11 ms·
Sperm Count Zero
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 8y agoBetter title: Why Sperm Counts Are Dropping For Men Today
- qubax 8y agoWhich has been posted about on HN numerous times already. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16245784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16245784 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15061484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15061484 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109328 It's amazing that even gq is now spamming HN.
- schoen 8y agoThis submission was made by a 5-year HN user with 14000 karma. Although I don't know if you've been more active with a different handle, which is certainly very possible, the account whose submission you're complaining about has been active 27 times as long as yours and has 91 times as much karma as yours... suggesting a history of reasonably good-faith contribution to HN. Edit: it's true that his submissions aren't primarily about IT topics, but people continue to find them interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pmcpinto https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pmcpinto
- phoschore 8y agoEh, it was posted yesterday too: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938276 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938276 And a few other times over the past week: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gq.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gq.com
- ggggtez 8y agoIt doesn't matter how much karma someone has. A repost is a repost, and it's ok to point it out.
- schoen 8y agoI took this as somehow blaming GQ itself. (I don't mind people pointing out reposts.)
- jameskegel 8y agoIt matters to me. The reasons the parent outlined are roughly the factors used for my personal trust rating when considering if I mind veering off topic momentarily while reading.
- zaroth 8y agoI had heard that sperm counts are dropping. What was news to me was that the decline is continuing, even accelerating, and also the concomitant drop in testosterone levels, starting even in utero. The bit about AGD was also pretty crazy — followed by the bit about men becoming less male. Some fear-mongering there no doubt, but a topic which in this era is more likely to be met with scoffs of “good riddance” rather than alarm bells.
- tluyben2 8y ago> followed by the bit about men becoming less male. This is pretty obvious without any research (papers). The difference between my generation and our children is already staggering in this regard. Not sure if that's just change in culture or physiological though; maybe a bit of both?
- zaroth 8y agoI resisted the urge to joke that this finally explains millenials, because it’s exactly that response which leads to the dismissive reactions this trend is being met with. A couple days ago I shared a NYT article with my wife because it was such a strange window into evolving gender standards [1] and the next day a friend of hers shared another story which took it to a whole new level [2]. I could not help but tie it all together in my mind with TFA and dropping testosterone levels, but god help me for admitting it here. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/style/modern-love-he-asked-permission-to-touch-but-not-to-ghost.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/07/style/modern-love-he-aske... [2] - https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/imagining-a-better-boyhood/562232/ https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/imagining...
- scarejunba 8y agoJesus Christ, #2 sounds dangerously like the parent pushing her viewpoints on the poor kid.
- ScottBurson 8y ago
- zxcvvcxz 8y ago>“What you are seeing in a number of systems, other developmental systems, is that the sex differences are shrinking,” Swan told me. Men are producing less sperm. They're also becoming less male. Is it possible that these phenomena relate to the seemingly explosive rise in transgenderism? Particularly MtF, which is much more common than the reverse. Perhaps for those with already low male:female hormone ratios, if they are tipped further by these endocrine disruptors, especially during development, they might really have a brain that feels more female.
- amelius 8y agoMakes me wonder if there are any "endocrine disruptors" that work in the opposite direction.
- rincebrain 8y agoSurprisingly, the only things I can find suggesting the existence of xenoandrogens seem to be attempts to sell me things. I wonder why.
- village-idiot 8y agoAll human Zygotes start out as female, and a burst of androgens makes some fetuses develop male sexual characteristics. If those androgens aren't released, the child retains female sexual presentation, even if they have XY chromosomes. As is commonly mentioned, this is why men have nipples even though they're not functional for men. According to my very weak understanding, it's easier to prevent that from happening than it is to accidentally introduce enough xenoandrogens to cause a XX fetus to develop male sexual characteristics.
- phoschore 8y agoYour sentiment echoes my own: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17939166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17939166
- zxcvvcxz 8y agoI would love a reliable way to measure Birth Control and SSRIs in the water, and compare it to decades ago. I feel like there's a good chance these are "sleeper issues" affecting global health (in addition to the plastics as discussed). Maybe somewhere there's an ice core that's saved representative water from the decades? Regarding estrogens from BC in the water, some fish findings are quite suggestive: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/birth-control-pill-threatens-fish-populations-1.2796897 https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/birth-control-pill-threat... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160304092230.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160304092230.h...
- agorabinary 8y agoAny other reliable sources on this beyond GQ?
- uptown 8y agoHere's the study: https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article-abstract/doi/10.1093/humupd/dmx022/4035689/Temporal-trends-in-sperm-count-a-systematic-review?redirectedFrom=fulltext https://academic.oup.com/humupd/article-abstract/doi/10.1093...
