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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

#561

Post by jonplackett »

artificial wrote: post #456
jonplackett wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'll agree with you that it was an interesting film. Morgan Spurlock is an admitted alcoholic which casts doubts on the liver claim.

Didn’t know that. They tested him before and after though right so would have been the difference they saw?

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

#562

Post by jonplackett »

beauzero wrote: post #97
jonplackett wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Asia is an interesting one for this. In Japan at least they eat a tonne of fish and seaweed which has a lot omega 3 which is really, really good for sperm so maybe there’s other factors. Like I’ve said on other comments. When you’re in the situation of having to figure it out, it’s simpler to just blanket cut out anything with any evidence whatsoever. If it improves your chances 1% then it all adds up. Plus soy…

Lard from pasture raised pork is also higher in omega 3. In the USA we switched to a "meat hog" around the 1920-30s for better industrialization. Just a heads up pasture pigs like Large Black hogs or wild boar do have a different flavor but you can buy the lard alone to cook with.

What the heck is a meat hog? Also curious where does that omega 3 come from? Can’t be much in pasture grass? Is it like free range beef / chicken where they get more nutrients from accidentally eating a bunch of insects?

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

#563

Post by beyondzero »

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…

> Curious on your age range.

This is going to be the dominant driver for female infertility. My wife and I waited until she was 32 and I was 40 and we struggled for two years. Eventually we talked to a doctor and both got tested. I was in the 98th percentile for sperm health, but unfortunately her egg production was closer to a woman 10 years older. We did IVF and got very lucky on the first try, with one viable embryo, who is now a curious and amazing four-year-old.

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

#564

Post by jonplackett »

fertilitythrow1 wrote: post #393
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…

throwaway due to personal health details: Similar anecdote from a UK-based late-30s guy with a BMI in the 30ish range: - no background health/illness issues. Non-smoker, occasional drinker (2-3 glasses a week). - trouble with getting pregnant - checks on female were all A-ok. - sperm analysis on me done. - count & motability fine. - morphology was low at 1% good-forms (minimum is IIRC 3% or above). Several months lat…

Hey thanks for replying and massive congrats on the little guy!

Weird how similar that was to me. Wonder how many other people there are like this where just that bit of advice + minor action could have made such a big difference to their lives instead of being told there’s nothing they can do.

Keep spreading the word!

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

#565

Post by jonplackett »

driverdan wrote: post #333
jonplackett wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like I said, I was going for the nuclear option and biscuits have sugar in. Sugar makes you fat. Fat belly means less testosterone. This is part of the anti-western diet thing.

> Sugar makes you fat. Nonsense. Overeating makes you fat, not a specific carb. Having a biscuit with a few grams of sugar is not going to impact your health in a meaningful way if you're not overeating.

Yeah that’s just factually inaccurate. Sugar does specifically make you fat because of the way your body processes it. The fructose part (which is half of standard sugar) get stored as fat straight away and it also makes you less insulin sensitive. Over time that means you eat more and more sugar and your brain still doesn’t think you’re getting enough.

Or if you just want a simpler explanation - eating sugar makes you crave more sugar and so you’re a lot more likely to over eat.

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

#566

Post by jonplackett »

kodt wrote: post #347
driverdan wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sugar makes you fat. Nonsense. Overeating makes you fat, not a specific carb. Having a biscuit with a few grams of sugar is not going to impact your health in a meaningful way if you're not overeating.

One biscuit no, but perhaps it was easier for him to always say no instead of occasionally saying yes, which could easily turn into saying yes too often.

That was exactly it.

The difficulty of dieting (and life in general!) is decisions. By being so absolutist it made it easier to just do it automatically rather than constantly weight up whether I should eat well.

That’s in hindsight.

At the time in my mind I was really convinced that that one biscuit might make the difference.

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

#567

Post by jonplackett »

war1025 wrote: post #479
ilyaeck wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's so wrong with a biscuit?

I may be off here, but I'm guessing based on the tea comment, that he may be British, which means a biscuit is actually a cookie in American terms.

Correct!

What the hell is an American biscuit then?

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

#568

Post by jonplackett »

Razengan wrote: post #286
jonplackett wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha. I unfortunately did take it a bit more seriously. There was a point where if someone offered me a biscuit with my decaf tea my inner monologue would say “if you eat that biscuit you might never have children”. It was at least in that way the easiest diet I ever went on. 100% motivation!

What's so wrong with never having children?

Nothing, if you don’t want to have children.

But when you do, there’s a lot wrong with it.

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

#569

Post by dragonwriter »

jonplackett wrote: post #567
war1025 wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be off here, but I'm guessing based on the tea comment, that he may be British, which means a biscuit is actually a cookie in American terms.

Correct! What the hell is an American biscuit then?

> What the hell is an American biscuit then?

Basically, a chemically (as opposed to yeast) leavened bread roll.

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

#570

Post by teachrdan »

rhinoceraptor wrote: post #509
hojjat12000 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently watching a video on Doublespeak[0], one of the types of doublespeak is to bombard the audience with technical jargon which means you automatically win, unless they know more technical terms than you do! In your case, your comment does not mean anything to me (or probably 99% of the HN users). Instead of this, you could at least cite a reputable source for this claim, this would be 100 times more effect…

I get that it's slightly esoteric, but this is all pretty basic biochem/endocrinology. Here's a small study that demonstrates that losing weight can increase fertility: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3177768/ Additionally, this mechanism is why drugs like clomifene and anastrazole work for male infertility.

Ha, "pretty basic biochem/endocrinology", followed by a link to a 10-year-old study of 43 men which concludes:

"This study found obesity to be associated with poor semen quality and altered reproductive hormonal profile. Weight loss may potentially lead to improvement in semen quality. Whether the improvement is a result of the reduction in body weight per se or improved lifestyles remains unknown."

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