8 ms·

Weight loss and proper exercise will probably deliver 99% of the improvements for 99% of the people. Stressing about heat, radiation, micro plastics, or other r

by tzone 6y ago

Weight loss and proper exercise will probably deliver 99% of the improvements for 99% of the people. Stressing about heat, radiation, micro plastics, or other random stuff seems like extra stress for not that much benefit. Most people in Western world are either out of shape, or straight up obese. It makes sense that, that will have huge negative effects on fertility.

medium_burrito 6y ago
Yeah, I'm gonna take Obesity for $400, Alex. Sidenote: When someone overfeeds their animal as is common in America, would that be Obestiality?
YinglingLight 6y ago
I'll hold off on my order of the new Impossible Boner from Burger King.
nvahalik 6y ago
We tried for several months but after starting and following a workout regimen for a few weeks... it just happened! It's amazing what a little exercise can do for your body!
- jonplackett 6y ago
  It takes 3 months or so for sperm to grow, so on that time frame the exercise can’t have made a difference to your sperm quality, it was probably fine already and you just had to wait to get lucky. Unless you’ve been trying for over a year that’s just a perfectly normal amount of time for it to take anyway
  - nvahalik 6y ago
    I think it was maybe not on my side, specifically... but just don't tell my wife that. :)
- vagrantJin 6y ago
  > following a workout regimen for a few weeks. This got a chuckle out of me sir. I imagine the sperm sent you a memorandum of protest about your unhealthy lifestyle. Sure it was an illegal strike but it worked.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
jonplackett 6y ago
Absolutely agree that being generally healthy will make a difference. But what if you aren’t over weight and already fairly healthy, like I was? Then you have to look at other things too.
- drpgq 6y ago
  If you had to say what was the best intervention?
  - jonplackett 6y ago
    Unfortunately, I have no idea. I just did EVERYTHING. I was more concerned with making a baby than figuring out exactly what worked and what didn’t. There are just so many potential things it would require a lot of testing to know.
    - yortpyperty 6y ago
      ah the old miracle of life.
goatcode 6y ago
Is it possible that endocrine disruption could be related to issues with physical fitness too? There are many factors, but this could also be one, perhaps.
Frost1x 6y ago
While I tend to agree with you WRT to diet and exercise, I think this is a secondary issue to what's being described here, similar to how I think modern science and technology has skewed the natural selection process with a bias that may select for undesirable attributes. Some of this bias may be for good intentions (allowing less fertile couples to conceive) while some may have questionable outcomes (selection based purely on socioeconomic status). Again, I think these are separate issues. Efforts I worked with looked at effects of contaminants such as manganese artificially introduced in natural water systems but that's just one, there's dozens of concern. The issue discussed in this article has quite a few biologists I've interacted with concerned which deal with products we redistribute or manufacturer back into the environment that may be causing these issues. Endocrine disruption is occurring in other species in the wild less or not clearly effected by the issues described above (selection bias, cultural biases in exercise/diet, etc.), and for all intents and purposes, seem to be going along with a sort of survival of the fittest model yet they're still having endocrine issues. In the anthropocene era, it's quite possible some of our behaviors are causing this and it wouldn't be the first time: lead and CFCs come to mind in the past. We have what appears to be a smoking gun, but we still haven't identified the shooter. We should definitely improve the factors that we can like diet and exercise and look to remedy socioeconomic selection biases for reproduction but the issue at hand may be one you can't simply diet and exercise your way out of and we need to continue to investigate it and find the root cause.
- Sunspark 6y ago
  I often wonder if it's something like car tire dust. All those vehicles eroding away the tire material which then goes into the air, soil and water. It goes somewhere.
  - Frost1x 6y ago
    This falls under the umbrella of "particulate matter" and is studied quite a bit. I'm not that familiar with particulates from road dust (specifically from tire erosion), but particulate matter is frequently studied (though not as much for endocrine disruption, at least not that I am familiar with): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates
jgalt212 6y ago
We need to start smoking again to control the obesity. And stop taking anti-depressants.
planetree 6y ago
Perhaps that has something to do with endocrine disruptors too.
wonder_er 6y ago
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 the most dangerous time period. Our traditional fertility doctor was pushing us hard to do IVF (we didn't want to), so we said "eh, thanks, we'll just take a break for a while." I asked the doc if there was any association between diet and pregnancy, and she said no. I facepalmed so hard. I wrote up notes on a book about sugar here: https://josh.works/notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar https://josh.works/notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar Might be worth skimming the notes to determine if it's worth reading the book. Oh, and for others trying to get pregnant, and curious to learn more about endocrine disruptors and the effects of diet and metabolic syndrome on fertility (for men and women) I'd recommend reading _It Starts With The Egg_ [0]. This book walks you, the reader, though a lot of recent research, boils it down to a "do this/don't do that" checklist at the end of each chapter, it was perfect for my engineering brain. [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21782260-it-starts-with-the-egg https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21782260-it-starts-with-...
- avesi 6y ago
  I'm shocked that any doctor's first recommendation isn't starting to do fertility awareness with ovulation test strips. I got pregnant on the first try with our second kid doing that. It was much more challenging for the first one and we even talked to a doctor who suggested fertility drugs. Thankfully, those weren't necessary in the end. Oddly, after we saw the doctor, we stopped trying as hard to conceive, and then it just happened on accident.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  Allopathic medicine is a disaster, the overwhelming majority of the modern medical establishment refuses to acknowledge that diet has anything to do with health, where in reality diet is easily the largest contributor.
  - 6y ago
steve_adams_86 6y ago
Overall this is good advice for anyone, so I think it's the best first step for anyone who's inactive or overweight. I'm not a doctor but I suspect this is how a doctor would approach it too. I know it's anecdotal, but of my friends with fertility issues (3 couples who mentioned it to me), none are remotely overweight, they're regularly active, and they eat well. I'm sure inactivity and obesity are a major issue in regards to fertility, but I'm not personally seeing that.
acdha 6y ago
> Weight loss and proper exercise will probably deliver 99% of the improvements for 99% of the people. In addition to be factually incorrect, consider how what you said sounds to the many people who are healthy, active but are having problems with something they thought would be easy. This is very stressful for many people, seeming especially cruel after years of worrying about accidental pregnancy, and the medical treatments are a figurative (and often literal) pain in the ass. Unqualified strangers taking the opportunity to offer judgmental “advice” is not something anyone wants even in general, and it’s certainly not more appropriate in this situation. We spent about 5 years on this (and have a great 3yo). If anyone reading this has questions, feel free to ask.
- rhinoceraptor 6y ago
  At least in men, there is a very clear mechanism. If you have excess body fat, your aromatase may be overexpressed, and if so, you will convert more of your testosterone to estradiol. This interacts with the hypothalamus' negative feedback loop, lowering your GnRH, (and therefore your LH/FSH) making you less fertile and lowering your testosterone until homeostasis is achieved.
  - hojjat12000 6y ago
    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 effective and also useful for the readers. Cheers. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc
    - Animats 6y ago
      It's just bio terminology. I can't tell if it's correct biology but the words are neither nonsense nor obscure.
naebother 6y ago
No, I believe it's 53.18008%
bordercases 6y ago
Notably, fat retains fake estrogens such as parabens and pthalates because both are fat-soluble. You might be accidentally making a counterpoint if it turns out that the retention of fake estrogens are what are mediating the effect.

