Live data from Hacker News

Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

nationalgeographic.com

601–610 of 1001 posts

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#601
post #204

> 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 can't count how many times I have ordered a mineral water (to avoid chlorine in tap water to which I am sensitive) and received it in a glass contaminated with a PFAS-coated paper straw. It has nothing to do with being savvy.

Additionally that water probably came from a plastic bottle.

Lately I've been seeing straws made from a compostable plant based polyester. It's unclear whether they are still using problematic plasticizers in them.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#602
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…

EMFs????

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S230505001...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#603
post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, kids may be incompatible with a lot of lifestyles, but I wouldn’t call them inherently expensive. You just have to adjust your expectations.

We estimated that it costs 1.5 million to raise our kids just based on opportunity cost. If we factored in increased health insurance rates, and all the other expenses around having multiple children including needing to own a bigger car and house, factor out the tax credits in the US, it's more like 2.25 million. This is for a very moderate salary estimation for the non-working spouse.

I'm always confused about the bigger car thing, and I think it's marketing hard at work.

I'm getting myself, my wife, and my two kids to BMX practice (yes, with bikes) in a compact sedan.

What are people filling all that space with? Do you pack like you're crossing the Sahara every time you leave the house?

I came back and added this:

If houses were still built like they used to be, with walls and separation, it'd be easier to fit more people and stuff into fewer square feet, but even a roomy new home feels like there's always somebody with you.

I'd love to move into something small and inexpensive, but my 2 bedroom town home will have to do for the time being. Works just fine for us.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#605

> 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 get reliably downvoted for suggesting this, but we need vastly better labelling across the board. We give companies a lot of leeway when it comes to selling things to put in and on our bodies without us, owners of said bodies, having any way of finding out what the hell is in their products, or where they came from, or how they were processed. It absolutely baffles me how everyone doesn't want considerably more inf…

> It absolutely baffles me how everyone doesn't want considerably more information and transparency about our foods and cosmetics.

People do want that, which is why organic food is rising in popularity, why vegan cosmetics are a thing... the problem is politicians are bribed by big industry influence to not regulate too hard.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#606

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…

> Will soon be throwing out liquid body wash and moisturizers, and replace with simpler oils

What are you planning on doing?

I stopped using the Dr Bronner's liquid soap and switched to the their bar soap. For a while I was using the same soap for my hair and then I was doing a "rinse" (apple cider vinegar + some oils) but I got lazy and stopped. I might pick that back up again.

https://info.drbronner.com/all-one-blog/2017/03/definitive-g...

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s going to be a real adjustment for a lot of these people to grasp that young American men are in really difficult situations socially, academically, and that it’s a key factor to underemployment, violence, etc… the concept of men’s health or men suffering feels like an attack to these people instead of a separate legitimate issue to other social topics they find important

Curious if you have sources for this. I agree wholeheartedly that there are some difficult issues affecting men, socially and academically, but always struggle to back that opinion up with any meaningful facts/figures. As one of my friends said, "Positions of power are still predominantly held by men, but the average man is lagging behind the average woman". Not sure if this is necessarily true, but sometimes it feel…

Educational attainment is going backwards for boys, while girls are doing great and have far surpassed them. I think they passed them some time back in the very early '00s, IIRC, but it's been a while since I looked at that stuff—this is all mainstream, they've been talking about it in education-academia for quite a while and it's uncontroversial, it's openly discussed among teachers et c., though proposed solutions aside from "try to hire more male teachers" are thin on the ground—bizarrely, "restore all that recess you cut over the last decades, in the name of more butts-in-seats time" doesn't seem to have much traction, and, call me crazy, but if I were in charge, that's the first thing I'd try.

Boys/men in general are exposed to a far higher likelihood of worst-case outcomes in a variety of ways, and there seems to be little societal attention to improving that. If women had the incarceration rates, the "successful" suicide rates, or the lagging lifespan that men have, it'd be all we'd hear about. Instead we figure that's just how men are, so, whatever.

I've got two girls and a boy and I'm a lot more worried about the boy's future than the girls', for sure. Seems a much finer line he'll need to walk to avoid a downward spiral, with fewer off-ramps available from such a spiral. Like, I reckon he's 75% of our risk of one of the three having a very-bad outcome, without even seeing any especially bad problems with him yet.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#608
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be massively in favour of adding a QR Code that details as much as possible (without giving away trade secrets if that is possible) where and how something is sourced and then adding how it was processed. Much like you get a track and trace with a package.

Your proposed requirement would have a nice side benefit of making supply chains much easier to trace for other purposes (e.g., why are some shelves bare in my grocery store). I'd want a carve out for home "manufacturers" that sell less than the US median wage per year in product. They should be able to just display the QR codes cut out from the packages of their ingredients rather than creating their own QR code inf…

Indeed, supply chains, or a webcam to the free range chicken eggs perhaps. Lots of options to make things a bit more transparent.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#609
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…

In an episode of Succession, Logan was drinking a smoothie that contained Maca Root, Almonds, and Walnuts apparently to boost his Sperm count/chances of having a kid according to Willa. Your list is more of "Dont's". Are there "Dos", based on diet or certain foods that increase the count significantly?

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#610
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…

"Sugar" doesn' seem to include fruits, thankfully. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29266782/

From what I understand, there is somewhat of a threshold in terms of how much fructose can be digested in your gut vs requiring your liver to get involved. It depends on a lot of factors (body size obviously, your overall calorie intake, some genetic factors, etc), but in general of you're only consuming a few grams of fructose and it's buffered by fiber, you're probably not exceeding that threshold. Fruit fits that bill, unless you're being weird and consuming a whole lot of sugary fruit.

There's a very good interview on the topic here: https://youtu.be/V02z9mqTWzg

Post reply on HN