[HN Gopher] Study of falling sperm counts finds 'alarming' level...
___________________________________________________________________
Study of falling sperm counts finds 'alarming' levels of chemicals
in male urine
Author : donsupreme
Score : 146 points
Date : 2022-06-14 15:36 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| no_wizard wrote:
| I wonder if lower sex drive is also caused by this sort of thing?
|
| I'll admit, I don't think I've ever had a normal sex drive. My
| partner is very frustrated by this at times. Its not an
| attraction thing, I don't know the "why" per se here. I'd be
| interested to know if these things are correlated. I'd also be
| open to hearing about how to reverse it. (I'm 30 years old,
| supposedly I should be not this)
|
| Speaking in aggregates, there have also been reports[0] of this
| happening across the world, including pre-pandemic[1]
|
| [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/mar/16/not-
| ton...
|
| [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/29/share-
| ame...
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I am in a similar boat as you. I am one of the last DES babies
| and I don't know if I have ever had a normal sex drive; being
| flooded with estrogens in utero might just do that. I have
| always been able to stop on a dime, wasn't very motivated by
| sex, apparently come off somewhere in the "aloof to gay"
| spectrum to women because I don't have the reflexive "look a
| woman up and down" habit. Sperm count at eighteen was ...
| miserable and sad.
|
| Due to another health issue, it will be complex to treat and
| I've considered Clomid versus just straight shots. And frankly,
| I am a little scared of what a normal sex drive would be like.
| everdrive wrote:
| What is a 'DES baby' ?
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > Diethylstilbestrol (DES) is a synthetic form of the
| female hormone estrogen. It was prescribed to pregnant
| women between 1940 and 1971 to prevent miscarriage,
| premature labor, and related complications of pregnancy
|
| https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-
| prevention/risk/h...
| willcipriano wrote:
| Some people have this idea that they have to be "in the mood"
| to have sex, but like many other activities sometimes you start
| doing something and you find that after a few minutes you begin
| to enjoy yourself. If you physically can't that's another
| problem, but for some this can be solved by setting a reminder
| to initiate sex from time to time. Really as a couple you
| should set aside some time to be physically intimate (not
| necessarily have sex) with each other on a regular basis, if
| you did that you may find the problem sort of solves itself.
| carlmr wrote:
| I think this is a big part. For spontaneous sex you need to
| have leisure time, together, where you can expect privacy,
| and you're not super tired. A lot of people don't have that.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| go to the gym and start lifting. (esspecially squats)
|
| my libido was insane after 2 months. (which was annoying
| because I was single and had no prospects at the time)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yep, was going to say the same. Leg work in particular is
| good for your testosterone levels.
| staticman2 wrote:
| There's nothing I can find showing muscle exercises have
| any more than a slight, temporary effect on testosterone
| levels.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| an action that has a slight temporary effect but
| performed consistently over time will have some sort of
| longer term effect.
| staticman2 wrote:
| The concept of homeostasis shows this isn't necessarily
| true.
|
| I can find nothing showing there is an effect over time.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| so people who regularly lift dont' look any different
| from people that don't after doing it consistently for a
| long period?
| staticman2 wrote:
| The claim was about testosterone levels not muscle mass.
|
| It doesn't appear to be true that lifting has any impact
| on testosterone levels aside from the first hour after
| lifting. It goes up temporarily then returns to normal.
|
| It appears scientists have studied such things. The
| biological concept of homeostasis could explain why that
| might be true.
|
| So it is what it is.
| pengaru wrote:
| If you're living sedentary and overweight/obese, I'd start with
| changing that to a more active lifestyle and maintaining a
| normal BMI. When I live more like a savage my sex drive tends
| to follow suit.
| metadat wrote:
| What exactly does "like a savage" mean to you? Staying lean
| and hungry?
| pengaru wrote:
| Regularly being sweaty/dirty/exhausted from exertion and
| general outdoor shenanigans is probably a reasonable
| general description of my mental image.
|
| But you can get a chunk of that just hitting the gym.
| Personally I find actually being out in nature and getting
| dirty while doing strenuous shit makes a difference WRT my
| vitality and vigor. An air-conditioned gym is still a
| largely sterile, low-risk comfort trap.
| izzydata wrote:
| Perhaps less comfortable with more physical movement.
| Humans didn't evolve with air conditioning and couches.
| gundamdoubleO wrote:
| I actually experienced the complete opposite. When I was
| sedentary and overweight sex was probably the number one
| thing on my mind most of the time. After I fixed my diet,
| lost the weight and started a regular exercise regime my
| libido dropped like crazy. These days I generally don't think
| about sex at all.
| leeroyjenkins11 wrote:
| Does that have any relationship to pornography usage? Porn
| usage affects those feelings but can negatively affect
| actual sexual performance, especially in monogamous
| relationships.
| patrulek wrote:
| If by "fixing diet" you mean cutting out sugars/carbs or
| being in heavy deficit thats no wonder your libido
| plummeted. You could also be out of some micronutrients.
| You could be overtraining or you were into new lifestyle so
| much you werent bothering about females at all.
| pengaru wrote:
| Yikes, that's very much not consistent with my experience.
|
| But I will admit that it's still much different in my 40s
| from say my late teens/early 20s. No amount of savagery in
| my mid-40s is going to make me the hornball that is my 19
| year old self. That would probably require TRT.
| globular-toast wrote:
| There is a phenomenon in some men where too intense or too
| much exercise can lower sex drive.
| thriftwy wrote:
| The expectations of your partner are likely the main reason for
| lowered sex drive. You need to learn to let these expectations
| free and not be affected by those, or by your own expectations.
|
| Only then you will, hopefully, rediscover parts of your sex
| drive.