- alexandercrohde 8y agoThere are actually well over 100 studies on this from different regions and periods. Google scholar can help.
- alexandercrohde 8y agoWhy is this downvoted? Simply putting in "sperm count decline" into google scholar gives over 42,000 papers. Lay people need to understand that this is not just some off-the-cuff casual theory, but a very-well-researched 30-year-trend.
- seibelj 8y agoChildren of Men? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men
- tyingq 8y agoLoosely maybe. The women were going infertile in that movie.
- scarejunba 8y agoPerhaps A Handmaid's Tale instead. The implication is that women were blamed but the men are the ones going infertile.
- MaxGabriel 8y agoIt’s both in that book. Otherwise the commanders’ wives would be able to get pregnant. But it is implied that the commmanders aren’t blamed when they’re the infertile ones.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoThere was an episode of Stargate where an alien race reduces human fertility by 98%. They do some shenanigans with time travel to tell themselves to not contact that world in order to prevent it. May have auto-play audio: http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2001_(episode) http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2001_(episode)
- Izkata 8y agoYour link is for the second appearance of the Aschen, when SG-1 meets with a different civilization they've already pacified. The episode with the time-travel shenanigans is the first of the two episodes: https://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode) https://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode)
- Nomentatus 8y agoIn mammals generally testosterone levels and photoperiod are very closely linked. It would be surprising if our increasing use (abuse) or artificial light didn't sharply drop our testosterone levels.
- zxcvvcxz 8y agoIs it that artificial light drops T levels, or is it the lack of sleep? Though admittedly the former often leads to the latter. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110531162142.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110531162142.h...
- village-idiot 8y agoPretty much impossible to separate these days.
- Nomentatus 8y agoIn mammals generally? Sorry, couldn't resist - in truth your question is good because while "sleep" is repeated endlessly, not just in the news but often by researchers who aren't controlling for photoperiod - that's NOT what the research says. It's light that's key, controlling the master hormone melatonin. Which is also a stunningly efficient antioxidant, of supreme use in taking out the garbage - something not irrelevant to Alzheimer's. If you sleep into the light regularly,long sleeps, your lifespan actually shortens.
- spraak 8y agoTestosterone also drops from high consumption of animal products.
- spraak 8y agoI'm wondering if the downvotes are from me not citing sources or from people getting triggered.
- 8y ago
- 300bps 8y agostudies with sample collection only after 1995—and the slope was even steeper. So that could not explain the decline we see after 1995.” That’s about the time high speed pornography became available en masse. Coincidence?
- zaroth 8y agoMy initial thought when I read the “the problem is right in front of us” interlude was, oh they’re gonna blame PornHub! Since masterbation decreases sperm count. But when they got into the other physiological symptoms, that definitely isn’t gonna explain it.
- 300bps 8y agoIn addition to sperm count, studies show masturbation also lowers testosterone levels. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11760788/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11760788/ This study showed a 150% increase in testosterone seven days of abstinence.
- amelius 8y agoI thought the same thing, and also wonder what effect it will have on the next generation, through epigenetic inheritance.
- EADGBE 8y agoIf we’re reducing the count over time, do we know if the sperm are simply becoming more effective to counter-act?
- village-idiot 8y agoProbably depends on the time scale. It's typically very easy to disrupt an existing system, and it takes a very long time for evolution to respond.
- village-idiot 8y agoAdmit it, you went and measured your AGD, didn't you?
- bassman9000 8y agoBut as it turns out, no surprise: men first. Second instance of no surprise: We're going to take the women down with us. Why. Why this self hate. What have we done to deserve this incredible vicious hatred?
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoThe chart of sperm count vs plastic production is pure BS. It shows nothing but a lack of journalistic integrity.
- minhazm423 8y agowould you mind expanding?
- trophycase 8y agoLack of exercise, poor diet, extremely feminine culture, absolute taboo of violence, endocrine disruptors.
- thomasfedb 8y ago> extremely feminine culture What's that meant to mean?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- trophycase 8y agoPerhaps feminine isn't the right word, perhaps what I mean is a devaluation of masculine traits. In my opinion we live in a time of extreme obedience to law, taboo and shaming of physical violence (with instead an emphasis on social shaming via television/media), and a general fear of social confrontation and disagreement. Our focus instead is on acceptance of absolutely everyone and everything.
- yesenadam 8y agoYou'd like to see more physical violence in the world? Or that it be less taboo, less shameful? Exactly which physical violence are you talking about?
- thomasfedb 8y agoWords from my mouth.
- trophycase 8y agoSee my response.
- thomasfedb 8y ago
- lukas099 8y agoIs it possible that sperm counts are lower simply because there is less selective pressure for producing lots of sperm? Less sperm competition and increased fertility due to medicine would both do that.
