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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

#621

Post by wonder_er »

adrr wrote: post #487
wonder_er wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some communities, weight gain is a down-stream effect of "metabolic syndrome", and the "solution" isn't to count calories or exercise more - it's to simply eat _differently_. Sugar is a particularly odious contributor to problems. Like OP, my wife and I also struggled with infertility for a few years (two miscarriages, years of doing everything "right", and not getting pregnant.) We're finally pregnant, and out of…

Curious on your age range. We also struggled with 3 miscarriages and most of our friends had the exact similar issues and had to conceive via IVF. There were more IVF babies than natural pregnancies in my group of friends. We were lucky and didn't need to resort IVF. We all waited till we were past 35 to have kids. Our fertility doctor said age makes a huge a difference and professionals are waiting till later in the…

I celebrated my 32nd birthday a few days ago. I'm one year older than my wife.

We've been trying to get pregnant now for 3 years. We tried IUIs (very different from IVF, think "turkey baster" a few times, to no success.

Ironically, it wasn't until we stopped trying to get pregnant that we got pregnant. We did a one-week intensive marriage counseling program (strongly recommended, not cheap, worth every penny of the $6k cost) and it possibly healed so much in our marriage we got pregnant _the week after the counseling_.

After trying, with great adherence to all the best practices, for the prior 3+ years.

I blame in part the extremely high housing costs in US metro areas. We are both in tech, but also want to live in a nice place (Golden, CO). Housing affordability is a joke, I have no doubt that the price of housing affected our child-rearing plans.

We bought a house in Golden (barely. Inflation and all, it's a stupid rigged system oppressive to everyone.)

Now I want to fix the housing cost problem here in Golden, in Lakewood, and ultimately in Denver.

It'll take some years, but if all goes according to plan, I'm going to die, peacefully, in my sleep, in about 80 years, within 150 feet of where I'm sitting right now.

I've got time to work on these affordability problems.

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

#622

Post by adkadskhj »

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.

Side question, any idea how being thin and inactive affect your sexual health? I'm not looking to have kids, but i've been slowly working on healthy activity primarily for my heart and longevity, but i've not heard anything conclusive on sexual health.

Searching for this stuff is difficult due to the lack of knowledge (on my side) and all the blog spam out there.

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

#623

Post by wonder_er »

jonplackett wrote: post #441
wonder_er wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some communities, weight gain is a down-stream effect of "metabolic syndrome", and the "solution" isn't to count calories or exercise more - it's to simply eat _differently_. Sugar is a particularly odious contributor to problems. Like OP, my wife and I also struggled with infertility for a few years (two miscarriages, years of doing everything "right", and not getting pregnant.) We're finally pregnant, and out of…

Really glad to hear you got pregnant. It makes me so happy now when people do after finding it so hard. It’s a shame this info isn’t more easily found by most people. I had the exact same experience with doctors just saying there was nothing a man can do to improve fertility. “It’s just genetic”. I also second the case against sugar. I should have called out refined sugar specifically in my list. That was one thing I…

Thanks for your kind words! It wasn't until we had the miscarriages that all these people came out of the woodwork, sharing their stories with us, about how difficult it was for THEM.

I, too, have tried hard to eliminate all sugar. We're not perfect, but we're way past the 80/20 principle of diet improvement.

I only eat twice a day (sometimes once) and the primary meal is a mushroom/spinach/egg omelet, usually with avocado or sardines, some tumeric/curcumin powder from Costco sprinkled on top, EVOO/Coconut oil, and usually some cheese.

Zero sugar, technically even zero carb.

Dinner varies a bit more, biased towards avoiding things that can be metabolized into blood glucose. It was my birthday recently, my wife got me an icecream cake. I protested a little as I tucked into it. :)

It's amazing the effect that avoiding processed sugar can have, and a little intermittent fasting baked in.

When my wife and I host family, I always am struck by how much work breakfast is. Extra eating, extra dishes, etc. My wife doesn't do that eating schedule, but it works for me.

Re: Super Size Me and the sugar - that's a great point! The soda is a particularly odious offender, I'd love to see the effect of eating just the burger every day.

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

#624

Post by wonder_er »

blacktriangle wrote: post #418
wonder_er wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some communities, weight gain is a down-stream effect of "metabolic syndrome", and the "solution" isn't to count calories or exercise more - it's to simply eat _differently_. Sugar is a particularly odious contributor to problems. Like OP, my wife and I also struggled with infertility for a few years (two miscarriages, years of doing everything "right", and not getting pregnant.) We're finally pregnant, and out of…

Allopathic medicine is a disaster, the overwhelming majority of the modern medical establishment refuses to acknowledge that diet has anything to do with health, where in reality diet is easily the largest contributor.

Western philosophy: "You are what you eat"

Western medicine: "What you eat is nearly irrelevant as long as you are not fat, at which point it's not what you eat it's how much and how much you exercise."