| fithisux wrote:
| Me too having the same problem. Possibly plastic bottles?
| pengaru wrote:
| Fortunately you can literally measure a male's ango-genital
| distance to see if they're underdeveloped as has been
| observed from Bisphenol A exposure.
|
| I wonder if it's a check doctors are generally doing now.
| fithisux wrote:
| Mine did not even mention the case of pollutants. He said
| heart problems or psychological problems.
| pengaru wrote:
| Maybe they just measure testosterone levels and avoid the
| awkward conversation (and potentially depressing
| conclusion) of determining how fully developed you are
| from your time in the womb. Is there even much they can
| do about it other than TRT anyways?
| groby_b wrote:
| In general - talk to a psych/therapist/sex therapist. Sex drive
| is weird, and the mind is weird :)
|
| But also, there is no "I supposedly should not be this". You
| are who you are. There's an entire community of people who are
| asexual, _and that is fine_. If it bugs you personally, by all
| means, I recommend spelunking in your brain and finding out
| more. But please don 't feel you have to conform to some sort
| of ideal.
|
| Yes, there are your partner's needs. But if you just aren't
| that sexual, it is time for a (difficult) conversation - how
| else can they get their needs fulfilled. You can try to just
| make yourself be that person, but if it's truly not who you
| are, there's a price to pay down the road. (Hence, please talk
| to a professional - they're much better at helping you navigate
| this complex area than randos on the Internet)
| hooande wrote:
| Seemed like the OP was making the point that lower sex drive
| could be caused by the same chemical effects that could be
| causing lower sperm counts. How would a mental health
| professional help with this?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| OP is guessing based on reading a random article on HN. A
| medical Dr. is probably more equipped to root cause their
| issue and more specifically treat it.
| concinds wrote:
| Doctor are unlikely to help, since most medical societies
| consider 300ng/dL (incomprehensibly low) T levels
| acceptable. With this (and a sadly too large number of
| other conditions), doing research and being one's own
| advocate will fare 1000x better than naively expecting a
| doctor to correctly spot, and be willing to treat, low T.
| That just isn't how they're trained, and here, their
| training is wrong.
| 0des wrote:
| I've been told that medically below 1200 for a healthy
| and young male is low
| staticman2 wrote:
| Been told by whom, a drug dealer?
| 0des wrote:
| essentially yeah, an endocrinologist.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Generally yes, I agree with you. In this case though OP
| was doing nothing and in no way appeared to be motivated
| to investigate. A dr. is going to be better than nothing.
| With that said I specifically went to male hormone / TRT
| doctor because that is what I wanted after my own
| research.
| no_wizard wrote:
| if by OP you mean me, thats not true, I am motivated. I
| was being succient in my point and hoping to understand
| what others felt / do in my situation, if they have any
| similar experience. I'm extremely motivated to get to the
| bottom of this. I've been roadblocked by therapy in some
| ways, because they just say _your sex drive is yours, her
| sex drive is hers, and it shouldn 't define your
| relationship_ on one hand to another therapist telling me
| that _women should drive sex in a relationship not men_
| to yet another telling me that _I don 't exhibit a normal
| pattern of sexual desire_ but gave little recommendation
| in the way of action on what to do about it.
|
| Doctors are even worse, they either don't see an issue,
| or just want to throw ED pills at me.
|
| Its alot more complicated than you might think. I just
| didn't want to put all of this into one post like that,
| so it didn't augment peoples opinions.
|
| I'm somewhat regretting this now, as I wonder if any
| potential employer might track down my identity now and
| see these posts and think lesser, but I'm willing to put
| myself out like this so I can hear from others, and I
| think thats worth the potential exposure
| wonderwonder wrote:
| I misunderstood then and apologize. With that said I
| highly recommend going to a TRT doctor and getting your
| total and free levels checked. Your issue could be as
| simple as just having low T and that is a very easy fix.
|
| I very much doubt an employer is going to go through the
| trouble of tracking your anonymous HN accounts down. You
| are likely safe :)
|
| Note: personal unpopular opinion unrelated to anything in
| particular that will get me down voted, unless recovering
| from some incredible trauma (death of a child, sexual
| abuse, etc.) I have never understood the need for a
| psychologist / psychiatrist. Best advice I have ever
| gotten is just to get on with it. No need to talk things
| through with some person that has never been through what
| you have and is just making it up as they go along.
| Trudge On.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Not all medical issues need to be made into an identity.
| samatman wrote:
| Asexuality is fine in the sense that no one should be
| challenged or treated badly for their level of sex drive.
|
| But in a context of falling sperm counts, testosterone
| levels, endocrine disruptors showing up in urine at high
| levels, SSRIs (some of these are male-specific but have
| female counterparts), I worry that just shrugging off low-to-
| nonexistent libido as just "ah some people are asexual and
| that's valid" isn't giving a complete picture.
|
| Sex feels really good, relationships are important to most
| people, most relationships of the sort I'm referring to are
| going to be with a partner who wants sex. To reiterate, any
| ego-synchronic asexuals out there, if you're happy I'm happy,
| but it's also okay to treat a lack of libido as a medical
| issue and see if it can be alleviated, which is often the
| case.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Asexuality on an individual level is fine, you shouldn't
| feel bad about it. As a societal phenomenon, it's worrying,
| and we should investigate.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Asexual people do not generally become less asexual when
| you give them hormones.
|
| There's a reason the term exists, it's not for people
| suffering from a treatable chemical deficiency.
| globular-toast wrote:
| If someone is genuinely asexual then they wouldn't be at all
| concerned about sex drive. But I know from experience you can
| have periods of low libido as a sexual man which are quite
| uncomfortable. You basically lose your virility and a big
| part of what makes you feel like you.
