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Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

nytimes.com

521–530 of 640 posts

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

#521

We see similar things happening with digestive diseases between the West and Asia. Diverticulitis is pretty rare in Asia (and Africa for that matter) and fairly common in the West. But what’s interesting is that it is just as common for Asians that move to the West after about 12 years or so which rules out genetics. Additionally we are seeing it occur in younger and younger people. This was once a disease for ages 6…

Similar effects have been seen with Multiple Sclerosis. People of the same genetic background who move to Western countries are more likely to develop MS than those who stay behind. I can’t remember the specific countries unfortunately.

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

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of info to choose from here instead of reading trash rebuttals that didn't attempt the replicate the study with the controls they are complaining about. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=cell+phone+sperm+count

One of the first results claims that using the internet resulted in a larger decrease to sperm count than using a cell phone. And all of the studies that claimed to show a link between cell phone use and decreased sperm were based on surveys of patients at fertility clinics, or were based on subjecting rat testicles to 1000x the amount of radiation that a human would encounter in the real world. You may want to rethi…

I'm not saying it's the only cause, just that it's one of them. They're not exactly going to blast human testicles with radiation. These sort of animal tests and surveys (couple with clinical evaluation) are standard practice for many medical research topics.

Where do you see the radiation level being 1000x? I see various studies using real cell phones on the market for between 2 and 6 hours per day.

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

#523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did you cut out tap water, heat, microplastics, teflon, and the western diet?

Not completely obviously! Micro plastics was hard since you kinda have to choose between bottled water or tap water! We got a water filter for this one. Heat meant loose underpants and no warm baths ever. Teflon- easy. Replace with a carbon steel pan. Improve your chef skills AND sperm! Western diet is basically high sugar and refined carbs. Just didn’t eat anything with refined sugar on the label in any amount whats…

> Micro plastics was hard since you kinda have to choose between bottled water or tap water!

Micro plastics have been found in the muscle tissue of ocean fish[1].

Micro plastics are everywhere, not just in water bottles.

[1]https://adfpi.org/2020/04/15/microplastic-particles-identifi...

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

#524
post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution and selective breeding don’t arbitrarily modify DNA. The actual methods are small random changes, copying from some other location possibly backwards, or removing segments. GMO significantly expands what kinds of changes are possible. In practice the difference is generally not that significant, but there is some increase in risks. Personally, I would prefer a different label for new GMO foods. Presumably,…

> Evolution and selective breeding don’t arbitrarily modify DNA. Except for random mutations, which are, well, random changes to DNA. There is a reason the nightshade family[1] is so varied. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae

Small random changes yes, but long specific sequences become exponentially less likely. People on the other hand can decide to add say the first 100,00 digits of Pi or some other marker for internal use. Picking a useful sequence is hard, but we have the technology to add any specific sequence as long as the plant can survive it.

So it’s not just a question of random chance adding something harmful at this point, but also malicious actors. Someone could easily decide to try and reduce the human population by reducing fertility or whatnot and new GMO crops aren’t tested for such things.

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

#525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non ionizing radiation doesn't have an effect on our bodies unless it's very high energy e.g. you're right next to a high powered transmitter (radio tower).

That's not exactly true. VHF can cause ocular issues due to heat buildup under the right circumstances. You can have this issue with extended use at relatively low power (<100 watts) if the distance is close (think ham sitting next to their antenna).

This is thermal heating which is the very well known mechanism for non ionizing radiation to affect the body (microwave oven cooking).

Cell phones put out about 1000 times less power than your 100w ham radio. Which in itself is not enough to cause ocular heating damage unless perhaps it was within inches of your eye, I have never seen a case of it caused at that power level please point me to citations.

Remember these are omni radiators only a small fraction of the 100w ham radio power would strike your eye even inches away and it would fall off with the inverse square law.

Putting a 100w lightbulb against your eye would also cause damage or a 1 watt laser both due to ocular heating. This is all about the amount of wattage absorbed by your body tissue which is why exposure levels are rated in watts per kilogram, the more tissue the more power it takes to raise that tissues temperature to damaging levels. This is a why a focus laser with little power can cause damage vs a omni directional light or radio source.

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

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats a good alternative? The ceramic ones?

Ceramic pans will always fail after a short bit of time. Cook's Illustrated has yet to find one that can pass their durability tests. That said I wish they'd test the Granitestone Pro as other reviewers have said the Granitestone holds up better than other ceramic pans.

I use two ceramic pans which are still as good as when I got them 10-15 years ago from a brand called ecosafe. Not all from the set made it, one got ruined by overheating.

Stainless is durable, but I suspect there are issues with chemical reactions between the food and bare metal.

I think that enamel is the best, being inert and durable, and old technology, though you also don,t want to drop or overheat it.

Cast iron is also good, just unwieldy and difficult to clean if you,re cooking meat, eggs, cheese, basically animal proteins.

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

#528

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…

You can't outsource your judgment. Do the research yourself if you want to understand something.

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

#529

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…

rhinoceraptor gave such a clear explanation of the process, that I'd honestly pay for an entire set of bio and chem mechanic breakdowns prepared by them.

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

#530
post #266

As someone who has had to do IVF for our child and go through the challenge of figuring our what to do to try and improve sperm quality, I can tell you once you start looking into it, basically everything about modern life is bad for sperm. Heat, radiation, plastic, micro plastics, soya, tap water, Teflon, antibacterial soap, underpants, western diet. It’s a perfect storm. If you’re going though it though I offer a r…

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.

No, I believe it's 53.18008%
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