Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors | Hacker News Reader

Falling sperm counts, declining egg quality, and endocrine disruptors

nytimes.com

500 pointsvincentmarle601 comments

It would be helpful if we knew eactly what these endocrine-disrupting chemicals were. As is usually the case with such reports, this article is short on specifics.

Over the years there have many reports from cleaners to plasticizers, phthalates, and various other chemicals as endocrine disruptors but no one has put a sufficient measure on the problem so that we can move foreword - put regulations in place, etc.

As the article points out, what is so problematic is that many of the chemicals that are under suspicion are ubiquitous and not easily avoided.

I consider it important that we act quickly for not only public health reasons but also the fact that we're living in an increasingly chemical-phobic society and worrying the public without solid evidence isn't helpful to anybody.

We need need more research on this urgently.

Afterthought: it is essential that we have solid evidence ASAP as billions of dollars are tied up in the plastics industry. Plastics already cause environmental problems (and I constantly curse the fact that I have to get rid of so much waste plastic) but there's no point deliberately alienating the plastics industry without good cause.

There are lists available, e.g. https://edlists.org/

When the EU was debating the REACH regulations there was a big push to move to a "don't sell or produce it until you can prove it's safe" stance, but AFAIK it was significantly watered down before an agreement was reached.

https://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/reach/reach_en.ht...

Then there's the problem of "chemical cocktails", where combinations of chemicals are more dangerous than each chemical by itself; this gets a lot of media space, but is even harder to research than individual chemicals since just about everything gets mixed up in various concentrations in nature.

Is there a reason we can't just dump tons of mice into different sets and combos of chemicals and see what happens?

One problem is mice aren't humans. In many cases research done on mice ends up being overly pessimistic, because the short lifespans of mice compared to humans means there is less evolutionary pressure to be resilient to cancers and other diseases of aging. Equally, in other circumstances they'll be more resilient, because they don't live long enough to see the effects of longer term toxins. And of course, there can be differences in specific metabolic pathways.

So yes, it certainly would be good to do more of that research. But there's limits to what it can tell us.

I think that's basically the current system.

Unfortunately, we're worried about bioaccumulation over decades, and lab mice only live a year or so... It's also worth considering the number of Giant Breakthroughs that happen with mice which fail to translate to humans. They're quite different, it turns out.

The search space is pretty big and research costs money.

It’s astounding how automated and reproducible software testing is.

I'd wager ethical considerations would hamper such ambition.

Right, synergistic effects are prevalent everywhere in with chemicals, drugs etc. One of the biggest factors is that we're exposed to so many trace chemicals that figuring out the combination of effects and whether their concentrations are relevant is extremely difficult even with the best science.

I reckon we will all be interested to see what the EU evaluation brings. What worries me though is that the EU is known for its hair-trigger response in such matters. If the evidence isn't really solid then we'll end up with a long protracted (and unnecessary) war with the plastics/chemical industry.

As I see it, the chemical industry is the most vital of industries as it underpins just about everything that's manufactured nowadays, without it we'd be in deep you-know-what. The fact that it's had a lot to answer for in the past, pollution etc., cannot be ignored but demonizing it unnecessarily won't help either.

From my perspective as one who doesn't work in the industry but who's had training in chemistry, there are two major problems that need solving. The first is that the chemical industry, especially in recent decades, is essentially closed to outsiders. There are many reasons for this, regulations, worry about access to dangerous chemicals, industrial accidents such as Bhopal being bad PR, and the fact that the industry is afraid to say anything for fear the public doesn't understand or takes what it says the wrong way - not to mention that its own PR is terrible to nonexistent. The second is that the public is grossely under-trained in chemistry and thus it's easily spooked or frightened whenever the word 'chemical' turns up. This leads to situations where minor incidents get concatenated with serious ones and they all take on equal seriousness. (I'll refrain from muddying the waters here with examples but there are many.)

I haven't the time to go into the reasons why the public is so sensitive and twitchy nowadays - given that chemistry is taught in schools - but nevertheless it's a serious problem. The secrecy surrounding the industry only makes matters worse.

It's why I'm always worried about inquiries into such matters. Of recent times we see engineers and scientists being so noncommittal about so many things that regulators and politicians ban things by default before the science is set. I acknowledge that's a sweeping statement because there are obvious exceptions where both commonsense and incomplete science indicate that we should act immediately. That, I stess again, is why the public needs to be better educated in the subject - then more correct decisions would be made more often and without unnecessary drama.