| cjensen wrote:
| If you have a concern about this, talk to your doctor.
|
| Also keep in mind "sex drive" (aka "libido") can be easily
| affected by worrying about it. Talk to a psych about it because
| generally speaking psych-caused libido issues are super-easy to
| treat.
|
| Lastly, if you are taking medications check for whether
| decreased libido is on the list of known side effects. Check in
| with your doctor anytime you have a well-known side effect to
| see if you can ignore it or not.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Have your testosterone levels checked. If they are low get on
| TRT. Massive quality of life improvement. Higher sex drive,
| more focus, more energy, etc.
|
| "My partner is very frustrated by this at times" Respectfully
| this should be an alarm bell. Sex is an important driver in
| most relationships and if your partner is upset you should be
| actively working with your Dr. to root cause the issue.
| caeril wrote:
| > If they are low get on TRT
|
| This blanket advice is a bit dangerous. Once on a test cruise
| for longer than a couple months, it's a lifelong commitment.
| Low testosterone has a _LOT_ of input variables. You need to
| know your cortisol, your LH, your FSH, your E2 and SHBG, your
| TSH, and T3 /T4 levels as well.
|
| Some men can be fixed with stress reduction methods, some can
| be fixed with interventions that increase gonadotropins, like
| clomiphene or HCG. Sometimes you need to inhibit
| aromatization into estradiol. Sometimes you just need to lift
| heavy weights.
|
| Check _all_ your hormones, because your HPTA is not a one-
| variable function. Then decide on a course of action.
|
| Hitting up Big Mike in the locker room for 500mg test cyp
| because your testosterone is low is a bit premature.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| "This blanket advice is a bit dangerous." Its a message
| board friend, I advised him to get his levels checked by a
| Dr. Doctor is not going to prescribe TRT based on my post.
| No one mentioned (except you) breaking the law and
| purchasing steroids from a black market dealer. The word
| dangerous is a bit of a stretch here.
| caeril wrote:
| > Doctor is not going to prescribe TRT based on my post
|
| Apologies, for some reason I read this through my
| biohacking lens and hadn't even considered standard
| medical channels, ha.
| staticman2 wrote:
| Elsewhere on this thread you said you generally agreed
| with someone who said the medical consensus on healthy
| TRT levels was wrong and someone should shop around for a
| doctor with alternative views.
|
| If the medical consensus is not wrong your "general
| agreement" about shopping doctors is probably at least a
| little risky.
| copperx wrote:
| TRT has its disadvantages, such as (1) you have to take it
| for the rest of your life, and (2) a higher risk of certain
| cancers. It sounds a bit scary, to be honest.
| concinds wrote:
| The "high-performance" doctors (for athletes/businessmen)
| I've seen tend to be very pro TRT. If you're low T, TRT
| will increase your energy, confidence, sex drive, serenity,
| and quality of life; and it'll also very significantly
| decrease your risk of heart disease and heart attacks even
| in old age. Even looking at the pure cost-benefit of TRT
| (without even considering whether it'll help GP's sex life)
| it's an easy decision to make.
|
| Low testosterone is vastly underdiagnosed. Some tests
| define _240 ng /dL_ as _normal testosterones levels for a
| 19 year old man_. That 's low even for a 70 year old. No
| man alive will even function at their real cognitive
| capacity at such low levels (brain fog is a low T symptom).
| Obviously, in a medical system that defines 240-300ng/dL
| Test as normal, TRT won't be the mainstream treatment. Its
| "controversialness" is completely unearned.
|
| https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-
| xpm-2013-09-15-ct...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| I am not going to argue on the pros/cons of TRT on life
| quality but this submission specifically describes lower
| sperm count in the general population.
|
| Theoretically TRT would actually make a patient's sperm
| count worse.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Sure, but it doesn't even matter if you aren't having
| sex.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| sure, there are tradeoffs to everything. Your points are
| valid, but so is the view point of OP potentially losing
| his partner for the rest of their life if sex is that
| important to them. TRT can provide many other benefits as
| well both physical and mental. Increased cancer risk is
| probably greatly reduced just by eating a proper diet and
| being physically active which being on TRT may motivate. As
| for taking it the rest of your life, its not a big deal,
| you can pin yourself once a week or get a pellet implanted
| that has to be replaced every 4 months. I just inject
| myself once a week, takes less than 5 minutes all in. My
| mental health & focus has vastly improved and i have more
| energy to actually play with my kids after work. My Dr.
| also monitors my blood work every 8 weeks and just due to
| this, my liver function is healthy after having elevated
| levels due to fatty liver for the last 15 years.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| In particular, get both _free testosterone_ and _total
| testosterone_ levels checked. Some doctors only order total
| testosterone. It 's possible to be symptomatic because you're
| low on the free stuff even though your total testosterone
| concentration is fine.
| all2 wrote:
| Get a complete male hormone panel. LH/FSH, SHGB, DHEA-S,
| Prolactin, Total T, Free T, Estradiol, TSH, fT3, fT4, T4.
|
| Adrenals, liver, thyroid issues can all contribute to
| jacked Test levels. A complete panel will give you a good
| starting point for root causes.
