Drunk on the idea that the more you can drink, the more of a man you are, research is now showing a rather inconvenient truth. Alcohol actually kills off testosterone in men. This longstanding cultural rite of passage says that blokes are tough if they can handle more pints than their mates, but this ‘toughness’ comes at the cost of being a man at the hormonal level.
There is no correlation between being tough and drinking copious amounts of alcohol. But there is a correlation between drinking copious amounts and killing your own testosterone.
‘Being on the piss’ or getting “sloshed’’ is the height of all the excitment.
A clinical researcher at Murdoch University, Stephen James Smith studied the effects of alcohol on testosterone synthesis.
“Excessive alcohol consumption, or alcohol use disorder, has a significant negative effect on steroidogenesis in men.
“Alcohol affects each level of the hypothalamus-pituitary-gonadal axis via the mechanisms of increased hypothalamus–pituitary–adrenal axis activity, increased inflammation, and increased oxidative stress.”
If you think I am against alcohol in every form, then you would be right, but I am not advocating for a government ban in any form; I am arguing that young men should think twice about cultural falsehoods that will do the exact opposite of what they claim to do.
Not convinced? A 2022 study found that drinking alcohol in moderate to high amounts at a time can decrease and kill sperm in men.
Our bittersweet relationship with booze
Does Australia have an alcohol problem? From the litany of teenage drink driving-related accidents to one punch knockout deaths to the correlation between alcohol in domestic violence and antisocial behaviors.
Over 5% of Aussies drink daily and 35% drink weekly; this is not an insignificant number. Our relationship with alcohol is one-way traffic. We drink and drink.
A recent government ad campaign ought to change the game and make Australian men rethink our relationship to alcohol. The advertisement claims that alcohol is converted to acid formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen and can cause various types of cancer. How effective was this ad campaign in making Australians think? It’s hard to say.
The WHO has a clear stance on the issue.
Dr Carina Ferreira-Borges of the WHO stated:
“We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is,”
Masculinity is under attack from alchohol. Drunkedness and a culture of binge drinking is not only killing mens testesterone, its killing our potential.
It’s time to break this patently absurd myth that ‘getting sloshed’ makes you more of a man. If people want to continue down this path, that is their free choice, but they should remember that heavy alcohol consumption will make them more effeminate.
