By The
following article is another example of a problem that impacts boys and
men considerably more than women and girls. The difference is that
this problem does not seem to be a result of feminism, gynocentrism, or
our white knight legislators. This is a result of our lifestyle, our
corporations, and our biology.
The sad truth is that we are
living in a world that is saturated by chemicals that mimic human
hormones. These chemicals have been dubbed “Endocrine Disruptors” since
their mimicking confuses and throws off the delicate balance of our
human endocrine system. EDC’s as they are called, (endocrine disrupting
chemicals) are all around us. They are in our streams, our lakes, our
grocery stores, our carpeting, our lawns, our cars, in the food we eat,
in our toothpaste, soaps, plastics and just about everywhere you look.
Most of these are derivatives of fossil fuels, often plastics. They are
in fertilizers, pesticides, even the byproducts of pills like birth
control pills, This stuff is everywhere.
The informative
endocrinedisruption.org web site states that “Endocrine disrupting
chemicals (EDCs) interfere with hormone signaling in a variety of ways
depending on the chemical and the hormone system.” They go on to state
that “biomonitering of chemicals in the blood and urine has shown that
100% of the people tested have EDC’s in their bodies.” So this is not
about someone else, this is about you and me.
This is not a small dilemma. The
same web site states that EDC’s have been implicated in neurological
diseases, reproductive disorders, thyroid dysfunction, immune and
metabolic disorders and more. But guess what? These chemicals impact
boys and men considerably more than they do girls and women. Look at
the list of problems that are thought to be related to EDC’s and males:
ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, delayed puberty, hypospadias,
obesity, early testicular cancer, male dysgenisis syndrome, prostate
cancer and more. Almost all of these problems have been growing each
year. ADHD has been increasing by 3% each year since 1997 and 5% a year
since 2003. Many scientists are starting to believe that EDC’s are a
part of this problem.
Imagine
the havoc you could wreak if you started taking hormones into your
body, you could throw off a very delicate balance of a finely tuned
system by increasing the amount of one hormone or another. Imagine we
started giving boys and girls additional estrogen on a daily basis.
What do you think would happen? It would likely confuse their
biological system and throw the normal process into chaos. Right. This
is a crude description of what is happening in our world today. Both
boys and girls are exposed to substances (EDC’s) that mimic estrogen
(most EDC’s mimic estrogen or in some cases block testosterone) and
these substances are throwing off the natural balance of the endocrine
system. But these are in such small amounts, you wouldn’t think they
would be that harmful, right? Wrong.
The
endocrine system is extraordinarily sensitive. In fact, it is
amazing. It makes decisions based on infinitesimal amounts of hormones
that are released in the body. One of the pioneers in understanding
Endocrine Disrupters is Theo Colburn, PhD. Listen to the way she
describes things in her book Our Stolen Future “The
endocrine system is so fine-tuned that it depends on changes in
hormones in concentrations of a tenth of a trillion of a gram to control
the womb environment. That’s as inconspicuous as one second in 3,619
centuries.” This is why it is so critical to worry over even tiny
amounts of chemicals around us that mimic hormones. A tiny amount can
cause big problems.
The
place those tiny amounts can cause the biggest difficulties is in the
womb. It’s a contained environment that is controlled by minute amounts
of hormones. Developmental actions and processes are started and
stopped in the womb by these tiny amounts of hormones. If the mother
has EDC’s in her system from the food she eats, the soft plastic
raincoat she wears or drinking from plastic bottles this can cause
difficulties to the infant in utero. This is obliviously the most
vulnerable time since fetal development is often related to minute
changes in hormone levels. If you have substances in utero that throw
off that sensitive balance by mimicking natural hormones you can have
permanent damage to the fetus.
Then shortly after birth the
infant may be less vulnerable but is often subject to plastic bottles
from which they drink warm liquid, plastic pacifiers they suck on, or a
huge array of other ways to ingest EDC’s. Have you ever taken a swig
of water out of a clear plastic bottle that had gotten warm in the sun?
When you did, did it taste plasticky? What you were tasting was the
endocrine disrupters that had been released from the plastic when
heated. You just got a dose of estrogen.