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Definitely, good point. My total testosterone was actually
| above average but free testosterone was very low.
| all2 wrote:
| DHEA-S? Estradiol?
| wonderwonder wrote:
| Sorry. not quite sure what you are asking if I took a
| DHEA-S test or checked my Estradiol levels? Estrogen
| levels were high, currently taking 1mg of Anastrozole
| weekly for that.
| all2 wrote:
| Also consider Diindolylmethane (DIM) and Calcium
| D-Glucarate (CDG). Vigorous Steve (what a name) talks
| about these some on his YouTube channel.
|
| Both are used to manage estrogens for those who run
| steroid stacks. They are likely useful for managing
| estrogens for normal folks too. Ask your endocrinologist,
| obviously.
| honkler wrote:
| Alex Jones was right
| Geee wrote:
| How to avoid BPA?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Avoid plastics - particularly when it comes to food.
| bojangleslover wrote:
| Literally everything is wrapped in plastic in the UK
| corrral wrote:
| Really hard to do. Better get used to gardening--a lot.
| Produce? Often wrapped in plastic. Anything canned? Those
| cans are lined in plastic, so goodbye canned tomatoes. Frozen
| veggies? Plastic bags. Anything that comes in an apparently
| paper sack? Probably a plastic liner layer on the inside.
|
| If you go extreme with it, you can't even use stuff that
| comes in glass jars or bottles--the inside of the lid is
| plastic.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| I don't have much to back it up, but I think adding heat to
| the equation is the biggest catalyst to how many chemicals
| leech into the food. Basically, avoid heating up food in
| anything plastic.
| klipt wrote:
| I thought the plastic mostly leeches out with heat. So cans
| with plastic lining: bad, the canning process uses heat.
|
| Raw vegetables in a plastic bag? Not so bad, you can wash
| them and then cook them yourself (but avoid non stick
| cookware which has PFAS coatings - use stainless steel and
| cast iron instead).
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Commenter asked how to 'avoid' BPA, not eliminate it
| entirely. Why let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
|
| I also think you're overstating the difficulty of avoiding
| major sources of BPA. Most cling wrap doesn't contain
| phalates. Buy fresh food and cook as much as possible.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| humaniania wrote:
| This euronews site is really weird. Majority owned by an advisor
| and friend of far right Orban. Pushing the same kind of anti-male
| conspiracy stuff as Tucker Carlson. Weird history of stories
| submitted for the domain.
| sumy23 wrote:
| I've been reading about this issue for a few years. Here is
| something in GQ from 2018: https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-
| count-zero
| linkingday wrote:
| think we should be focusing on the academic journal rather than
| the sketchy news site. this seems to be a legitimate study.
| ParksNet wrote:
| We need to ban entire categories of chemicals, if they are ever
| going to be in contact with food or potable water, including at
| end of life: phthalates, bisphenols, PFAS.
|
| We also need to ban polyester clothing, at least for categories
| washed frequently: socks, tshirts, underwear. Polyester clothing
| is made from discarded plastic and inevitably degrades into
| microplastics inside your own house, bed, washing machine.
| scythe wrote:
| >ban polyester clothing
|
| I'm sympathetic, but I'm afraid people don't realize just how
| incredibly difficult this would be. Polyethylene terephthalate,
| colloquially "polyester", has _completely_ transformed the
| textile industry. You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen
| towels? Polyester. Water-resistant lightweight warm clothes?
| Polyester. Ultra-light athletic clothes? Polyester. Bathing
| suits that don 't chafe? Polyester. Durable, stain-resistant
| upholstery? Polyester. Fuzzy blankets? Polyester. Cheap suits?
| Polyester. Gore-Tex? You bet it's on polyester.
|
| Lyocell can pick up some of the slack in terms of durability,
| and if we ever nail down artificial silk it can insulate pretty
| well, but for water and mold resistance, pretty much everything
| _else_ you can use will also leave behind microplastics. We 're
| talking big downgrades in the quality of everything.
| Rumplestiltskin never seemed so real.
| corrral wrote:
| > You want mold-resistant carpets and kitchen towels
|
| Ugh, synthetic towels. They don't absorb anything, just push
| it around. They burn and/or melt if you try to use them as a
| substitute oven mitt. They're beyond awful.
|
| Get white cotton ones and bleach them. They actually function
| as towels, which should be the minimum standard for, you
| know, a towel. You don't need mold resistant towels.
|
| As for the rest:
|
| The cost problem's the main issue. Take away the cheapest
| materials, demand goes up for the next-cheapest and pretty
| soon it's not cheap anymore (yes, they can make more, but
| only to a point). Our society's totally adapted to clothes so
| cheap they're not worth repairing, that don't need special
| care because, even if extra care would make them last longer,
| they're so cheap it's not worth any time or materials, et c.
| Given the modern cost of labor in the developed world, a
| large chunk of the population would be doing a lot more DIY
| clothing repair than they do now.
| scythe wrote:
| >Take away the cheapest materials, demand goes up for the
| next-cheapest and pretty soon it's not cheap anymore
|
| This is why I didn't even mention wool. It's not so
| expensive now, but if PETE was gone, surging demand for
| wool would quickly make it very expensive.
| corrral wrote:
| Yeah, goodbye wool shirts, as it all gets sucked into
| suit production again.
| bdcravens wrote:
| I've looked into this myself. I've moved to as many plastic-
| free and sustainable options as I can, but I just can't give
| up my preference for things like tri-blend shirts.
| Additionally, cotton is a very resource-intensive crop.
| bdcravens wrote:
| It's not a perfect solution, but you can get filters for your
| washing machine to capture microplastics put off by clothes
| (though it's more for preventing it from going into the water
| supply; uncertain if it would help for those inside the house)
|
| https://planetcare.org/
| tinco wrote:
| I think recent research showed that microplastics are caught
| by waste management processes, and I think dumped in land
| fills so not much of a threat to the environment if they get
| into the sewage.
| willcipriano wrote:
| Looks like it filters the water the washing machine outputs,
| that would've just went down the drain anyway so it won't
| help keep it out of your house.
| qgin wrote:
| Paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) is a risk factor?