Also Western Medicine: "We don't understand why we've lost credibility in broad swaths of the population! Don't you see the degrees we've granted ourselves?"

My dad's a doctor, firmly rooted in the western style of things. He's blind to some of the ways western medicine's gotten it wrong. Taints the conversations we'd have, when I AM trying to get medical advice from him.

It's hard for him to get over me not wanting to take max doeses of painkillers, 3x/day, for a week straight, to "heal" lingering back pain.

I'm like "yeah, yeah, lets skip the meds part, and talk about healthy rehabilitation via strength training and stretching and all that". And he lectures me for my ignorance and resistance to "Established Medical Science".

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

#625

Post by f6v »

seszett wrote: post #163
f6v wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I miss about Germany is S.Pellegrino in glass bottles. Since I moved to Belgium it has been incredibly hard to come by glass-bottled water.

I've found glass-bottled water easy to find in Belgium, I buy cases of Ginstberg (they have both still and carbonated water) in glass bottles in a supermarket here in West Flanders. I know at least a couple places where you can buy it (Huis Maria in Harelbeke, Vanuxeem in Ploegsteert, so both Flanders and Wallonia) so I would assume those to be widespread enough throughout the country. To me coming from France it was…

I only shop at AH and Delhaize, the choice isn't that great there.

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

#626

Post by f6v »

thorin wrote: post #164
f6v wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I miss about Germany is S.Pellegrino in glass bottles. Since I moved to Belgium it has been incredibly hard to come by glass-bottled water.

Can't you just drink tap water, or if it really tastes that bad use a water filter. The idea of buying a new bottle every time you want a drink of water seems insane to me!

I have a filter for cooking/making tea. However there's something about S.Pellegrino and others that makes it taste much better. And the filtered water has completely different taste in the first day vs the rest of the month.

And yeah, you usually give the bottles back. However, it's much more common in Germany than in Belgium, it seems. I have never seen a line to give the bottles back in Gent, unlike Berlin.

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

#627

Post by Auracle »

jonplackett wrote: post #69
admiral33 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4x is a large jump, is that referring to sperm count? It might be anecdata but given that you were seeing a fertility specialist it could be more valuable to hear your lifestyle changes rather than much of the noise that is out there.

It’s certainly anecdata since it’s just me but it was multiple tests over that period and showed a steady increase from not going to work for IVF to the level where it would. They test a number of things from total count, count per ml, motility, correctness of shape. Everything went up. The shape was my main issue and that was the thing that increased 4X I should say I also took some supplements too. The problem with…

For what’s it’s worth my tests were all over the place (as low as 12mil total and as high as 80) with no large lifestyle changes. My doctor at Mayo said that’s normal and they look at the average over a year or so.

Also, in case it comes up in the future, doing you own sperm counts on a microscope isn’t that hard. I didn’t bother with morphology and the like as that was typically fine, but total counts are easy.

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

#628

Post by Auracle »

fertilitythrow1 wrote: post #411
gremlinsinc wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had to use donor sperm, and even then we had 8 miscarriages and 8 rounds of ivf. Every time it was at 5 weeks and 5 days. Doctor finally figured out Wife had an autoimmune disorder (presumed) and 10 mg of prednisone during first trimester solved it, for the next 2 out of 3 ivf cycles to get our 2 little boys. She had cancer cells though so had to have a full hysterectomy so we're likely done unless we adopt now...…

Similar for us - trouble conceiving and a miscarriage. Months spent improving sperm. All conventional checks on mother came back as fine - "keep trying!" they kept telling us, while writing "unexplained infertility" on our medical records. Still nothing happening. IVF was on the horizon, but a private consultant identified some trouble with "natural killer" cells in mother. No other issues with mother (no cancer like…

My wife and I are in the unexplained fertility category and are currently doing IVF (so far, so good).

I knew immune issues were a thing but I didn’t know it was easily treated. We were told by multiple doctors we could do more tests to see what was wrong but it wouldn’t change our treatment plan.

Just wanted to air my annoyance. We’re both healthy and at least were relatively young when we started trying to conceive.

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

#629

Post by Auracle »

slipper wrote: post #467
Flow wrote: post #46

Related: "Chemicals in plastics damage babies' brains and must be banned immediately (cnn.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26211605

Except most babies seem to be fine, so maybe the fear is overblown? I think it should be kept in check, as it seems all sorts of nasty stuff can be mixed into plastic. But many plastics seem to be fine. There is also poisonous stuff in plants, including wood.

I mean, people probably said the same thing about leaded gasoline. Just because things are “fine” doesn’t mean they’re ideal.

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

#630

Post by bordercases »

tzone wrote: post #266
jonplackett wrote: post #47

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.

Notably, fat retains fake estrogens such as parabens and pthalates because both are fat-soluble.

You might be accidentally making a counterpoint if it turns out that the retention of fake estrogens are what are mediating the effect.

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