We all know what these are. It's precursors to common plastics, and byproducts of their decay. Majority of these have been grandfathered as GRAS "generally recognized as safe" by the FDA when environmental laws first went live in the 60s.

The onus is therefore much higher, it is on you to prove they are harmful, instead of requiring producers to prove they are safe.

Nobody wants to stick their neck out because the petrochemicals lobby will go after you, your career and your family.

The only way to get this fixed is to require producers to conduct testing to prove they do not disrupt endocrine systems of not only humans, but other animals, insects and so on.

I'm just not sure the political will is there.

The most reasonable work around is to force producers to label their product.

There are many vegetable packing containers which do not specify which plastic type they are. There are thousands of cleaning products and hygiene products that hide these compounds in the 'Parfums' label.

Forcing manufacturers to exaustively list composition would at least give people the data to make an informed decision when buying a product.

Also we really need to we stop watering down all these health and environmental protection regulations because of lobbyists.

No, labeling things does exactly nothing for consumers, because most of them don't have a Phd in endocrinology so they don't have the faintest idea what to do with the extra information. The most reasonable workaround is forcing producers to prove safety of the chemicals they use before using them.

It's labeled now, and what good is that? I am sure you've seen "sodium benzoate" if you ever read these.

Not until someone actually finds free benzene in the drinks, giving rise to serious liability on the part of the companies, absolutely nothing gets done.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzene_in_soft_drinks

> when environmental laws first went live in the 60s.

I love our Earth and want to protect it as much as possible, and it's incredibly frustrating that restricting housing construction, globalizing pollution emission so it's out-of-sight-and-mind, and economically wrecking large swaths of middle America are the only things our environmental laws seem to be consistently good at :/

It’s easy to forget how much cleaner our air and water are now, though.

"Nobody wants to stick their neck out because the petrochemicals lobby will go after you, your career and your family."

Yeah. That's more blunt and succinct than I put it, and you're absolutely correct. It's a damning indictment on our laws, our governance and even our society that this can actually happen.

These days, techies and engineers fear to speak out and it takes a very brave person to be a whistleblower—and when they are, they're even ostracized by work colleagues who know the facts just as well as they do.

Laws have to be strengthened and new ones enacted but unfortunately there seems a snowball's of that happening.

When something’s this bad it would be much better to act now based on the evidence we have and figure out the full picture later. We know enough about how bad plastic is, even based solely on how it affects the environment and goes through the food chain as microplastics basically forever.

If you wait for someone else to think for you and protect you from all the dangers in life, you'll be waiting a long time.

The "regulators" are the same people and entities who make huge profits off this stuff.

Do your research and act on it yourself.

>Do your research and act on it yourself.

Or, we could acknowledge that most of the general public doesn't have the education necessary, and have the government regulate on our behalf. You know... like they're elected to do.

Average Joe truck driver or Jane LPN shouldn't have to have an indepth knowledge of endocrinology just to be safe from the greed and callousness of polluting corporations.

> Or, we could acknowledge that most of the general public doesn't have the education necessary, and have the government regulate on our behalf.

It's also worth acknowledging that having this kind of regulation makes our society more efficient.

I would be capable of informing myself on this issue, but I don't. The are so many issues of this kind that if I were to attempt to inform myself on all of them, I wouldn't be able to get anything done anymore.

Another way of looking at it is that regulation is a form of implicit specialization, which is why it helps us be more efficient.

> Over the years there have many reports from cleaners to plasticizers, phthalates, and various other chemicals as endocrine disruptors but no one has put a sufficient measure on the problem so that we can move foreword - put regulations in place, etc.

I've been reading through http://projecttendr.com/ and they seem to be what you're looking for. I'm not sure what traction they've achieved on the political arena if any, though.

> Targeting Environmental Neuro-Development Risks Project TENDR is a unique collaboration of leading scientists, health professionals and children’s and environmental advocates. We came together in 2015 out of concern over the now substantial scientific evidence linking toxic environmental chemicals to neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficits, hyperactivity, intellectual disability and learning disorders.