| lprd wrote:
| This has been brewing for the last 50~ years. The average
| testosterone level found in men is drastically lower than our
| ancestors. Testosterone is a man's primary hormone, and being
| deficient in it can cause a multitude of issues including
| depression, little to no sex drive, and even sperm count. Yes,
| diet and exercise play a role in overall health and T production,
| but this goes deeper than that.
|
| I know the article isn't about testosterone, but I believe this
| is all connected in some way or another.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Endocrine disruptors, diet, plastics, reduced exercise
| (exercise absolutely causes more testosterone to build muscle
| in response to stress), less violent and physical
| environment/society, other pollutants.
|
| Heck, sitting in chairs puts your testes closer to your body,
| which reduces sperm count.
|
| There are tons of reasons that probably add up. The scary part
| might be the pollutants though.
|
| Women also change their level of testosterone preference based
| on the stress level of environment. Civilization is by
| definition a less stressful environment regardless of
| inflation/unemployment rate.
| abeppu wrote:
| > The average testosterone level found in men is drastically
| lower than our ancestors.
|
| I'm curious -- how far back do we have good data on that? When
| did we learn enough to measure it? Are there techniques to
| estimate it for people in the far past, or is this the kind of
| thing where you really need to collect / process samples at the
| time of interest?
| Balgair wrote:
| Cigarette smoking increases testosterone levels in men [0].
| With the decreased prevalence of cigarette smoking in many
| countries, we should expect average testosterone levels to
| fall as a result. The hard part about historical data would
| be to disentangle the smokers from the nonsmokers and then
| find a way to measure testosterone to see if there is yet
| another factor at play. I'm not aware of any easy methods to
| conclusively preform that analysis.
|
| [0] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24457405/
| antiverse wrote:
| How do these chemicals get into the body and into the
| sperm/urine?
|
| If it's a matter of controlling what we eat, then hitting the gym
| isn't enough. We'll have to curtail and adjust diets as best as
| we can, start being more careful around what sprays/treatments
| are used in vegetables and what anti/pro biotics the animals are
| fed with. We'll need stricter nutritional breakdown on this. We
| might even need to cut out certain foods if, by default, they are
| harmful to us past a certain quantity. We will have to switch
| from using the plastics we use in bottles and food storage
| containers to safer ones. Would fasting help here, even?
|
| If it's a matter of quality of air, we'll need to install better
| indoor filters (assuming we spend most of our time indoors).
| Outdoor air pollution is something we can't really solve on a
| dime, so to speak, as it would need greater intervention by Big
| Government et al to put into motion (good luck with this). So
| we'll have to do the best we can on our own, limited budgets,
| that we can to reduce the impact. For those who can afford it,
| living in an over all healthier outdoor-air-quality place is the
| way to go.
|
| Does it permeate from/through the clothes and through the skin?
|
| Feel free to add more of this sort of thing as a reply. At this
| point, having seen what I've seen, all bets are off that anyone
| other than ourselves will actually lift a finger to solve this,
| so we'll have to do it by ourselves, for ourselves.
|
| So keep lifting.
| screye wrote:
| > If it's a matter of quality of air
|
| Should be fairly easy to check for correlations across
| neighboring urban vs rural regions.
| filoeleven wrote:
| I expect endocrine disrupters to play a big role in low sperm
| counts, low testosterone, increases obesity, specific cancers,
| probably many other things.
|
| They have outsized effects at very low levels, and we aren't
| very good at regulating exposure to them. See for example the
| whole BPA thing (along with many other plastics), PFAS, etc.
| klipt wrote:
| And as soon as BPA was discouraged companies switched to the
| close analog BPS which hadn't been proven harmful _yet_.
| schiffern wrote:
| > How do these chemicals get into the body
|
| I suspect an under-appreciated source of BPA and BPS is thermal
| ("receipt") paper. One receipt can contain 1000x as much BPA as
| a plastic-lined can[0], which is absorbed through the skin
| (especially when using hand sanitizer) or transferred to the
| mouth[1]. They can also contaminate objects in direct contact
| -- cash, coins, wallets, clothing, food packaging, etc.
|
| The official assumptions used to calculate the public's
| "typical exposure" are laughable[2]:
|
| > _For example, the European Food Safety Authority's (EFSA)
| exposure model estimates one handling event per day for
| adolescents and adults as typical exposures, and 4.6 handling
| events per day as high exposures; each exposure was anticipated
| to last 10 seconds. EFSA also estimates that average exposure
| involves handling by three fingertips on one hand, and high
| exposure comprises handling by three fingertips on both hands
| (6 fingers total)._
|
| One behavioral change individuals can do is carry an envelope
| for receipts, and ask cashiers to place them directly in the
| envelope. If the cashier asks why, spread the word! Suggest
| that they ask their employer switch to non-phenol paper that
| doesn't contain BPA or BPS.
|
| [0] https://www.pca.state.mn.us/green-chemistry/bpa-thermal-
| pape...
|
| [1] https://www.ewg.org/research/bpa-coats-cash-register-
| receipt...
|
| [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5453537/
| impostervt wrote:
| So, I know this is anecdotal, but I've seen a number of my
| friends (mostly male engineers) have kids later in life (35+),
| and a higher-than-I-would-expect number of those kids have
| developmental problems. Some act out more violently than you'd
| expect from a little kid, some just have ADHD-seeming issues, and
| some are just not progressing at the "expected" rate.
|
| Is this a real thing? Anyone else notice it? I'm not even sure
| how to google it.
| sumy23 wrote:
| Women are more likely to give birth to children with birth
| defects after 35. Not sure about how the father's age impacts
| the child. E.g.
| https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/birthdefects/downsyndrome/data.ht...
