10 ms·

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

• rafaelero 4y ago
  What a list like this misses is some sense of proportionality. We don't need to stress over everything that causes fluctuations on sperm count. The science is not there yet, but personally I am going to bet >50% of the reason for decreased sperms count is because of high protein diets (which correlate to lower testosterone) and high BMI.
• spacedcowboy 4y ago
  Avoiding age doesn't seem like a great plan for sperm viability ... :)
• grammers 4y ago
  This more or less reads like any health instruction (except for the soy products). Would you have a quantity as to how one can change plastic intake by following these recommendations? How strict does one need to be? - I mean basically everything you buy is wrapped in plastic...
  • mikodin 4y ago
    This isn't based on anything except for intuition, take it or leave it :). Like most things - eliminating the highest points of contact likely would suffice. Daily habits are the ones that matter. Are you drinking from a plastic water bottle everyday? Is your water filter plastic? Are you drinking coffee from a keurig or similar? Are you storing food in plastic containers? Are you heating food in plastic containers? Are you using plastic utencils? Are you using plastic lined pans? Are you buying food wrapped in plastic? Etc etc. It's a good starting place...then get your sperm tested, it's not prohibitively expensive.
• torginus 4y ago
  It is surprising to me that consuming dairy products is not on that list. After all milk is produced by lactating animals (whose lactation is sometimes induced by feeding the animal artificial estrogen). It seems like a fairly direct vector to me. Why is this so rarely discussed?
• tdehnel 4y ago
  Cool so my whole life
• danuker 4y ago
  Amazing! Thanks for the well-researched info. I did not know aluminum cans were lined. I thought the oxide layer is stable enough.
  • bluGill 4y ago
    The acid in carbonation will eat the oxide layer, so soft drink cans get a thin plastic lining. Alcohol cans often are not lined.
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    I think they just spray them with a thin layer of epoxy, otherwise certain drinks get a metallic taste?
• ipdashc 4y ago
  I think I'm missing something. On the Results in study [b], they say > Semen parameters did not seem affected by caffeine intake, at least caffeine from coffee, tea and cocoa drinks, in most studies. Conversely, other contributions suggested a negative effect of cola-containing beverages and caffeine-containing soft drinks on semen volume, count and concentration. If tea and coffee don't cause an effect, but cola and soft drinks do, doesn't that imply it's sugar, not caffeine?
  • Knufen 4y ago
    There is an ongoing discussion on the effect of caffein on sperm quality. There are articles which describes a possible route for DNA damage to the sperm from caffein https://www.cureus.com/articles/109365-effect-of-stress-and-caffeine-on-male-infertility https://www.cureus.com/articles/109365-effect-of-stress-and-.... From personal (lab) experience there is a clear difference to the smell of sperm from a coffee to a non coffee drinker, so it ends up there somehow. Whether it truly has an effect is still being discussed.
    • Tagbert 4y ago
      Caffeine has no smell so what you are detecting is some other component or effect on the semen taste. Many things can affect the taste of semen.
      • calmdownpeople 4y ago
        He said smell not taste! At least I hope he wasn't tasting the lab samples.
        • fnordpiglet 4y ago
          Just the semen.
        • vineyardmike 4y ago
          “Lab samples”
• dj_mc_merlin 4y ago
  I might as well stop using condoms.
  • danuker 4y ago
    I suppose it's a good idea, if you're trying to conceive :)
    • glitchc 4y ago
      He's become.. Inconceivable.
      • moffkalast 4y ago
        You keep using that word, I think it means what we think it means.
  • themagician 4y ago
    Switch to PS5 + Mountain Dew. 30 minutes before sex, microwave a cookie in tupperware and drink a beer. For added protection, download the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.
    • ChuckNorris89 4y ago
      Can't get a PS5. Does a Nintendo switch also do the job?
      • themagician 4y ago
        Unfortunately, the Switch is only about 90% effective in preventing unwanted pregnancy. PS5 is 98%.
