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Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

nytimes.com

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Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#471

Post by pb7 »

slipper wrote: post #465
pb7 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> acted I have a very hard time believing a 12 year old can pass as a 19 year old in maturity. What knowledge or experience can a 12 year old offer to a mid 20s individual to appear intelligent, as you claim? > You would've been fooled too Zero chance. In my mid 20s, I already considered 19 year olds to be far too removed in life stages to consider seriously and the maturity gap between a 12 year old and an 19 year o…

You have a hard time believing it possible, so it can't be true? Are you aware that many models you see in magazines are only in their early teens, made to look older with makeup?

It can be true if your judgment is poor.

> Are you aware that many models you see in magazines are only in their early teens, made to look older with makeup?

I'm not sure what this proves considering you can manipulate photos to look like anything. I would be able to tell within minutes of talking to them in person -- as would any reasonable person -- which is what the discussion is about. If you want to go that route though, actors are almost universally older than the characters they play, especially characters in their teens.

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#472

Post by Apocryphon »

Frost1x wrote: post #343
tzone wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weight loss and proper exercise will probably deliver 99% of the improvements for 99% of the people. Stressing about heat, radiation, micro plastics, or other random stuff seems like extra stress for not that much benefit. Most people in Western world are either out of shape, or straight up obese. It makes sense that, that will have huge negative effects on fertility.

While I tend to agree with you WRT to diet and exercise, I think this is a secondary issue to what's being described here, similar to how I think modern science and technology has skewed the natural selection process with a bias that may select for undesirable attributes. Some of this bias may be for good intentions (allowing less fertile couples to conceive) while some may have questionable outcomes (selection based…

> modern science and technology has skewed the natural selection process with a bias that may select for undesirable attributes

But that's hardly "modern" at all. Any improvement since the dawn of time that increases survivability for any creature that otherwise could not have lived and bred without it would lead to that result. Where does one draw the line?

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#473

Post by hojjat12000 »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #455
acdha wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weight loss and proper exercise will probably deliver 99% of the improvements for 99% of the people. In addition to be factually incorrect, consider how what you said sounds to the many people who are healthy, active but are having problems with something they thought would be easy. This is very stressful for many people, seeming especially cruel after years of worrying about accidental pregnancy, and the medical t…

At least in men, there is a very clear mechanism. If you have excess body fat, your aromatase may be overexpressed, and if so, you will convert more of your testosterone to estradiol. This interacts with the hypothalamus' negative feedback loop, lowering your GnRH, (and therefore your LH/FSH) making you less fertile and lowering your testosterone until homeostasis is achieved.

I was recently watching a video on Doublespeak[0], one of the types of doublespeak is to bombard the audience with technical jargon which means you automatically win, unless they know more technical terms than you do! In your case, your comment does not mean anything to me (or probably 99% of the HN users). Instead of this, you could at least cite a reputable source for this claim, this would be 100 times more effective and also useful for the readers. Cheers.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#474

Post by DC1350 »

slipper wrote: post #464
airhead969 wrote: post #381

I went to glass containers for food storage and transfer food out of plastic packaging as soon as possible. Precocious puberty: I had a mental health hit (near collapse) from something that happened in my mid 20's. I started dating the stepdaughter of a neighbor (upper-middle class area) who said she was 19, and she definitely seemed it by being smart, chill, age-mature, sensible, and fully-developed (Tanner V). Lo a…

If she was biologically mature, being attracted to her doesn't mean you are a pedophile. Attraction is a result of biology, not of man-made laws. It would of course still be illegal to date her. The last psychiatrist has written about that, but I couldn't find it right away.

This dude dated a middle school girl in his mid 20s and his only defence is that her breasts were so big he didn’t notice she was 12. He might not be a pedophile by definition, but he is still a child predator.

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#475

Post by VectorLock »

jules wrote: post #218
jonplackett wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, I was going for the nuclear option and biscuits have sugar in. Sugar makes you fat. Fat belly means less testosterone. This is part of the anti-western diet thing.

What were the things you did? Did it improve testosterone levels too? If that is the mechanism, could you raise sperm count with artificial testosterone? Or would that be counterproductive?

You'd probably hit diminishing returns when testicle shrinkage starts.

