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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

#571

Post by Scaevolus »

lr4444lr wrote: post #547
Knufen wrote: post #478

I did my Master Degree in Organic Chemistry where we tried to develop a male contraceptive pill. I spend a lot of time studying sperm so here is a short list of thing to avoid regarding sperm quality (not ranked): 1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a] 2. Heating food in ANY type of plastic [a] 3. Caffein intake [b] 4. Sugar intake [c] 5. NOT exercising regularl…

Comments like this from commenters like this are why I love HN. Does BPA-free plastic improve anything? What about containers of non-prepared food? I can see not eating directly from any, but I think it's pretty hard in the developed world to rid ourselves of plastics entirely in the storage of foodstuffs. Also, do we know whether the changes in sperm quality you mention affect congenital childhood maladies? (I reali…

BPA is merely one of many endocrine disrupting chemicals found in plastics. Oftentimes BPA is replaced by BPS or BPF to get that coveted "BPA-free!" label, ignoring the fact that the replacements are JUST AS BAD^1. It's a minefield.

Silicone tends to not have endocrine disruptors because it doesn't need plasticizers.

[1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4492270/

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#572

Post by lzooz »

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.

Or maybe people aren't stupid but they don't give a shit.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#573

Post by CadmiumYellow »

bergenty wrote: post #442
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…

You may not like to hear this but women having a kid past 30 introduces a lot of potential problems and deficiencies in the child.

Women have been having kids past 30 since the dawn of humanity. The only difference is that now women tend to be older at the time of their FIRST pregnancy. Before the modern era women would start having kids in their late teens or early 20s and continue doing so until menopause in many causes, so that's up til 45-55. Plenty of women are perfectly capable of having healthy kids past 30 and even past 40.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#574

Post by Knufen »

lr4444lr wrote: post #547
Knufen wrote: post #478

I did my Master Degree in Organic Chemistry where we tried to develop a male contraceptive pill. I spend a lot of time studying sperm so here is a short list of thing to avoid regarding sperm quality (not ranked): 1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a] 2. Heating food in ANY type of plastic [a] 3. Caffein intake [b] 4. Sugar intake [c] 5. NOT exercising regularl…

Comments like this from commenters like this are why I love HN. Does BPA-free plastic improve anything? What about containers of non-prepared food? I can see not eating directly from any, but I think it's pretty hard in the developed world to rid ourselves of plastics entirely in the storage of foodstuffs. Also, do we know whether the changes in sperm quality you mention affect congenital childhood maladies? (I reali…

All plastics are endocrine disruptors [a], though the an easy filter is softer = worse. If anything food related is in contact with plastic there will be plastic in the food. The pH and temperature of the food have a big impact on plastic leaching.

And sperm quality mostly affect fertility. The egg and the body if the woman is incredibly effective at selecting quality sperm and rejecting bad sperm. There are multiple guidance systems for sperm which selects for good quality [b].

a. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/ind... b. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_guidance

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#575

Post by nzealand »

irusensei wrote: post #560
Knufen wrote: post #478

I did my Master Degree in Organic Chemistry where we tried to develop a male contraceptive pill. I spend a lot of time studying sperm so here is a short list of thing to avoid regarding sperm quality (not ranked): 1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a] 2. Heating food in ANY type of plastic [a] 3. Caffein intake [b] 4. Sugar intake [c] 5. NOT exercising regularl…

> here is a short list of thing to avoid > 7. Age [f] wait wat

Age is also best avoided as it is the number one cause of bodily deterioration, disease and death.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#577

Post by kccoder »

addingadimensio wrote: post #534
Knufen wrote: post #478

I did my Master Degree in Organic Chemistry where we tried to develop a male contraceptive pill. I spend a lot of time studying sperm so here is a short list of thing to avoid regarding sperm quality (not ranked): 1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a] 2. Heating food in ANY type of plastic [a] 3. Caffein intake [b] 4. Sugar intake [c] 5. NOT exercising regularl…

Careful — saying that plastic is turning the frogs gay is a dangerous right wing conspiracy theory

Is lower sperm count correlated with a change in sexual orientation?

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#578

Post by zhynn »

siglesias wrote: post #565
Knufen wrote: post #478

I did my Master Degree in Organic Chemistry where we tried to develop a male contraceptive pill. I spend a lot of time studying sperm so here is a short list of thing to avoid regarding sperm quality (not ranked): 1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a] 2. Heating food in ANY type of plastic [a] 3. Caffein intake [b] 4. Sugar intake [c] 5. NOT exercising regularl…

I cannot recommend highly enough having a set of glass bottles[1] at home. Fill them at the tap (or wherever), refrigerate them, take them to the gym, in the car, serve to guests. Point is to have many, keep a rotation going. Has greatly reduced reliance on plastic. 1) https://amzn.to/3H2YadV

You can often buy milk at a coop in a glass bottle which can then be reused. Most of our beverage consumption is out of re-used milk bottles. :)

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#579

Post by majkinetor »

javajosh wrote: post #445
someweirdperson wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tea bags are a useless convenience. In bulk tea is not only significantly cheaper (not as bad as the tea capsule mark-up, which is in a league oo its own), but also waste is reduced to nothing (only the tea itself, which is perfectly organic). Rinsing a reusible tea holder doesn't take more time than it takes to dispose off the paper tied to the end separately.

> Tea bags are a useless convenience. Why do people wildly overstate their case, and thereby weaken it? This is obviously false: tea bags, like disposable silverware, may be harmful but they are not useless! These days if you are against something then anything bad said about it is true, anything good said about it is false or questionable. This is a (bad) lawyer's attitude, a very easy algorithm to execute, and one…

Useless! Your analysis its obviosuly fake and lame.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#580

Post by Dig1t »

shawnz wrote: post #199
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…

> I strongly suspect BPA-free plastics have similar endocrine effects Based on what? BPA is the monomer which makes up polycarbonate plastic, and it's a simple molecule which has been known to be an estrogen analogue for nearly 100 years. Other kinds of plastics besides polycarbonate are made from much different kinds of monomers which have no structural similarity to BPA, so why should we assume that the risk carrie…

This exact thing is discussed in detail in the book OP referenced, it's excellent BTW.

The group of chemicals known as phthalates are added to a huge range of plastics we use at home every day and there is a ton of evidence suggesting that these chemicals are endocrine disruptors. They seem to all have very similar effects WRT endocrine disruption, often substituted for one another when one is found to be bad. This leads to the whack-a-mole effect described by a sibling comment.

Products can be listed as "BPA free" but still have these endocrine disrupting chemicals in them.

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