| geodel wrote:
| Well as a parent of one such kid, seems like it may be real
| thing. On other hand I see similar age friends' kids and they
| look fine. Also since I am dealing with physical disabilities
| so its more obvious from outside.
| all2 wrote:
| Dr. Campbell-McBride, "Gut and Psychology Syndrome" is worth a
| read.
|
| You're not wrong in noticing that something is wrong. No doubt
| folks will come out of the woodwork yelling "anec-data!". Trust
| your gut and keep looking.
| pythonic_hell wrote:
| The age of a man when conception occurred is a known (and not
| new) factor in determining the health of a child. Sperm from
| old men (after 30) starts to introduce all sorts of risks such
| as Aspergers and autoimmune diseases.
|
| In fact the age of the father is one of the only variables that
| have been shown to correlate with the prevalence of Asperger in
| children.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| Wouldn't a very accessible explanation for that correlation
| be that aspie-leaning men might tend to have children later
| in life?
|
| I should really go find the studies.
| carlmr wrote:
| Especially since social awkwardness usually leads to more
| issues in finding a partner. So it's actually a really good
| explanation.
| newaccount74 wrote:
| > higher-than-I-would-expect number of those kids have
| developmental problems
|
| My experience is that when you start talking to parents, you'll
| find that there are very few kids who don't have some kind of
| "problem".
|
| My friend group has a bunch of parents who had kids in their
| 20ies, and I don't know of a single kid that doesn't have some
| kind of "issue".
|
| Also, from talking to a friend who is a therapist for children,
| she says that with a lot of children in therapy she thinks that
| it would be better if the parents went to therapy rather than
| the kids.
| touisteur wrote:
| Well yes having kids is a daily trigger for all kinds of
| childhood trauma. Even with good parents and a caring
| environment, growing up comes with so many painful, traumatic
| events, we learn to cope, to live with them, but kids make
| all of it surface, it can be overwhelming...
|
| I'd advise any parent who has a first kid and is feeling all
| kinds of overwhelming or surprising things, to go and first
| get desensitised a bit, and then do the work...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Some things worth bearing in mind. These studies come from the
| field of epidemiology, which is notorious for low quality studies
| that rely on flawed assumptions to create apocalyptic scenarios.
| Everything coming out of this field has to be assumed to be
| suspect until thoroughly vetted by outsiders.
|
| At least, that's my personal belief. Let's do a quick literature
| review to check if there's disagreement with the claims of the
| researchers.
|
| Firstly, are sperm counts actually falling at all? The article
| says:
|
| _" Sperm quantity and quality have dramatically declined across
| Western countries in recent decades, with research suggesting
| sperm counts have been more than halved in the space of 40
| years."_
|
| But Tong2022 [1] says:
|
| _" Concerns regarding declining sperm counts have existed for
| over 50 years, and even predate the use of a standard means to
| assess semen characteristics ... in the field of reproduction,
| the contention that sperm counts are declining is not universally
| accepted and has been a hotly debated topic over the last several
| decades.1,5-9"_
|
| If they are falling, does it actually matter?
|
| _"... our review suggests that a decline in sperm counts does
| not necessarily translate to a decline in male fertility "_
|
| A New York Times report [2] on their study stated:
|
| _" Now a group of interdisciplinary researchers from Harvard and
| the Massachusetts Institute of Technology contend that fears of
| an impending Spermageddon have been vastly overstated. In a study
| published in May in the journal Human Fertility, they re-
| evaluated the 2017 review and found that it relied on flawed
| assumptions and failed to consider alternate explanations for the
| apparent decline of sperm ... even the data that passed muster
| was geographically sparse and uneven and often lacked basic
| criteria like the age of the men. Moreover, its authors took for
| granted that a single metric -- sperm count -- was an accurate
| predictor of male fertility and overall health ... no one knows
| what an "optimal" sperm count is ... as methodologies for
| counting had improved and been standardized since the 1980s,
| sperm counts had appeared to fall. In other words, it may simply
| be that earlier scientists were overcounting sperm._"
|
| A lot of this stuff originates in a 2017 meta-study by Dr Swan et
| al. Tom Chivers reviews Swan's book on the "spermogeddon" [3]:
|
| _" the book does not seem sensible. Because for Swan, everything
| causes fertility problems, not just phthalates. Sugar, beef,
| cycling, stress, watching TV, doing too much exercise, doing too
| little, eating the wrong diet; you can barely get out of bed in
| the morning without sabotaging your chance of having a baby ... I
| half expected her to say we ought to wear ray-shielded underpants
| ... She even suggests that the growth in intersex conditions and
| perhaps the rise of gender dysphoria, and even changes in gender
| identity, could be because of EDCs (and taking paracetamol in
| pregnancy!)
|
| This hyperventilating about human extinction, and rolling
| everything bad into a ball labelled "fertility and phthalates",
| makes no sense if you think Swan (a respected epidemiologist) is
| trying to give a dispassionate assessment of fertility issues.
| But she's not. This is a polemic."_
|
| A key problem with Swan's argument is that she and others like
| her define fertility as how many babies women have. This makes it
| easy to draw a correlation between falling sperm counts and
| falling fertility, but eliminates the impact of free choice.
| Women prefer to have fewer children as their countries get richer
| and child mortality falls, but as far as these "respected
| epidemiologists" are concerned that's apparently out of scope.
|
| [1]
| https://bcmj.org/sites/default/files/BCMJ_Vol64_No3_bcmd2b.p...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/04/health/sperm-fertility-
| re...
|
| [3] https://unherd.com/2021/03/the-truth-about-spermageddon/
| sumy23 wrote:
| Even if sperm count doesn't impact overall male fertility, the
| fact that sperm count is declining potentially indicates some
| type of endocrine disruption. Also, your comment kind of
| glosses over the fact that though-to-be cause hormonal
| interference were found at levels 17 times what is considered
| safe in the median sample from the study.