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#476

Post by StillBored »

jesperlang wrote: post #144
chaostheory wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the difference in Asia because they eat less processed soy compared to the US and EU?

I was eating lots of miso, tofu and soy sauce when I lived in japan without issue. In europe i tried soy milk once and got an instant allergic reaction (itchy soar throat). The difference being soy milk is just soaked, ground up, boiled soy bean..

This is where i think science has been failing us. I have a couple similar stories where I have various reactions to one product but not a very similar product from another vendor. When that happens it would be really helpful if there were a research lab/etc where one could show up with both products and basically say, product A does the following to me, while product B doesn't.

The first time I really noticed this was ~15 years ago I was on a spinach salad kick that started when I purchased an organic pre-packaged salad kit (as In I was almost exclusively eating just spinach salad for a couple weeks because I really liked it and my kitchen was being remodeled). Anyway, those kits were quite expensive, so I switched to a cheaper non organic spinach and my own dressing. I started to have some pretty severe intestinal distress over a couple days, and swapped the spinach for a 3rd organic brand and the problem went away. But because the no organic brand was cheaper I bought a couple other bags assuming it was probably just a bad batch and I had gotten hit by a bacterial infection/whatever and it returned.

So I've had similar issues with coffee (gotten ichy all over when I changed brands and couldn't figure it out for a couple months), and a few other products. My Dr describes me as "allergy prone" but its not as simple as I'm allergic to spinach, or coffee. I seem to have a low grade allergy to something that is sometimes present across multiple food sources. I suspect without any proof at this point its a pesticide or herbicide, since I seem to have far fewer reactions if I'm tending to stick with organic leafy vegetables, and away from crops which have traditionally used more industrial farming processes.

If you look at the pesticide/herbicide studies what is abundantly clear in the US, that just like e-coli its hard to predict/track which foods are affected at any given point . The food growing and distribution system is to complex. So while a farmer may be following all the rules, he may be downwind (or whatever) of another farmer growing and spraying a different crop. Then his crop gets mixed into a larger batch and it goes complexly undetected because in low doses many of these products are considered non-harmful.

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#477

Post by greenonions »

irscott wrote: post #443
greenonions wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shocking to think that our society would discount the future for the present... On a serious note however, babies and a growing population is an enormous advantage to a nation. I would think it would be massively popular to increase benefits to those who are having children. Full disclosure, I found out my wife is pregnant yesterday, but still.

Hey congratulations!

Thank you!

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#478

Post by FooBarBizBazz »

mediaman wrote: post #431
Sunspark wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often wonder if it's something like car tire dust. All those vehicles eroding away the tire material which then goes into the air, soil and water. It goes somewhere.

Exactly that was found to be responsible for mass killings of salmon in the Puget Sound, and the consequent deaths of orcas and other wildlife. A rubberizer additive put in tires was getting atomized and then washed off into the streams. It makes salmon swim in circles until they die. Does it do anything to people? We don't know.

> swim in circles until they die

Quite a metaphor when applied to people.

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#479

Post by war1025 »

ilyaeck wrote: post #95
jonplackett wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. I unfortunately did take it a bit more seriously. There was a point where if someone offered me a biscuit with my decaf tea my inner monologue would say “if you eat that biscuit you might never have children”. It was at least in that way the easiest diet I ever went on. 100% motivation!

What's so wrong with a biscuit?

I may be off here, but I'm guessing based on the tea comment, that he may be British, which means a biscuit is actually a cookie in American terms.

Re: Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

#480

Post by Animats »

hojjat12000 wrote: post #473
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in men, there is a very clear mechanism. If you have excess body fat, your aromatase may be overexpressed, and if so, you will convert more of your testosterone to estradiol. This interacts with the hypothalamus' negative feedback loop, lowering your GnRH, (and therefore your LH/FSH) making you less fertile and lowering your testosterone until homeostasis is achieved.

I was recently watching a video on Doublespeak[0], one of the types of doublespeak is to bombard the audience with technical jargon which means you automatically win, unless they know more technical terms than you do! In your case, your comment does not mean anything to me (or probably 99% of the HN users). Instead of this, you could at least cite a reputable source for this claim, this would be 100 times more effect…

It's just bio terminology. I can't tell if it's correct biology but the words are neither nonsense nor obscure.
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