> Store food in glass containers, not plastic. Above all, don’t microwave foods in plastic or with plastic wrap on top. Avoid pesticides. Buy organic produce if possible. Avoid tobacco or marijuana. Use a cotton or linen shower curtain, not one made of vinyl. Don’t use air fresheners. Prevent dust buildup. Vet consumer products you use with an online guide like that of the Environmental Working Group.

I really want to do this, but it seems impossibly hard. For example, almost all the food I buy is in plastic containers.

Because its the same thing as a person setting your house on fire then advising you not to breathe in the smoke. Advice like telling people we are drowning in plastic because we don't recycle, telling people with no access to public transportation to minimize the use of cars, telling people with no access to healthcare to take care of their bodies, telling people that grew up in a glorified prison they call public schools to get more education. They flood the world with plastic to the point where people effectively have no other option than use plastic then tell people to not use plastic. It's funny how if people say the solution to income inequality is to execute billionaires we would never seriously entertain that thought, we would immediately know that is an absurd solution, yet when people say guys choose not to use plastic we stop and consider it as if it is a viable solution for ordinary people and not callously asinine advise. It is no wonder there is so much rage in the Western world when the elites present such ridiculous solutions to problems they themselves brought into existence and expect us to act like they are priests endowed with God's personal blessing.

Who is "they"?

So much "plastic" packaging nowadays (in the UK) is labelled with "Do not recycle" but no indication of what it's made of. This has annoyed me from an environmental point of view, but probably one should look at it from a health point of view, too. Perhaps those items are made from a material that the manufacturers know has potential health implications and that's why they're carefully not saying what it is?

Perhaps the law should require proper labelling of packaging material that is in contact with food just like it requires food ingredients to be listed. If manufacturers were to lobby hard against such a rule, what might we conclude from that?

NPR recently collected some history lots of plastics got some recycling symbols even though most plastics are not recycled for economic reasons: plastics have to be unmixed for true recycling. Most food packaging is landfill.

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

> Perhaps those items are made from a material that the manufacturers know has potential health implications and that's why they're carefully not saying what it is?

Unlikely. It's more likely that they don't know, because they didn't look too hard.

The reason it's not recyclable has nothing to do with that, though. It's not recyclable because plastic recycling is very difficult, many plastics can't be recycled, and of those that can, any contaminants will ruin an entire batch. Food is an example of such a contaminant.

There's a big difference in the amount of leakage from the plastics when it's cold vs when it's heated - so a good step is to put whatever you're heating on a plate before you put it in the microwave (or oven, or…), rather than heating it in the plastic it came in.

Also, avoid using dishwasher and dryer. But some types of plastic cookware is just a pain to clean up. The only solution is avoid buying any plastic cookware or food container completely.

Unheated food-grade plastic is generally okay, but when exposed to heat or UV light, you have a big problem. This paper is worth reading [0], according to their experiment, almost all commercially available plastic products—independent of the type of resin, product, or retail source—leached chemicals after being exposed to UV lights or heat.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/

Isn't that common sense anyway? Especially the packaging it came with?

It’s interesting they call out vinyl shower curtains but not vinyl and polyester clothing, which we wear on our bodies all day.

Even most cotton shirts and jeans tend to be a blend with synthetic plastic fibers because it stretches and breaths better.

I'm not sure you should specifically be worried about vinyl shower curtains, but vinyl is a specific concern, because to get the form of vinyl that's soft and pliable, the vinyl is mixed about 50/50 with phthalates that are known endocrine disruptors.

That said, phthalates are used in tons of stuff, and it's not fully clear to me which sources are the most important. I've replaced my soap/shampoo/shaving creams with phthalate free versions. It's also present though in basically all plastic tubing, which is known to leach phthalates and is used very extensively in food production machinery.

I think there's two issues.

The first is that I recall the shower curtain problem was related to the heat / steam floating around in the shower which facilitated shedding of particles and also ingestion. Having the "plastic" clothing just on the body may be less bad.

Also, and more importantly, I think people who are conscious about those things tend to wear less plastic fibers but won't necessarily think about the shower curtain.

For example, except for full on technical sportswear (think biking shorts), I never wear polyester or other synthetic fibers in clothing that goes directly on my skin. I used to avoid it because, for the most part, I've found that polyester is less breathable, tends to stick a lot, etc. I try as much as possible (I check the labels) to stick to cotton / linen (for the summer) / wool (for the winter). Now, the whole "plastics are bad" thing doesn't really push me to reevaluate my choice.