- ImaCake 8y agoThere aren't really any good evolutionary explanations for the decrease in sperm count. Changes in the distribution and frequency of any given genotype/phenotype literally takes generations to occur, and would require some kind of selective pressure (as you say, competition and medically induced fertility are possibilities). This is happening too fast and too uniformly.
- jondubois 8y ago>> would require some kind of selective pressure Not selective pressure, but lack of it. When you take away selective pressure for a specific trait, organisms become weaker on average in respect to that trait; when a trait loses importance, populations divert their resources to different traits.
- Dylan16807 8y agoFor a gene to decay without selective pressure takes a very long time, especially when your population is not on the edge of starvation.
- londons_explore 8y agoA selective pressure going away is as strong as a selective pressure appearing. Eg. 100 years ago, 20% of children would die as infants. Imagine all of those children died of a mutation which causes half the usual sperm count, together with a lack of resistance to polio/cholora. Now that polio/cholora don't exist, all those people survive, and within 3 generations, nearly everyone has at least a grandparent with that 'low sperm count' mutation.
- martinpw 8y agoWorth pointing out this trend is only unambiguously evident in the Western world, identified as U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Other parts of the world do not show a statistically significant trend, although the article suggests these data are not good enough to draw strong conclusions.
- rbrcurtis 8y agoWhat's curious about that is if this is solely a first world problem, then it should be easy to compare our sperm counts to that of men in 2nd/3rd world countries. The lack of that data in this article is troubling.
- AlexCoventry 8y agoMaybe men just masturbate more than they used to? Doesn't that reduce sperm count?
- rustcharm 8y agoHe got one fact wrong in the intro: Women are more obese and overweight than men. I suspect the life expectancy gap may narrow because of this (just like the thigh gap closed!)
- pokemongoaway 8y agoGQ... LOL! "We're going to take the women down with us." The same magazine that publishes about "toxic masculinity." There are plenty of virile men out there - but I imagine very few are journalists! Restricting calories, "soy boys," lack of exercise, lack of quality animal products - of course you're going to have a low sperm count! I would say, be honest - and tackle your mental and physical issues before your sperm count - and it will likely rise on its own. Besides, someone with poor mental and physical health shouldn't become a father or mother yet anyway.
- gniv 8y agoMakes me wonder: are there more girls being born than boys?
- DoreenMichele 8y agoProbably not. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/30/396384911/why-are-more-baby-boys-born-than-girls https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/03/30/3963849...
- myrandomcomment 8y agoMy wife and I had one child. I know the time and date we conceived. We wanted more. Never happened. At 40 I asked her if she wanted to speak to a doctor to figure out why. We both did the math on it....cost and age of child at end of high school and said, no. I have friends that spent 100K on their offspring, and it was an emotional roller coaster. 2 kids later, happy, and a 3rd unexpected. Fatherhood is the best startup I ever did.
- theyinwhy 8y agoThere is strong evidence fertility decreases if there is a lack of vitamin D, which would correlate with the thesis that fertility decreases for human kind in general (as we expose ourselves less and less to the sun): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28667465 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28667465
- kwccoin 8y agoIs man is even needed is my take. Only those deliver are important and only woman by definition reproduce. For diversity, one day the female as a race can get each other X genes ... why need Y ... The question is why we need male? Not totally sure actually even though I am male.
- roansh 8y agoTo generalise your question: Why do we need any differences in anything. Why we need multiple languages, cultures, races, etc. (Off course, this isn't something we could alter overnight, or if we should even contemplate altering, but just using it as an example) I think we are all about information. Some information works better for survival of a species than other information. The knowledge that helps better, helps flourish. Bad knowledge dwindles the number of specimen. In effect, better and better information is passed down generations. Different cultures, languages, genders have different perspectives, ways of thinking about different things. More the variety there is, the more possibility is there for new thoughts, and different mental models. And the more the differences, the better are our chances of survival. Men have a different way of thinking about a lot of things than women (consider the choice of games in childhood). And so, I think, having both genders survive is better for our species than just one :)
- okyougotmenow 8y agoAnd here we see sperm count zero manifest.
- amriksohata 8y agoNo on can prove the specific reason, I'm sure any reason that is explored will get push back from businesses who have interests in that area, for example if it's because of sugar, mobile phones, pesticides or pollution, all those industries will fund counter claims. It's sad but that's the capitalist world we live in, the problem will get so bad even the owners of these businesses will be affected but foolish enough to continue for the pursuit of greed and profit, knowingly or unknowingly destroying the chance of future, healthy offspring.