| legitster wrote:
| Sample size of 98. No controls or comparisons. And they
| specifically were searching for chemicals with anomalous
| representation.
|
| Take it with a grain of salt big enough to club someone with.
| ipnon wrote:
| It's good to be sceptical but this is a pandemic of sexual
| dysfunction that needs a working theory as soon as possible,
| and these results are in line with our current understanding of
| pollution endocrinology.
| tinco wrote:
| Sample size of 98 is pretty large for this kind of study. What
| sort of sample size would you suggest, and why?
| legitster wrote:
| > The researchers acknowledged some limitations to their
| research.
|
| > For example, the data used dated from 2009 to 2010, and
| exposure to BPA may have decreased since, while exposure to
| other chemicals may have increased.
|
| > Another uncertainty is whether women of reproductive age
| have the same levels of chemical exposure as the men in the
| study.
|
| Even the researchers suggested a wider time frame and a
| larger comparison group.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Every research ever conducted suggests a larger study.
|
| Is there any quarterly report that doesnt suggest doing
| something to invrease profits
| diydsp wrote:
| It's not an experiment, it's a study.
|
| > The team then _compared_ the results with acceptable levels
| of exposure derived from the scientific literature.
| whatthedangheck wrote:
| Also relevant: https://www.psypost.org/2022/06/study-finds-early-
| exposure-t...
|
| > Low exposure to gonadal hormones during early gestation and
| infancy predicts higher recalled childhood gender nonconformity
| in men, according to new research published in Psychological
| Science. The findings provide evidence androgens such as
| testosterone play a role in the development of male-typical
| gender role behaviors in childhood.
| twoxproblematic wrote:
| dehrmann wrote:
| I know someone with a theory that the rise of "the pill" is a
| factor in male-typical gender role behaviors. Essentially, the
| pill is only 91% effective over a year in practice, the mother
| doesn't know she's pregnant, continues taking estrogen pills
| during the first trimester, and this impacts the development of
| the fetus. In the US, it wasn't really widely available to
| around 1970, so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of
| homosexuality.
|
| No idea if it's true, but the timeline and mechanism of action
| seem plausible. The rise of the pill also happened around a
| time of greater LGBT awareness, so overall awareness is also a
| factor.
| nkrisc wrote:
| You have to take "rates of homosexuality" with a huge amount
| of skepticism considering it was often _illegal_ until
| recently and could even get you killed. You have to assume
| any data from the 70s or earlier is severely under-reported.
| Any research into the subject was also taboo, frowned upon,
| or even actively discouraged, or outright disallowed.
| abeppu wrote:
| > so it lines up somewhat with increased rates of
| homosexuality
|
| ... but isn't it really hard to distinguish _actual_ rates of
| homosexuality from visible homosexuality? As public
| acceptance for LGBT people has increased, more people can
| feel safe coming out or identifying as gay.
|
| Further, if the pill became widely available around 1970, and
| if this were an impactful factor, wouldn't you expect to see
| the corresponding change beginning in at least the mid 80s,
| as those kids grow up?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| LGBT rates among zoomers is shockingly high to me. 20%,
| double that of millenials. Millenials are double that of
| Gen X. I tend to believe there's a genuine biological
| phenomenon going on here. The next generation should be
| just starting to establish their sexual orientations. The
| data should be interesting...
| staticman2 wrote:
| We have records showing male male sex was common in
| ancient Greece.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Yeah, mostly rich older dudes fucking young boys. Greece
| was not some idyllic free love society. It was just that
| being a top was super manly and being a bottom was not.
| You didn't have wealthy men in openly gay equal
| relationships with other men.
| abeppu wrote:
| I'm not saying nothing genuinely biological is happening,
| and it's totally plausible, but I am saying one has to be
| careful about the available evidence and how it's
| interpreted.
|
| The only thing we can really measure is what people say
| about themselves, often in a poll/survey/study context.
| More people are identifying as LGBT in the younger
| generations. We have no way of knowing how many people in
| each generation are some form of closeted. But people's
| increased rates of _identifying_ as LGBT have occurred in
| an environment where both cultural and
| chemical/biological factors have shifted. How could you
| disentangle their effects?
|
| I think there's a risk when making claims about anything
| that has stigma attached to it. How prevalent has sexual
| assault been, over time? How many kids are raised with
| corporal punishment? If you expect that both their
| prevalence, and the willingness of people to report or
| talk about it changes over time, how could you know when
| rates go up or down?
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Pick a Bayesian prior and roll with it. 20% of Gen Z is
| identifying as LGBT. Seems high to me. If we see another
| doubling for the next generation then something would
| seem to be obviously different. One doesn't need to
| disentangle the effects per se
| concinds wrote:
| The increase is almost entirely in bisexuality. I think
| the biological argument is strong.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| That might also fit with the fact that the youngest is
| usually the homosexual one. Mom started taking the pill to
| prevent anymore kids, but one slipped through.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| That, and guys tend to medicate their hormones too these days
| (finasteride). Yes, DHT is "just" a parallel path -- but when
| is biology ever that cut and dry, especially when there's so
| much money to be made?
| scythe wrote:
| Does anyone actually start taking finasteride _before_ the
| emergence of sexuality, though? As far as I 'm aware,
| treatment is usually initiated at age 21 or later. In that
| case, changes in sexuality should be very hard to miss, and
| we'd know by now.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah, it's after puberty -- but are you so sure it would
| be hard to miss? Small effects with lots of confounding
| variables and an enormous profit incentive to miss seem
| easy to miss.
| scythe wrote:
| In order to do due diligence for this reply, I typed
| "finasteride" into Google Scholar, and the first
| suggestion was "finasteride side effects", which brings
| up 20,500 results, including highly cited papers dealing
| specifically with sexual side effects:
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S174360
| 951...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S17
| 436...