Or carpet.

> Even most cotton shirts and jeans tend to be a blend with synthetic plastic fibers because it stretches and breaths better.

Just look at the labels...

> For example, almost all the food I buy is in plastic containers.

I stopped buying these a while ago. Buy fresh veggies, classic pasta/rice/lentils or whatever you fancy, meat from the butcher if you eat meat, I skip anything I can't identify or anything that I couldn't make myself at home with regular ingredients.

It's super restrictive but you get rid of literally 99% of junk food. You are what you eat, quite literally

Not that simple. The paper your butcher uses also has plastic most likely. Most paper products do these days.

You nonetheless minimize exposure that way to be clear.

It's not easy, almost impossible, to do overnight. Try it one thing or habit at a time. Single out one thing which is harmful, and commit to finding and integrating a substitute.

Also, remember "cleaning" products besides a select few like Bronner's have the same type of crap in them. "Eco-friendly" ones like Seventh Gen and Meyer's are bullshit if you look at the ingredients list.

Let's all take a moment to consider how blessed we are to have those ingredients list, by the way.

It's difficult to do it all at once. Taking little steps might help: instead of using plastic tupperware, use glass; instead of buying beans in a can, buy dry beans; balcony garden? Sure!

Even if some things are impossible to do, it's imo best to not pile on top of those problems issues that aren't impossible to solve.

Even dry beans come in a plastic bag...

Yeah this is my issue. I have to drink bottled water for water quality reasons. How am I supposed to avoid plastic there?

This is very much a cultural thing. Over here, you can easily get bottled water in glass bottles. The delivery services will pick up your tray with empty bottles to be reused. That's reuse after cleaning, not recycling!

One thing I miss about Germany is S.Pellegrino in glass bottles. Since I moved to Belgium it has been incredibly hard to come by glass-bottled water.

Filtered water? Sure, the filter cartridges are plastic, but I’d guess that you’d reduce your plastic usage in general.

Couple of options:

(a) I used to live in Malaysia where tap water wasn't drinkable as-is, but filtering and boiling made it drinkable and tasted just fine. Hot water dispensers are pretty standard to have in most Asian homes; just put the water through a filtering pitcher before pouring into the hot water dispenser.

(b) Subscribe to those 5-gallon big blue bottles and a dispenser. They get actually reused instead of downcycled.

There are some pretty decent filters out there that are not crazy expensive, guess it depends on how bad the water is though.

Get a water filter and drink tap. They sell filters made primarily out of steel.

> I have to drink bottled water for water quality reasons

Why is your water quality bad?

Drink Voss? and re-fillVOSS bottles with distilled water?

You can get distilled water delivered in very large glass jugs (4 gallons i think?)

> I really want to do this, but it seems impossibly hard. For example, almost all the food I buy is in plastic containers.

Hacker News: colonizing to Mars is straightforward and natural. Buying vegetables fresh or organizing a farmers market is impossibly hard and goes against human nature.

It's reasonable to work on the factors that you can easily influence. Once you've tackled those, you can see what else you can still fix. It doesn't need to be all or nothing.

My instincts have told me not to do any of this. All my life I've seen people microwaving stuff in plastic containers. I find it repulsive. I don't even own a microwave. I keep leftovers in bowls and reheat it in the oven or in a saucepan. I've always hated everything plastic really. And anything that decreases air quality. How people can spray tiny droplets of god knows what into the air and subsequently breathe then in is beyond me.

What part of taking out the food you buy out of its plastic container before microwaving it is impossibly hard?

This is the most important part of the essay:

   Uncertainty remains, research sometimes conflicts and biological pathways aren’t always clear. There are competing theories about whether the sperm count decline is real and what might cause it and about why girls appear to be reaching puberty earlier, and it’s sometimes unclear whether an increase in male genital abnormalities reflects actual rising numbers or just better reporting.

You should maintain a very low prior probability of this being true without more information. Remember correlation usually != causation

https://www.gwern.net/Causality

There are a lot of other possible causes for all the these declines. (obesity and lower physical activity being only the most likely-seeming to me)

Obesity being a correlation might mean it is also a symptom. We already know from a couple studies that people with the same activity level and calorie intake are significantly more overweight than in the 80s. One leading hypothesis is endocrine disruptors.