        • ghostbrainalpha 4y ago
• throw0101a 4y ago
  > 1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a] So drinking containers should generally be ceramic, glass, or stainless steel?
  • Knufen 4y ago
    Generally yes. Beware of drinking bottles made from stainless steel. A lot of them are lined with plastic to avoid the metallic taste.
  • yamtaddle 4y ago
    I'd want to know that drinks aren't full of that stuff regardless of the end-user container material, before worrying about it. They're surely exposed to tons of plastics in the manufacturing process, including at times when various components are heated. Even water supplies in a house will typically have been in contact with plastics—at the treatment plant, in the house for any modern house (they're pretty much all PEX now, since it's stupid-easy and fast to install, which means it's very cheap), in the hot water heater if they're any hot water mixed in (ever start with a hot tap for water you're gonna boil?), if you've got a filter system that's almost certainly full of plastic, and so on. You'd also have to avoid canned goods of all kinds, not just bottled/canned drinks. Store-bought canned foods have plastic liners, which all but completely solved problems with canned-good spoilage that we used to have, but does mean ~all canned goods are sitting in plastic, not metal, effectively. Glass-canned might be better but are usually more expensive and there's still plastic on the inside of the lids (how much that matters, I do not know—I'd expect very little, but sometimes these things are surprising, for all I know those inside-the-lids bits use exceptionally awful plastic or something).
    • throw0101a 4y ago
      > (they're pretty much all PEX now, since it's stupid-easy and fast to install, which means it's very cheap) Also good in cold climates as they can stretch if the water expands after freezing: they'll shrink back to the original size (esp. PEX-A/Uponor) which may help reduce the chances of the house being flooded. Once copper bursts that hole is permanent.
• addingadimensio 4y ago
  Careful — saying that plastic is turning the frogs gay is a dangerous right wing conspiracy theory
  • Knufen 4y ago
    Though it is a funny Alex Jones quote there might actually be some meat to it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC122794/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC122794/
  • asguy 4y ago
    The Alex Jones motto: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
    • MarcoZavala 4y ago
  • kccoder 4y ago
    Is lower sperm count correlated with a change in sexual orientation?
  • creaturemachine 4y ago
    I thought that was the goblins' doing.
• lr4444lr 4y ago
  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 realize this is probably beyond your field somewhat.)
  • Scaevolus 4y ago
    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/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4492270/
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • Knufen 4y ago
    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/index.cfm https://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/ind... b. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_guidance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_guidance
    • fnordpiglet 4y ago
      Plastic is generally defined by its mechanical and thermal properties and a dominance of polymers. There’s are lots and lots of different chemicals used as plastics today and they have wildly different chemical properties. It seems incredible to state that “all plastics” are endocrine disruptors. Many plastics are essentially chemically inert in a biological sense. In some ways DNA itself can be seen as a plastic being a biopolymer if it were handled properly and in enough quantity. As an uneducated layman my intuition, and the links you provide, is that the additives and monomers added to plastic to modulate their mechanical and chemical behaviors are most likely to be the chemically reactive part that can be disruptive to our biology. I didn’t find a reference to a single plastic in your references. This applies to the leaching comment as well - I suspect you mean ph and temp increase the leaching of the additives from the plastic. Am I right?
• aidenn0 4y ago
  > Funnily enough these goes for both genders So eating and drinking from plastics lowers sperm quality in women too?
  • Knufen 4y ago
    No, but it does affect fertility, as well as various cancers. Breast cancer: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7286136/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7286136/, cervical cancer: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4801991/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4801991/ and fertility: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479690/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5479690/
• irusensei 4y ago
  > here is a short list of thing to avoid > 7. Age [f] wait wat
  • nzealand 4y ago
    Age is also best avoided as it is the number one cause of bodily deterioration, disease and death.
    • mauvehaus 4y ago
      Perhaps, but as death almost certainly assures a sperm count of zero (and some weird looks if you try collecting a sample), aging is probably preferable if you're trying to reproduce.