by tzone 6y ago

medium_burrito 6y ago

Yeah, I'm gonna take Obesity for $400, Alex. Sidenote: When someone overfeeds their animal as is common in America, would that be Obestiality?

YinglingLight 6y ago

I'll hold off on my order of the new Impossible Boner from Burger King.

nvahalik 6y ago

We tried for several months but after starting and following a workout regimen for a few weeks... it just happened! It's amazing what a little exercise can do for your body!

jonplackett 6y ago
It takes 3 months or so for sperm to grow, so on that time frame the exercise can’t have made a difference to your sperm quality, it was probably fine already and you just had to wait to get lucky. Unless you’ve been trying for over a year that’s just a perfectly normal amount of time for it to take anyway
- nvahalik 6y ago
  I think it was maybe not on my side, specifically... but just don't tell my wife that. :)
vagrantJin 6y ago
> following a workout regimen for a few weeks. This got a chuckle out of me sir. I imagine the sperm sent you a memorandum of protest about your unhealthy lifestyle. Sure it was an illegal strike but it worked.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

jonplackett 6y ago

Absolutely agree that being generally healthy will make a difference. But what if you aren’t over weight and already fairly healthy, like I was? Then you have to look at other things too.

drpgq 6y ago
If you had to say what was the best intervention?
- jonplackett 6y ago
  Unfortunately, I have no idea. I just did EVERYTHING. I was more concerned with making a baby than figuring out exactly what worked and what didn’t. There are just so many potential things it would require a lot of testing to know.
  - yortpyperty 6y ago
    ah the old miracle of life.

goatcode 6y ago

Is it possible that endocrine disruption could be related to issues with physical fitness too? There are many factors, but this could also be one, perhaps.