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/15579883145
| 384...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001502
| 821...
|
| I think that in _that_ context, it would be hard to miss!
| brightball wrote:
| Oh, I've wondered about the societal effects of birth control
| pills for a couple of decades. Stuff like the above theory,
| effects on difficulty conceiving when women get off of it
| finally.
|
| Talk to a doctor sometime about the volume of 30+ year old
| women who are on some type of daily anxiety medication. My
| understanding is that it's approaching 50% or higher.
|
| Was that level of anxiety among women common before birth
| control?
|
| IMO there are a whole lot of questions that come from it.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| You spotted a social phenomena, but you have no reason to
| blame the borth control pill- it could bechemical
| pollution, tefllon, etc.
| [deleted]
| zo1 wrote:
| If true, that sounds like something that should have worried
| and concerned those that "certified" those pills safe for
| human consumption.
| whatthedangheck wrote:
| It seems plausible. During the first section of this talk on
| transgender medical care Dr. Will Powers touches on exactly
| what you're talking about except in his example it was a
| highly potent estrogen prescribed to mothers who had had
| miscarriages to take during pregnancy.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fefu33e8O-0
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| As I once read, the contraceptive is not eliminated by the
| body, so it gets washed out by the kidneys and ends up via
| sewers in water everywhere. No idea how long-lived it is
| though. I guess it would break down naturally?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The pill is probably responsible for a bunch of crap at the
| societal level just like any other group of hormone changing
| medications taken by such a wide chunk of the population
| would be. But it probably has little to do with homosexuality
| since we have good historical record of prevalence varying
| inversely with persecution.
| annyeonghada wrote:
| >prevalence varying inversely with persecution
|
| No, we don't because before we didn't even count. It is
| possible that
|
| 1. there were fewer homosexual men in the past
|
| 2. increase in the number of homosexual men is due to less
| persecution
|
| are both contemporarily true.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Is this actually real news to anybody?
|
| The so-called disinformation-prone conspiracy-theorists have been
| strongly emphasizing the problem of plastics and chemicals in the
| water having a negative affect on testosterone and sperm counts
| for many, many years. So why is this being reported on more just
| now?
|
| And beyond the science, what are the real social consequences of
| lower testosterone and sperm counts? You could look at lower
| birth rates particularly in developed nations, and less natural
| male aggression leading to a more docile and controllable
| population. Just an observation.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > The so-called disinformation-prone conspiracy-theorists have
| been strongly emphasizing the problem of plastics
|
| They are lucky they didnt discover that baceria make us sick -
| we've put that guy in a mental asylum
| [deleted]
| cerol wrote:
| There's a huge difference between " _they 're_ putting
| chemicals in our water to _make_ us more docile " and
| "technologies and products which revolutionized food production
| and made it affordable for an increasingly larger population
| have now been shown to be harmful, but corporate interest
| acting on local monetary optimization coupled with government
| corruption (also acting on local monetary optimization) are
| preventing policies to be made for the sake of global human
| health". The latter is boring but useful. The former sells more
| books.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| there are also plenty of things that the disinformation-prone
| conspiracy theorists think that are clearly falsifiable. A
| stopped clock is right twice a day and all that. It doesn't
| actually matter what some crank thinks without evidence to back
| it up.
| antiverse wrote:
| This is a very mean-spirited response to people who are on
| the lookout for the safety of themselves and those around
| them, distrustful of believing everything they're told
| because "so-and-so said and they know better so you should
| listen."
|
| Especially on HN, it's a particularly shrewd assessment where
| we ought to be critical of every single thing we are told,
| and told to believe - because we've been burnt before, we've
| learned our lessons, and we ought to know better. The part of
| the play is to assume that everyone who is labeled a
| "conspiracy theorist" automatically believes in far out
| things like the planet being flat. It's a very good
| disqualification mechanism, and people buy into it easily.
| Lets not bring that to HN.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| No, requiring evidence for believing things is neither mean
| spirited or a disqualification method. It's simply a
| rational worldview.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think a lot of people think that men are naturally aggressive
| and can't get over. I suggest this isn't necessarily true.
| Furthermore, I think countries that have exceptionally low
| violence from males (like Scandinavian and (some) European
| countries) point out what -can be- and that this violence that
| we see in America and a lot of 3rd worlds countries is more
| societal and learned than innate. Aka nature affects it more
| than nurture. Given that just accepting this poisoning of male
| potency "as a good thing" is a really dumb move. Lowering what
| are basic biological functions and quantities of sperm and
| testosterone can not be a "good thing" as your post seems to
| imply.
| [deleted]
| bobro wrote:
| what is this title? how does a falling sperm count find
| something?
| acbullen wrote:
| I think the implication is 'Falling sperm counts [study] finds
| 'alarming' levels of chemicals in male urine'
| fguerraz wrote:
| And reading the article, I see no link between sperm count and
| these chemicals.
| dang wrote:
| The article's title exceeds 80 chars so the submitter had to
| shorten it. We've adjusted the wording now.
| elicash wrote:
| "Find" is being used here as a noun, not a verb.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| If they are looking for sperm in urine I think I've found the
| problem.
| davzie wrote:
| Not for the old boys on Tamsulosin
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| In other news, svientists find strong evidence that the obesity
| epidemic is caused by pollution:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/may/19/environm...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Green Chemistry and the Body Burden publicity of 2000s.. "I told
| you so" only goes so far.. deeply troubling..
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