    • moffkalast 4y ago
      Dammit, I wish I knew that before I started aging!
  • majkinetor 4y ago
    Technically, you can easily avoid age :)
    • irusensei 4y ago
      Oh that went dark really fast lol
  • simonsarris 4y ago
    "Avoid waiting (delaying) key life things you know you want" is actually great advice that even very smart people seem to fail to consider.
    • SoftTalker 4y ago
      Yes. In terms of best outcomes, you should have kids in your early 20s. Gametes are at their best, mother's body is young but fully developed and has the best chance at carrying the pregnancy to term without complications. Financially, or in terms of career and other life goals, are other matters.
• concinds 4y ago
  "Sugar" doesn' seem to include fruits, thankfully. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29266782/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29266782/
  • majkinetor 4y ago
    Yeah, right... Totally believable.
  • mikenew 4y ago
    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 https://youtu.be/V02z9mqTWzg
  • adrian_b 4y ago
    There is no real difference between eating food to which refined sugar has been added and eating sweet fruits. The sugar is not bound to anything and it is released in the fruit juice when the fruit is chewed, so it is not digested more slowly than when eating a sweetened cake with the same proportion of sugar (but the cakes are frequently made much sweeter than the fresh fruits). The great danger that has been created by the availability of cheap refined sugar and similar sweeteners, like HFCS, is that it has become extremely easy to create food that has an unnaturally high concentration of sugar or fructose and that it has become extremely easy to eat an excessive amount of sugar per day. Most cultivated fruits contain around 10% sugar, while a few are sweeter than that, with up to around 16% sugar, like grapes, fresh figs or fresh dates. When eating only fresh fruits or defrozen fruits, it is unlikely to eat too much sugar, but it is still possible. It is recommended that the daily intake of sugar should not exceed around 50 g (i.e. around 25 g fructose). That corresponds to around 300 g of grapes, or around 500 g of apples or pears or blueberries (or most other fruits), so eating amounts less or equal with these every day should be safe. On the other hand, a single chocolate might contain over 60 g of sugar. Most industrially-made food, including juices or yogurts or breakfast cereals, contains excessive amounts of sugar, so many people eat daily 100 to 200 g of sugar, or even more, without being aware of this. When eating dried fruits or honey, it is also possible to eat too much sugar without a lot of effort, e.g. around 80 g of most dried fruits is enough to provide the maximum recommended daily intake of sugar.
• siglesias 4y ago
  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 https://amzn.to/3H2YadV
  • zhynn 4y ago
    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. :)
    • bluGill 4y ago
      In my state it is illegal to use a glass milk bottle for anything other than milk from the dairy that the bottle is from. The law is from many years ago, and so there are a lot old bottles from now-defunct dairies that legally cannot be used even though everyone does.
  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    Gyms often ban glass bottles because of the hazard they create when dropped/shattered. I personally use a hard (i.e. not squeezable) plastic bottle, that I fill with cold/cool water just before use. As long as the water has not been sitting in the bottle for days or in the sun or in a hot car, etc. I don't think there is enough potential chemical leeching to worry about.
    • djmips 4y ago
      Any reason to not use a Yeti cup or similar stainless steel thermos cup?
  • Bud 4y ago
    Wouldn't metal be far preferable? Especially double-walled metal bottles that can hold liquid at a temperature. They don't break. I do have some glass bottles as well for occasional use by guests, but when on the go, the popular metal water bottles seem best.
• ceedan 4y ago
  ibuprofen and acetaminophen also affect quality, which are daily medicines for some people with chronic pain.
  • DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    > acetaminophen That's paracetamol for the rest of the world in case you were confused like I was.
    • ChrisPebble 4y ago
      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%2F0lbt3 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=paracetamol,%2Fm%...
      • zerocrates 4y ago
        I get the results I'd expect: acetaminophen is the vast leader in the US and Canada only, while paracetamol totally dominates essentially everywhere else and is by far the more searched term globally.
  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    Neither of these are safe for long-term daily use.