- sytelus 8y agoI wonder how substantiated these numbers are but I can't deny that IVF facilities have been very very busy all over. In Canada, fertility treatment rate increased to 15.7% in 2011, up from 5.4% in 1984. It is a safe bet that 1 in 8 couples you know probably have visited fertility clinic[1]. Also, does this apply to China/India or just Western world? If no then I would worry about all the tech that has gotten in to our lives like plastic everywhere, RF radiation through wifi, chemical infested food and toys etc. 1. https://resolve.org/infertility-101/what-is-infertility/fast-facts/ https://resolve.org/infertility-101/what-is-infertility/fast...
- yorwba 8y ago> plastic everywhere, RF radiation through wifi, chemical infested food and toys etc. All of these are common in China as well. There is a lucrative business in importing baby formula from Western countries due to past food safety scandals. But maybe the differing onset of that kind of pollution would still allow treating it as a natural experiment.
- christinamltn 8y agoThose stats don't imply anything about fertility rates. IVF has gotten far more accessible and affordable since the early 1980s. The 1 in 8 stat was likely just as true in 1984, it just meant they'd been trying for a year without success. Now that gets you a referral to a clinic (and you're more likely to accept that referral).
- alexchamberlain 8y agoThis was a study that used data from circa 180 other studies; I wonder what the purpose of the other studies were and whether there's any selection bias here?
- jaimex2 8y agoHow do they measure this? No one has taken my sample =\
- zanba38 8y agoWhat's some actionable advice about how to increase your T? If you google it you just find snake oil bullshit.
- techsin101 8y agostrength exercises... https://mic.com/articles/61037/study-proves-that-lumberjacks-are-super-manly#.ULOrsAqDb https://mic.com/articles/61037/study-proves-that-lumberjacks...
- konschubert 8y agoOkay, really naive question: Could it be that the measured sperm count per ejaculation is getting lower because men are ejaculating more frequently? Or is this being considered in these studies?
- no_identd 8y ago...I'll just leave this here: https://molecularcytogenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13039-016-0224-1 https://molecularcytogenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.... Stindl, Reinhard - The paradox of longer sperm telomeres in older men’s testes: a birth-cohort effect caused by transgenerational telomere erosion in the female germline [2016] Citations here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=14318367152713660147 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1431836715271366014... Which leads us, among other things, to the following papers: https://journals.lww.com/co-obgyn/Abstract/2018/06000/Should_we_consider_telomere_length_and_telomerase.11.aspx https://journals.lww.com/co-obgyn/Abstract/2018/06000/Should... Balmori, Carlos; Varela, Elisa - Should we consider telomere length and telomerase activity in male factor infertility? [2018] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/05/276030 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/05/276030 Delgado et al. [22 Authors in total!] - The contribution of parent-to-offspring transmission of telomeres to the heritability of telomere length in humans [2018] And to this: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/20/1707337115.long http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/20/1707337115.long Xie et al. [28 authors in total!] - Epigenetic alterations in longevity regulators, reduced life span, and exacerbated aging-related pathology in old father offspring mice [2018] Which itself has citations, here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=10103094276161770241 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1010309427616177024... Leading us, pardon the pun, to, among other things, this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X18301633 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X1... Maloney et al. - Latent consequences of early-life lead (Pb) exposure and the future: Addressing the Pb crisis [2018] As the first handful articles I've linked here now show, we have a hell of a lot more issues than just endocrine disruptors: evolution will mess with us, come hell or high water! PLUS endocrine disruptors already causes a lot of problems, as the OP article outlines, AND as that last article I linked also shows us.
- dudul 8y agoThis article only mentions sperm count. However, as per what I recall from my visit to an IVF clinic, this is only 1 of the 3 important factors. The gamete's shape and motility are the other 2. The last one being the most important if I recall correctly.
- ktpsns 8y agoFigure from the article: https://media.gq.com/photos/5b71dc69cc91ae0c5f57efdc/master/w_800/mean-sperm-count.jpg https://media.gq.com/photos/5b71dc69cc91ae0c5f57efdc/master/... Oh wow. This suggested correlation is pulling your hair out. First, there are two data points for the "men total sperm count" dataset. I can hardly imagine there are no measurements bewtween 1970 and 2010. Analysis of this data: Sure, you can draw a line. An exponential decrease is much more likely, thought. This would look much less or much more dramatic. Never trust statistics you haven't counterfeited on your own. Obviously, the "global plastic production" follows an exponential. And probably any other metric such as "global number of people" or "global number of cars" would exhibit a similar curve. You can correlate everything if you want...
- fallingfrog 8y agoHas anyone checked to see if it's happening to animals too?
- Analemma_ 8y agoIt's happening to dogs as well, apparently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857588