If Ball Tanning Can Save The World, Why Mock It?
Legacy media had a field day last April when Fox News’ Tucker Carlson aired a documentary on the “End of Men.”
The 30-minute film on Fox Nation highlighted the unconventional ways men around the country are battling low testosterone levels with “bro science.” Remedies ranged from pursuit of a completely organic diet that features daily raw egg consumption to testicle tanning.
The ball tanning segment included testimony from fitness influencer Benjamin Braddock who broke down the benefits of red-light therapy which is now being studied to treat Parkinson’s disease.
“The bro science behind it is based on very real science that’s emerging,” Braddock says. “Our cells respond differently to different wave lengths of light… the cells in your testicles are what create testosterone, your Leydig cells, so by increasing the cellular health in your testes, you’re increasing the function of what they do. A big part of that is producing testosterone.”
Over the course of reporting a major story on men’s declining sex drives for The Federalist on Wednesday, I presented the question to Dr. Keith Nichols, an endocrinologist in east Tennessee, on whether testicle tanning actually raised testosterone levels. According to the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, more than half of men aged 40-70 experience some form of erectile dysfunction. Research published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine from 2013 found erectile dysfunction rising among younger men under 40, with more than 1 in 4 now suffering new-onset ED.
“It doesn’t work at all,” Dr. Nichols said simply, but warned plummeting testosterone levels remain the crisis of our time. “[We’re seeing] increased morbidity across the board with low testosterone.”
Corporate outlets such as the Rolling Stone, however, were quick to stigmatize the search for solutions, branding Carlson’s program as a product of “toxic masculinity.”
The magazine “Men’s Health” called the documentary “disturbing.”
USA Today connected the Fox Nation special with white supremacy.
The Guardian published a story that claimed, “reducing the problems facing American men to their testosterone levels is too stupid even for Carlson.”
Similar commentary emerged in the Daily Beast, Vanity Fair, and the Huffington Post.
According to Dr. Nichols, however, just about every crisis facing men today does stem from low testosterone levels, which have dropped by double digits since the 1980s.
Research published in 2021 by a team of European, American, and Israeli scientists found testosterone therapy linked to better metabolic health, sexual function, mobility, bone density, and quality of life while lowering depressive symptoms.
Declining testosterone levels are also to blame for not just obesity and diminished sex drives but sinking sperm counts, which threatens fertility already headed for the brink. According to the Massachusetts Male Aging Study, testosterone levels are falling across the board with each generation.
Dr. Nichols blamed the decline on endocrine disrupting chemicals, a primary focus of Carlson’s documentary.
“All this decline has correlated with the increase in environmental chemicals,” Nichols told me this week. “We are being chemically castrated by our environment.”
“Obviously half the viewers right now are like, ‘What? Testicle tanning? That’s crazy,’” Carlson said in an interview to promote the documentary. “But my view is, ‘Ok, testosterone levels have crashed, and nobody says anything about it. That’s crazy.’”
Read my story on falling testosterone levels here: Healthy Males Have High Sex Drives — But Today’s Men Don’t
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