• FollowingTheDao 4y ago
  EMFs???? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2305050015000044 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S230505001... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412021004311 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...
• sc90 4y ago
  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?
• colordrops 4y ago
  With all of these it's a matter of quantity. For instance, bullet point 9 about soy makes me question this list. It turns out that phytoestrogens are much less potent than real estrogen, and the only people that were found to have measurable effects from soy was through a study of older men that ate massive amounts of soy every day in Japan. There is real estrogen in cow's milk, which would have a much stronger effect than soy, yet no one speaks about this. Hops in beer also has more phytoestrogens than soy.
  • s1artibartfast 4y ago
    Anecdotally I know someone that had their ovaries removed as a child and did not know because their high soy diet provided enough estrogen that they had regular menstruation
  • amelius 4y ago
    Does estrogen in food even enter the blood?
    • colordrops 4y ago
      It's sold in pill form so I assume so?
      • amelius 4y ago
        Lookup drug delivery systems. Getting something reliably in the blood stream is not trivial.
      • teg4n_ 4y ago
        Sure some gets through when ingested, however you typically have the pill dissolve under your tongue for significantly better absorption.
      • ruined 4y ago
        the pills are designed to be taken sublingually, not swallowed. first pass metabolism destroys most of it.
• UglyToad 4y ago
  Ah yes, that study of 99 (predominantly overweight) men from an infertility clinic that definitely shows soy affects sperm count. As far as I'm aware the evidence just isn't there with respect to soy and cherry picking the single study that shows some potential link is just helping fuel a dietary myth, would be my view.
  • Klonoar 4y ago
    Yeah, I feel like the soy myth has been disproven time and time again but won’t die already. This and seed oils get hit with the exact same playbook, then disregard significant chunks of the world that have zero issues with them.
    • UglyToad 4y ago
      Yeah, like I get people maybe being wary of soy. There's a lot of mistruths and half understood myths out there. In addition to various contradictory findings from studies [0]. But for a list speaking from a position of expertise it felt quite jarring to see it included as a definitive "don't" and made me wonder about the agenda of GP (soy with respect to fertility is indelibly linked with the far-right "soyboy" meme). As a chemist the idea that phytoestrogens might have the same impact as estrogen isn't completely buck-wild, but also as a chemist I know that two isomers with the exact same composition can have wildly different effects in the human body. So I'd need to see a lot of solid evidence before treating is as anything more than a myth spread by misinterpreted studies of red-clover consumption in Australian sheep from the 1940s. [0]: https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(10)00368-7/pdf https://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(10)00368-7/pdf
      • vladvasiliu 4y ago
        > But for a list speaking from a position of expertise it felt quite jarring to see it included as a definitive "don't" and made me wonder about the agenda of GP (soy with respect to fertility is indelibly linked with the far-right "soyboy" meme). I can see why that would make you wonder. However, a few years ago, the French TV did a take on soy and products containing derivates [0] (French only, unfortunately). It warned about possible effects on the endocrine system. In relation to your point, there are two notable things: 1. It focused mainly on effects in females (never heard of a "soygirl" meme) 2. French TV is not affiliated with the alt-right (or any right) in any way, shape, or form. It has a reputation of being quite left-leaning. And that's by French standards. [0] https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/alimentation/perturbateurs-endocriniens-alerte-sur-les-aliments-au-soja_3456845.html https://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/alimentation/perturbateurs...
• Teknoman117 4y ago
  9. You just can't win can you? Eat meat, increase risk of heart disease. Eat soy, decrease fertility. Life is weird to me. Humans have one of the longest lifespans among mammals, yet we seem to start breaking down not all that far into it. We don't tend to consider 35 "old", as we regularly live 80+ years, and even if you consider the "generally well functioning" span of your life to be your years up to 60 or so, 35 is barely past half way. Oh well.
  • jahewson 4y ago
    The heart disease thing is probably bogus https://bigthink.com/health/red-meat-cancer-not-health-risk/ https://bigthink.com/health/red-meat-cancer-not-health-risk/
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    Life is a known cause of death.
