Does Marijuana Lower Testosterone Levels?

By
Aanchal Rao
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Does Marijuana Lower Testosterone Levels? - DATOS

Does Marijuana Lower Testosterone: As more people are using weed for medical and fun reasons, especially men, there’s a question about whether it affects men’s hormone levels. With millions of people using cannabis, it’s worth considering how it might impact men’s health over time.

Because guys between 18 and 25 years old use weed the most, it’s worth thinking about whether smoking it can change testosterone. When testosterone goes down in men, it can cause problems like gaining weight, feeling tired, getting larger breasts, and even having trouble with getting and staying hard. So, let’s answer to the question; Does Marijuana lower testosterone and if it has any impact on testosterone?

Testosterone and the Endocannabinoid System

To figure out how weed and testosterone might be related, we can learn from the endocannabinoid system (ECS). This system helps control some chemicals your body makes and the places they attach to.

In the 1990s, scientists found out that THC affects the ECS. And it seems that the parts of the male body responsible for making babies, like the testicles, prostate, and sperm, also have receptors for these endocannabinoids.

So, what does this mean for stuff like cannabinoids and making testosterone? Well, a study with mice showed that THC sticks to certain parts in cells (like tiny locks) that help make testosterone. In those cases, it stopped testosterone from being made as much. But we’re not totally sure if this happens the same way in people.

Does Marijuana Lower Testosterone Levels?

Because marijuana is considered a serious drug, studying its effects on people in the United States has been hard. However, researchers have looked at animals to learn more.

A new study on monkeys adds to what other animal studies have already found: using cannabis seems to have bad effects on male animals and monkeys. It makes their testosterone levels go down, lowers the number and quality of their sperm, and even makes their testes smaller.

We might expect similar results in guys like us, and that seems somewhat true. Some studies have connected using weed to having less testosterone, and the most famous one was done in 1974 by a medical journal.

In that study, they found that guys aged 18 to 28 who didn’t use weed had around double the amount of testosterone compared to guys who did. But, another study in the same year didn’t find a link between using weed, even a little, and testosterone levels in guys like us.

This shows that we’re still not sure if weed really makes testosterone lower in guys like us.

Does Marijuana Make Testosterone Go Up

In the past, studies said different things, but a test in 1989 found that guys who smoke weed didn’t have their testosterone change. Also, in 2017, a survey with 1,500 guys in the US showed that those who smoked weed had the same testosterone levels as those who didn’t.

This tells us that people still don’t agree about weed and testosterone. Actually, some studies suggest that smoking weed might even make testosterone production better.

For example, in 2017, researchers in Denmark did a study to see what happens to testosterone with weed. They found that guys who used weed had more testosterone. And in 2020, scientists at the University of Chicago looked at data from a medical journal. They found that guys who had used THC (a part of weed) in the past year had higher testosterone levels than those who didn’t.

The Main Idea

Even though we see that THC can harm testosterone in animals, we can’t directly say it’s the same for people. The small amount of research done on men doesn’t clearly prove that marijuana for sure makes testosterone higher or lower in men.

Read More: Does Marijuana Lower Testosterone Levels?

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