You should stop drinking beer if you wish to be in peak physical health. For a variety of reasons we will discuss, beer should cease to be your tipple of choice if you wish to pursue fitness, but also have a penchant for alcoholic beverages on occasion…
Testosterone is the master male hormone, and increased testosterone in men is associated with the entire host of traits that make men men, rather than women. Body hair, muscle mass, bone density, strength, aggression, dominance and competitiveness – increases in all of these things are associated with increased T in men.
It’s worth noting that falling T levels are a fact of life for all men as they age; unless you take exogenous T, it’s as unavoidable as taxes and death, I’m afraid. After the age of 30, a man can expect to lose 1% of his T every year for the rest of his life.
But the natural reduction all men can expect to suffer pales in comparison with the society-wide collapse in T levels that has occurred over the second half of the twentieth and the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
Men today have considerably less T than men of the same age even a single generation ago. A 2007 study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism showed a significant reduction in the T levels of men since the 1980s. A 60-year-old American man in 2004, for example, had 17% less testosterone than a 60-year-old American man in 1987…
One of the most powerful pieces of anecdotal evidence is the observation that female hop pickers – women who simply touched hops when they were working – would regularly suffer menstrual disturbances because of their contact with the plant. Likewise, it is regularly observed that men who suffer alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver – i.e. men who have consumed huge amounts of alcohol, usually including large quantities of beer – often ‘show testicular failure and symptoms of feminization’.
Studies on subjects that produce no natural estrogen – rats with their ovaries removed and post-menopausal women – have shown that phytoestrogens in beer and other alcoholic drinks do exert estrogen-like effects in the body. Read more…