Frost1x 6y ago

While I tend to agree with you WRT to diet and exercise, I think this is a secondary issue to what's being described here, similar to how I think modern science and technology has skewed the natural selection process with a bias that may select for undesirable attributes. Some of this bias may be for good intentions (allowing less fertile couples to conceive) while some may have questionable outcomes (selection based purely on socioeconomic status). Again, I think these are separate issues. Efforts I worked with looked at effects of contaminants such as manganese artificially introduced in natural water systems but that's just one, there's dozens of concern. The issue discussed in this article has quite a few biologists I've interacted with concerned which deal with products we redistribute or manufacturer back into the environment that may be causing these issues. Endocrine disruption is occurring in other species in the wild less or not clearly effected by the issues described above (selection bias, cultural biases in exercise/diet, etc.), and for all intents and purposes, seem to be going along with a sort of survival of the fittest model yet they're still having endocrine issues. In the anthropocene era, it's quite possible some of our behaviors are causing this and it wouldn't be the first time: lead and CFCs come to mind in the past. We have what appears to be a smoking gun, but we still haven't identified the shooter. We should definitely improve the factors that we can like diet and exercise and look to remedy socioeconomic selection biases for reproduction but the issue at hand may be one you can't simply diet and exercise your way out of and we need to continue to investigate it and find the root cause.

Sunspark 6y ago
I often wonder if it's something like car tire dust. All those vehicles eroding away the tire material which then goes into the air, soil and water. It goes somewhere.
- Frost1x 6y ago
  This falls under the umbrella of "particulate matter" and is studied quite a bit. I'm not that familiar with particulates from road dust (specifically from tire erosion), but particulate matter is frequently studied (though not as much for endocrine disruption, at least not that I am familiar with): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particulates

jgalt212 6y ago

We need to start smoking again to control the obesity. And stop taking anti-depressants.

planetree 6y ago

Perhaps that has something to do with endocrine disruptors too.

wonder_er 6y ago

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 the most dangerous time period. Our traditional fertility doctor was pushing us hard to do IVF (we didn't want to), so we said "eh, thanks, we'll just take a break for a while." I asked the doc if there was any association between diet and pregnancy, and she said no. I facepalmed so hard. I wrote up notes on a book about sugar here: https://josh.works/notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar https://josh.works/notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar Might be worth skimming the notes to determine if it's worth reading the book. Oh, and for others trying to get pregnant, and curious to learn more about endocrine disruptors and the effects of diet and metabolic syndrome on fertility (for men and women) I'd recommend reading _It Starts With The Egg_ [0]. This book walks you, the reader, though a lot of recent research, boils it down to a "do this/don't do that" checklist at the end of each chapter, it was perfect for my engineering brain. [0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21782260-it-starts-with-the-egg https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21782260-it-starts-with-...

avesi 6y ago
I'm shocked that any doctor's first recommendation isn't starting to do fertility awareness with ovulation test strips. I got pregnant on the first try with our second kid doing that. It was much more challenging for the first one and we even talked to a doctor who suggested fertility drugs. Thankfully, those weren't necessary in the end. Oddly, after we saw the doctor, we stopped trying as hard to conceive, and then it just happened on accident.
blacktriangle 6y ago
Allopathic medicine is a disaster, the overwhelming majority of the modern medical establishment refuses to acknowledge that diet has anything to do with health, where in reality diet is easily the largest contributor.
- 6y ago

steve_adams_86 6y ago

Overall this is good advice for anyone, so I think it's the best first step for anyone who's inactive or overweight. I'm not a doctor but I suspect this is how a doctor would approach it too. I know it's anecdotal, but of my friends with fertility issues (3 couples who mentioned it to me), none are remotely overweight, they're regularly active, and they eat well. I'm sure inactivity and obesity are a major issue in regards to fertility, but I'm not personally seeing that.

acdha 6y ago

> Weight loss and proper exercise will probably deliver 99% of the improvements for 99% of the people. In addition to be factually incorrect, consider how what you said sounds to the many people who are healthy, active but are having problems with something they thought would be easy. This is very stressful for many people, seeming especially cruel after years of worrying about accidental pregnancy, and the medical treatments are a figurative (and often literal) pain in the ass. Unqualified strangers taking the opportunity to offer judgmental “advice” is not something anyone wants even in general, and it’s certainly not more appropriate in this situation. We spent about 5 years on this (and have a great 3yo). If anyone reading this has questions, feel free to ask.

rhinoceraptor 6y ago
At least in men, there is a very clear mechanism. If you have excess body fat, your aromatase may be overexpressed, and if so, you will convert more of your testosterone to estradiol. This interacts with the hypothalamus' negative feedback loop, lowering your GnRH, (and therefore your LH/FSH) making you less fertile and lowering your testosterone until homeostasis is achieved.
- hojjat12000 6y ago
  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 effective and also useful for the readers. Cheers. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc
  - Animats 6y ago
    It's just bio terminology. I can't tell if it's correct biology but the words are neither nonsense nor obscure.

naebother 6y ago

No, I believe it's 53.18008%

bordercases 6y ago

Notably, fat retains fake estrogens such as parabens and pthalates because both are fat-soluble. You might be accidentally making a counterpoint if it turns out that the retention of fake estrogens are what are mediating the effect.