Possible, but I would tend to bet its just a high sugar and sweetener diet more than anything. Obesity is not uniform at all. In pre covid days of seeing many people, I would rarely see anyone who is obese (northeast american), but that's because I'm in an upper middle class bubble. These days I'm pretty good about avoiding heating up plastics and what not. Growing up it wasn't on our radar at all. Point I'm trying to make is plastic exposure is pretty high for all populations, whereas diet varies tremendously by social class, and the composition of it has changed significantly since the 80s.

Also we traded cocaine and cigarettes for pot and booze (alcohol usage is much higher than the 80s).

I'd be very wary of any studies that ask people to identify "activity level."

That does seem the weak point. The body can conserve calories in many hard to observe ways.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S18714...

If something could be very harmful you should avoid it out of precaution. And many of these chemicals are known endocrine disrupters, so just because there is no slam dunk evidence there is a lot of circumstantial and anecdotal evidence that indicates a problem with these substances.

Plus, the people who avoid them are almost invariably healthier, so taking steps to avoid them seems to have positive effects anyways.

Would it be... unreasonable... to point out that the fall in sperm quality, egg quality, and overall hormonal disruption is happening concurrent with a blurring of overall gender identification, predominantly in the youngest generation?

Identification as trans or other non-binary status is incredibly high among the gen-z cohort. Might be unrelated social upheaval, but would anyone really be surprised if we weren't accidentally hormonally poisoning children at the same time they are developing their own gender identities?

I am dismayed, but not entirely surprised, that you are getting downvoted for this.

If we really have hormonal disruption of the ecosystem strong enough that alligators have problems breeding, why wouldn't it influence human behavior? Hormones influence human behavior all the time, so if there is a change in the balance, there should be a change in the behavior patterns.

This is a testable hypothesis and should not be discarded automatically without being tested, especially by HN forists who are expected to be, on average, more friendly towards critical thinking and less towards dogmatism.

I don't think we can come anywhere close to ruling this out but of course we also don't know how many people felt this way before and hid it so the data is far to muddy to make a clear conclusion.

I don't think Caitlyn Jenner is gen-Z, or The Wachowskis.

I mean, maybe there is a link? It's not inconceivable I suppose, but I am not aware of any evidence, and purely comparing numbers of people is not a very good way of going about this. You will find there are a lot more gay people in the United States than in, say, Saudi Arabia too. But that doesn't mean there are environmental factors in the US that make people gay: they just don't feel free to declare themselves as such in SA because you will get in to trouble.

It's also entirely possible that cultural factors can influence the number of people who develop a homosexual sexual orientation. Humans are highly malleable and affected by culture.

Not malleable enough for conversion therapy to work.

It's not unreasonable to speculate that it may be one factor. It is unreasonable to implicitly assert that it's the only factor and the clear singular cause.

> It is unreasonable to implicitly assert that it's the only factor and the clear singular cause

Sure, but did op assert that? I didn't read it that way.

It's a distinction that doesn't require the OP to have done any such thing for the distinction to be meaningful. Making a distinction about what is or is not a reasonable inference when someone asks isn't the same thing as accusing them of anything.

> Identification as trans or other non-binary status is incredibly high among the gen-z cohort.

The highest study estimate I've seen is 3%, almost all others are between 0.7% and 1%, with even boomers around 0.5%. (For Gen-Z kids, parental belief that children are trans or have non-binary identity is many times higher, though, but that's clearly more about social priming than “hormonal poisoning”.)

> Might be unrelated social upheaval,

To the extent there is an increase at all, it's probably increased awareness of the concept providing a framework to fit into than any “hormonal poisoning”.

3% included people just questioning their gender identity.[1]

[1] https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/141/3/e201716...

You're only allowed to write vague doomsday articles about things that people like to hate. It's pretty funny that you're downvoted for using exactly the same type of vague fear mongering that the article does but because you did it towards unacceptable targets peoples incredulity kicked in.

I wish people would use their ability to think in all cases, not just when they disagree with the conclusion. And if you're about to flag and downvote this because you think I'm being *ist, you are exactly the problem since I did nothing of the sort.

