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Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#371

Post by ridgered4 »

vanderZwan wrote: post #100
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #34

> Swan also recommends reducing exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals by being a savvy consumer Most hygiene products get away with listing diethyl phthalate as 'Parfum'. What we need is not savvy consumers what we need is regulators to get serious.

I genuinely hate this (meaning Swan's) take. The modern world is waaaay to complex to offload all responsibility to "consumers". They did it with sustainability, with sweat shops, with food, with cleaning products. It's ridiculous.

Consumers can't compete on an individual level against giant mega corporations actively obfuscating information from them even if they had lots of free time and weren't overburdened already. And corporations can lobby to even get obvious terms redefined (Assembled in America) so everyone needs to understand lawyer speak to even make sense of the information they do receive.

And that is without even getting into misinformation campaigns.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#372

Post by kelseyfrog »

greenhearth wrote: post #355
lm28469 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get reliably downvoted for suggesting this, but we need vastly better labelling across the board These companies shouldn't be able to use these ingredients in the first place, labels or not. It's not our job to read lists of 30+ ingredients and their wikipedia entries to know if we're at risk or not

This is of course an ideal, but in our brutal reality corporations owe no moral obligation to the society they are profiting from. They are only driven by capital and brand propagation. Sometimes a moral approach is taken as a compromise, to continue operating in peace, etc. We are left with defending ourselves as best as possible and sometimes the onslaught is too much, as indicated by multitudes of lawsuits and ent…

Corporations are human constructs; they exist in whichever reality we create for them. You don't have to give in to their demands. They have to give in to ours.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#373

Post by lm28469 »

greenhearth wrote: post #355
lm28469 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I get reliably downvoted for suggesting this, but we need vastly better labelling across the board These companies shouldn't be able to use these ingredients in the first place, labels or not. It's not our job to read lists of 30+ ingredients and their wikipedia entries to know if we're at risk or not

This is of course an ideal, but in our brutal reality corporations owe no moral obligation to the society they are profiting from. They are only driven by capital and brand propagation. Sometimes a moral approach is taken as a compromise, to continue operating in peace, etc. We are left with defending ourselves as best as possible and sometimes the onslaught is too much, as indicated by multitudes of lawsuits and ent…

For non religious people, the ones who don't believe in the invisible hand, regulations could take care of that, although given the current dynamic we're getting further from that by the day

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#374

Post by DevX101 »

twobitshifter wrote: post #337
DevX101 wrote: post #158

The thesis of the book 'Countdown' is that this is largely due to widespread plastic and other endocrine disrupting chemicals. I believe this is one of the most important risks to humanity, after climate change, and global war. So far, I've taken some lifestyle changes to combat this: 1) Threw out all of my teflon cooking pans 2) Refuse to consume food in heated plastics 3) Throw out teabags (they have plastics). Use…

Along the same lines as tea-bags, is it possible k-cups have an effect? The keurig machine is already plastic, so does using a reusable cup buy you any benefit?

k-cups get quite warm when in use so I'd avoid it for daily use. Try a french press with a glass container instead. I also threw away my Aeropress for similar reasons.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#376

Post by prmoustache »

devmor wrote: post #264
scient wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats absolutely not true.

You're right, it's not true. It's more like a decade's salary. Full IVF generally ranges from $10-15k USD. Median worldwide income is about $900 USD.

10-15k is nothing compared to the million your kid will cost you until its 20y birthday.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#377

Post by abyssin »

thehappypm wrote: post #336
PakG1 wrote: post #156

My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and h…

Another lesson from your story (similar to many of my friends’) is to just have kids younger. It sounds like you started at around 35 — if people started at 30, even, fertility is higher.

I agree. We shouldn’t pressure people to make children early, but make sure they understand the consequences of delaying. I’m surrounded by couples of 30-35 year old that are struggling to have children. They had no idea it would be so hard.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#378

Post by [deleted] »

karaterobot wrote: post #316
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #34

> Swan also recommends reducing exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals by being a savvy consumer Most hygiene products get away with listing diethyl phthalate as 'Parfum'. What we need is not savvy consumers what we need is regulators to get serious.

Consumers can voluntarily reduce their exposure to phthalates AND the industry can be regulated. Regulators aren't going to save consumers if consumers refuse to get educated or practice restraint.

[deleted]

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#379

Post by exhilaration »

houtanb wrote: post #235

Several years ago, I switched to products that are EWG verified [1], meaning a product's ingredients are safe for humans. Some of the EWG verified products are quite expensive, so it took a while to find a brand that was affordable and safe to use. I've switched everything to that brand (shampoo, conditioner, soap, dishwasher and laundry detergent, cleaners, ...). They even have a search engine that allows you to sea…

I've switched everything to that brand -- could you share that brand? It would save us a lot of research.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#380

Post by pcthrowaway »

lambdaba wrote: post #308
gitfan86 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience it was a stress issue for the couples that were having trouble that I know. One friend and his wife gave up alcohol, caffeine and meat, it seemed like there was just a ton of stress they had put on getting pregnant for 6 months. It wasn't until after they took a break from trying that they got pregnant one night after drinking. I think modern medicine somewhat ignores how powerful the human mind is.…

> alcohol, caffeine and meat one of these is definitely not like the others... An all-meat diet I would bet is the best to conceive, because it's the best for hormonal health, judging by the countless anecdotes (e.g. women regaining their cycles after many years) I'm seeing. Anyway, I just wanted to point that out, it's still shocking to me that people still believe that meat is detrimental to health.

Ahh, anecdotes about consuming meat, I can't think of anything more scientifically rigorous and less influenced by sentiment.

My own anecdotes tell me that eating meat vastly decreases your fertility rate. Some anecdotes add that it's because of the animal hormones you consume, others state that it's because meat-eating is associated with other health conditions which interfere with conception (obesity, high cholesterol, cancer), and yet other anecdotes don't assign a cause to the increased fertility from leaving out meat.

As anecdotes, these are all of course, incredibly scientific.

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