Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

nationalgeographic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

871–880 of 1001 posts

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#871

Post by Vrondi »

SoftTalker wrote: post #688
flanbiscuit wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-blo…

Olive oil works nicely as a skin softener/moisturizer, as long as you don't mind smelling of olives.

Almond oil is a nice alternative. If you can't find it, look for massage oil, which is usually almond oil re-labelled.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#872

Post by Dig1t »

lisper wrote: post #744
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…

> This is an emergency No, this is hope. Converting the entire biomass of earth into homo sapiens is not the goal.

This is dark.

I will never understand how so many educated people have such an anti-humanist view of the world.

Humans are awesome, intelligence is awesome. More humans means more amazing things. We are capable as a species of incredible things, and we have the ability to save our planet as well as continuing to grow. We cannot outgrow this planet and colonize other worlds, we cannot solve climate change, nuclear fusion, quantum computers, the great questions of physics without MORE smart people.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#873

Post by selimthegrim »

JPKab wrote: post #349
Arete314159 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read an interesting study on this. It showed that obesity rates were lower in places like Colorado, and theorized that the reason was that they were at the headwaters of their water source, so there was less opportunity for contaminants to enter their water.

I live in Colorado, and I think it's just less oxygen and its effects on metabolism. It's definitely not a topic that's examined enough.

What are us poor sickle cell heterozygotes to do?

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#874

Post by wizofaus »

Dig1t wrote: post #872
lisper wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an emergency No, this is hope. Converting the entire biomass of earth into homo sapiens is not the goal.

This is dark. I will never understand how so many educated people have such an anti-humanist view of the world. Humans are awesome, intelligence is awesome. More humans means more amazing things. We are capable as a species of incredible things, and we have the ability to save our planet as well as continuing to grow. We cannot outgrow this planet and colonize other worlds, we cannot solve climate change, nuclear fus…

Except you only need to look at a large number of countries with high populations (and often those with high fertility rates) and see little correlation with ability to achieve what you call "amazing things". A billion people with good access to necessary resources is going to achieve more than 10 billion living in poverty because we've largely trashed our planet's ability to support us.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#875

Post by dudul »

SoftTalker wrote: post #701
BeFlatXIII wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a societal problem when the rational individual choice (to provide your children the best head start) is to wait until your fertility declines to have children.

There is also a lot of pressure on women to "have a career" which contributes to them waiting to marry and have kids. It's not really possible to optimize both being a mother and having a career, it's all tradeoffs and those who choose motherhood and a more domestic life are made to feel like they have sacrificed or lost out on something.

Do you have examples of how this pressure is implemented?

AFAIK it has been shown many times that "career woman" is absolutely not a trait men find attractive.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#876

Post by lisper »

Dig1t wrote: post #872
lisper wrote: post #744

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is an emergency No, this is hope. Converting the entire biomass of earth into homo sapiens is not the goal.

This is dark. I will never understand how so many educated people have such an anti-humanist view of the world. Humans are awesome, intelligence is awesome. More humans means more amazing things. We are capable as a species of incredible things, and we have the ability to save our planet as well as continuing to grow. We cannot outgrow this planet and colonize other worlds, we cannot solve climate change, nuclear fus…

> Humans are awesome,

Some humans are awesome. Other humans not so much.

> intelligence is awesome.

It is indeed, but intelligence is pretty unevenly distributed among humans.

> More humans means more amazing things.

It also means more stress on the planet's ecosystems. There are awesome things on earth besides humans, and one of the problems with humans is that too few of us seem to understand this.

> we have the ability to save our planet

In theory. The jury is very much out on whether we can actually do it. Personally, given what has been done to address climate change so far, I'll give long odds against.

> We cannot outgrow this planet and colonize other worlds

And who says that these are good things? If we can't even manage to bring this planet to a sustainable steady-state what makes you think we'll have better luck elsewhere?

> without MORE smart people.

More smart people is not the same thing as more people.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#877

Post by janef0421 »

TexanFeller wrote: post #855

One thing that I'm genuinely curious about that I've never heard addressed is whether the large increase of people identifying as trans(trans women in particular) could be related to the same factors that are causing lowered sperm counts and testosterone in men. There are massive amounts of compounds in our environment that are endocrine disrupters or mimic sex hormones like estrogen. Like maybe many persons assumed…

It might be the case that endocrine disruptors may be increasing the likelihood a person is trans, but what you are proposing is almost certainly incorrect and would not work. Using sex-aligned hormones to cause a person to become cisgender is sometimes tried and does not appear to be effective, and I am not aware of any evidence that transgender people's pre-transition hormone levels are substantially lower than their cisgender peers. Also, this theory would suggest that eunuchs, self-identified men who voluntarily undergo gonad removal, would generally come to identify as women, but this is not the case; Similarly for men who have their testosterone suppressed as part of cancer treatment.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#879

Post by ChrisPebble »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #674
ceedan wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ibuprofen and acetaminophen also affect quality, which are daily medicines for some people with chronic pain.

> acetaminophen That's paracetamol for the rest of the world in case you were confused like I was.

I was curious about this and looked it up on google trends. It looks like acetaminophen is the more commonly searched term.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=paracetamol,%2Fm%...

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#880

Post by polio »

csomar wrote: post #858
TexanFeller wrote: post #855

One thing that I'm genuinely curious about that I've never heard addressed is whether the large increase of people identifying as trans(trans women in particular) could be related to the same factors that are causing lowered sperm counts and testosterone in men. There are massive amounts of compounds in our environment that are endocrine disrupters or mimic sex hormones like estrogen. Like maybe many persons assumed…

No. Trans people have existed for quite a long time. It just happens that the "West" has become more accepting of them, and since it is the "West" that gets most of the media attention it's looking like a new thing with them coming out.

These things are not mutually exclusive. I don't see any evidence that would justify a high degree of confidence that the person you're replying to is wrong.
Post reply on HN