  • brushfoot 4y ago
    The soy study is far from conclusive - it showed an inverse association between soy intake and sperm concentration, but mainly in "overweight and obese men," and "total sperm count, ejaculate volume, sperm motility, [and] sperm morphology" remained the same. NEJM Journal Watch stated the findings were inconclusive and recommended against suggesting dietary changes [0]. Either way, soy vs. meat is not the dichotomy it's sometimes presented as in political narratives. You can eliminate both and still have a huge number of healthy world foods to choose from. The Mediterranean I had recently was delicious and soy and meat free. [0]: https://www.jwatch.org/jw200808070000002/2008/08/07/do-soy-foods-affect-sperm-quality https://www.jwatch.org/jw200808070000002/2008/08/07/do-soy-f...
  • lm28469 4y ago
    Half of the west eat and live as if they were attempting a slow suicide. Take care of your body and you'll be healthy well into your 60s, unless you're afflicted by outlier events but you can't do anything about these, maximise what you can, fate will do the rest
• thedorkknight 4y ago
  >short list of thing to avoid >7. Age I find this to be the hardest one to avoid!
• TurkishPoptart 4y ago
  >1. Eating and drinking from plastics (This includes aluminum cans which are plastic lined) [a] How do we avoid this? So no Costco plastic water bottles, ever.
• citizenpaul 4y ago
  >it takes approximately 7 months for sperm to fully develop Can you explain this more? I was under the impression it took something like 60days for sperm to generate in the body.
  • mclightning 4y ago
• Conscat 4y ago
  I'm not sure you have any credibility considering point 9.
  • faximile 4y ago
    They cited a study. If you disagree, please raise the bar, and either challenge the study, or cite something compelling.
• sizzle 4y ago
  7 months?? I thought I read it was 120 days, anyone have a reputable source?
• tdaltonc 4y ago
  Those all have measurable effects. But at a population level, which of those are actually driving meaningful fertility decline?
• commandlinefan 4y ago
  > list of thing to avoid > ... > 7. Age Well, I'm trying my best...
• agilob 4y ago
  Let's not forget how many people were born thanks to alcohol
  • moffkalast 4y ago
    Alcohol now working overtime to somewhat re-address the balance.
• 10g1k 4y ago
  Agree 100%. I don't eat foods with added processed sugars. I treat sugar like a spice, just throw a pinch in with a few recipes. Sugar is in just about everything in the supermarkets, and is screwing up the entire population.
• irrational 4y ago
  Growing up we never microwaved food in tupperware, but we do it daily now. None of me or my siblings (8 of us) had any sort of mental issues (and it wasn't a matter of not being diagnosed), but all of our children have so many mental issues (depression, anxiety, pulling hair out, ADHD, etc.) that we have asked each other if it could possibly be something in the environment - even though all of us live in different states/cities. Maybe we all reheat food in tuperware and eat/drink from plastics.
• steve_adams_86 4y ago
  Worth noting is that sperm concentration was the only notable impact of soy consumption, leaving other measured aspects of sperm health unaffected (notably sperm motility, a critical factor in assessing sperm health).
• grammers 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing, these studies are extremely interesting! > Because we can identify existing, relatively inexpensive monomers and additives that do not exhibit EA, even when stressed, we believe that plastics having comparable physical properties but that do not release chemicals having detectable EA could be produced at minimal additional cost. The only question that I have left: Why aren't we doing this already???
• Aachen 4y ago
  Just a small note: I noticed that I read your disclaimer that it's not in ranked order, and then went on curious to see what is the #1 cause, and had to remind myself that no it's not ranked. It might help stupid readers like me to use dashes or similar for lists when the order isn't particular, rather than numbering the items!
• faximile 4y ago
  This might help me cut down my Coke Zero consumption. Thanks! Can you suggest any reputable sources for keeping up to date with these best practices, from a consumer PoV?