensive article on the best water filters to remove pesticides that lower testosterone at this website: https://whatwaterfilter.com/best-water-filter-removes-pesticides/
Another way that pesticides can get into your body is on your food. This organization does a great job identifying which fruits and vegetables have the worst levels of pesticides – https://www.ewg.org/foodnews/dirty-dozen.php
You should consider growing these plants on your own, or buying them from a farmer’s market or at least certified organic.
What else lowers testosterone?
Another potential cause of low testosterone is the seed oil found in junk food. We have an article about that here. And if you’re interested in snacks made without seed oil, check out our potato chips made with tallow, and no seed oil!
They’re available at https://noseedoil.com/chips and you can click the horse in the image to visit that page.
