CONSEQUENCES FOR MEN
Since elevated estrogen levels are not normal for men, scientific investigators have been raising questions about the effects of these environmental estrogens on the male endocrine system. Many scientists have noted a host of consequences that accompany elevated estrogen levels. In men who ingest these EMCs, common symptoms include low semen concentrations, poor semen quality, lack of sperm motility, and
eventually a reduced sexual appetite,2 problems that can usually be reversed when exposure to estrogens is terminated. For the developing male fetus, however, these environmental estrogens can have severe and life-long detrimental consequences to reproductive and urogenital development.
Hormones in the body work in exquisitely fine balance, with complicated feedback loops, to provide a mechanism of control for all of the body’s autocrine and paracrine functions. Early anatomists described the hypothalamus and pituitary glands as the “masters” of bodily functions,3 viewing the intricate synergy of these organs as the driving force of the entire body. Since the times of classical anatomy in the late 1800s and in the early 1900s, scientists have confirmed the importance of these organs through ablation procedures. It was easy for them to remove the pituitary gland, for example, and observe how the animal would cope without it. They were able to see how this little organ influenced almost every component of life, and how its removal was detrimental to the longevity of the animal. Later, scientists tested the effects of these “master organs” by observing the effects of artificial supplementation of certain hormones released by, produced at, or controlled by the various hypothalamal-hypophyseal axes.
Early on, they were able to define the interplay between the parts of these axes at which the action of change would take place. They determined the role of the gonad, for example, in the release of sex hormones such as testosterone in males and estrogen in females. This led to the recognition of the hypothalamal-hypophyseal-gonadal axis, where sex hormone levels in the blood feedback negatively to halt synthesis and secretion of the hormones until blood levels become stabilized. We now know that this kind of mechanism allows normal function in every organ system encapsulated by our body.
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