Theo Colburn calls EDC’s the
“stealth” chemicals and for good reason. The government has been testing
for cancer producing agents for some time but the tests needed to
evaluate a possible endocrine disrupter are much more subtle. With
12,000 new chemicals entered into our country every day it would be an
overwhelming task to keep tabs on them all. This means that many of the
endocrine disrupters are probably going under the radar. The EPA has
been mandated to test for EDC’s for some time but has dragged its feet
to such a degree that law suits have been filed to force them to do so.
According to Colburn the corporations are spending mega-bucks to keep
this quiet. They have a huge investment in their products and seem more
concerned about their profit than about human suffering.
So how does this stuff manifest?
Scientists
were shocked to find that male alligators at a lake in Florida had
shriveled testicles and genitals. The gators also showed high levels of
female hormones. What was going on? They struggled to figure it out
and ultimately came to the conclusion that these poor gators had been
victims of EDC’s from the pesticide DDE that had found its way into the
lake. These chemicals had created chaos in the male gators and their
genitals proved it.
Male
fish are also taking a hit from EDC’s. Many fish across the country
are now swimming in water that has higher levels of EDC’s. Fish tend to
have their sex determined by the levels of hormones in their bodies.
When the hormones are at a certain level that fish will be male, when it
is at a different level it will be a female. So now we have fish
swimming in water that is higher and higher with EDC’s that mimic
estrogens and guess what happens? The EDC’s impact the males in a
profound manner. They turn the males into non-descript fish that has
genitalia that is a bizarre mix of male and female. It is the male
fish that have been seen showing the bizarre genitalia, sometimes the
male fish will grow eggs instead of testes! What a mess.
But what about humans?
One of the suspected connections
with EDC’s is that of changing the timing of puberty for both boys and
girls. Girls onset of puberty has been steadily getting younger and
younger. It used to be that girls would enter puberty around 11-12 years
old with boys lagging about a year after them. But now guess what is
happening? Girls are entering puberty when they are 9 years old on
average and even younger in the black community. At the same time the
boys puberty is becoming delayed. Many experts are thinking the EDC’s
mimicking estrogens plays a part in this.
Human males also seem to be taking
the hardest hit from the EDC’s. American boys today are three times
more likely to be born with genital abnormalities then boys 30 years
ago. The frequency of smaller then normal penis’s, hypospadias, and
undescended testes are all examples of this.
Scientists are also thinking that
the drop in testosterone levels of boys and men in the past 30 years may
also be due to the EDC’s. A 35 year old man today has 20% of
testosterone of a 35 year old man 30 years ago. Men just aren’t like
they used to be…
Leonard
Sax points out that the bone strength of boys seems to be
deteriorating. Boys today are nearly twice as likely to break bones as
boys were 30 years ago and many are thinking this is related to lowered
bone density due to EDC’s. It seems at the same time that girls bone
density may be going up. Go figure.
The only good news is that we do
have some power in limiting our exposure to EDC’s. Eating whole foods
that are unprocessed, eating organic foods that have not been exposed to
pesticides, wearing clothes are have not been treated with chemicals,
and on and on. We all need to become more informed about this problem,
especially when it comes to women who are thinking about getting
pregnant. For more information on EDC’s you can find some great
information on youtube. Here’s a start but I would urge you to google it
and see what you find.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some beginning resources:
Theo Colburn, PhD. has done a video titled the Endocrine Disruptors, The Male Predicament. It is a quick introduction to this problem from the scientist who first named the problem back in the 1990’s.
Theo Colburn – Endocrine Disruption: Are Males at Risk?
Theo Colburn reads letter to the white house about EDC’s
About Tom Golden:
About Tom Golden:
Tom
Golden is a psychotherapist specializing in men and boys' issues. He is
the author of Swallowed by a Snake: The Gift of the Masculine Side of
Healing, and its followup, The Way Men Heal, both available on Amazon. He is also a member of Warren Farrell's proposed White House Council on Boys and Men.
Source
Related: "The Conspiracy To Feminize Males And Masculinize Females"
Further discussion:
Angelo: Thanks Tom. I think this an important and real issue. Have a bizarre story about this subject regarding a gay friend who insisted I should allow him to suck my todger because he “knew what I wanted.” lol.
Related: "The Conspiracy To Feminize Males And Masculinize Females"
Further discussion:Angelo: Thanks Tom. I think this an important and real issue. Have a bizarre story about this subject regarding a gay friend who insisted I should allow him to suck my todger because he “knew what I wanted.” lol.
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