"Chemicals in plastics damage babies' brains and must be banned immediately (cnn.com)"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26211605

If only plastic utensils and other plastic one-use expendables had never been taken as good idea in the first place

I think many health problems are related to not a few single causes, but to a cocktail of problems, some chemical, other purely lifestyle(sleep, food, exercise).

It's humbling how much AND little we know about processes in the body. Just read the article and comments some days ago about antidepressants. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26197140

Except most babies seem to be fine, so maybe the fear is overblown?

I think it should be kept in check, as it seems all sorts of nasty stuff can be mixed into plastic. But many plastics seem to be fine.

There is also poisonous stuff in plants, including wood.

I mean, people probably said the same thing about leaded gasoline. Just because things are “fine” doesn’t mean they’re ideal.

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 ray of hope that it was possible to sufficiently avoid these things, at least temporarily, and it made a very large difference (4X better within 6 months) and resulted in a now 3 year old child.

Soy isn't that easy: https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Medical-me...

There was one study with 99 participants. A counter argument is Asia, where men eat a lot more soy and don't have reduced sperm count.

They've also eaten soy for much longer than others, literally thousands of years(1) at this point. That's more than long enough to evolve countermeasures if it did have an effect. They also eat soy differently, mainly in products which are fermented.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean#History

I think a lot of it comes down to how it's processed... fermentation probably made it safer to consume over time.

I think the aversion to dietary fat for the past 3 generations combined with refined seed/bean oils has been hugely detrimental to human health as well. Not to mention, even with reductions, we still consume a massive amount of sugar per capita compared to pre-wwii levels.

One does not need 1000 years to evolve. One generation where soy intolerance leads to death through famine/malnutrition is enough. That is why cultural differences are so important to take into account.

They also ferment a great deal of the soy they consume.

So when bullies bully people for eating tofu, they being especially stupid because tofu is the one form of soy that isn't "anti-masculine"?

Almost 95 percent of the soybeans grown in the U.S. are genetically modified.

https://www.thedailymeal.com/travel/8-most-genetically-modif...

In 2007, over half the world’s soybean crop was genetically modified; a higher percentage than any other crop.

https://worldofgenetics.weebly.com/genetically-modified-soyb...

Asians are probably eating less GMO soy (than Americans) and we don't really know what those genetic modifications do in terms of human health. They are typically made to improve profit in some fashion, not to improve human health.

It's interesting to look at such studies, here is an example:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2721724/figure/...

So if you have low BMI you improve sperm concentration if you eat soy 2-8 times a week? Less or more than that is worse? Data is not convincing, and it is easy to find studies which don't agree.

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 isn’t even that great tasting. You aren’t gonna miss it!

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.

Isn't the difference in Asia because they eat less processed soy compared to the US and EU?

I was eating lots of miso, tofu and soy sauce when I lived in japan without issue. In europe i tried soy milk once and got an instant allergic reaction (itchy soar throat). The difference being soy milk is just soaked, ground up, boiled soy bean..

I can't speak for other Asian countries, but here in Indonesia tofu and tempeh (fermented soybeans) are a lot more common than in Europe.

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.

> 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.

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.

Yeah this is like people telling me my sleep apnoea will get better if I lose weight. Nevermind that I was underweight when I was diagnosed because my sleep issues had ruined my appetite.

I get that it will help a lot of people whose issues are caused or worsened by weight but those people will have doctors who can tell them, you don't need to make assumptions about my lifestlye, and even if you do it seems weird to assume I wouldn't have already been told that by my sleep specialist

I used to be really chubby, and increasing exercise barely changed it. My body decided to randomly change one day and the problem mostly went away. The body just plain has a mind of it's own.

But we are also not designed for desk jobs. Most of our ancestors sweated on farms or in quarries. One of the best pieces of evidence against Intelligent Design is that the designer forgot to design us for desk jobs.

Being offended about someone saying obesity is bad for you is nonsense. Fine, someone is offended. Oh well.

And it is true - most issues are related to weight.

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

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-...

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 their life to have kids which makes it harder conceive with a healthy embryo.

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.

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 cut out 100% even in ingredients lists (this is tough. It’s in EVERYTHING. Even loads of savoury things that have zero business having sugar in).

Side pondering - I’ve often wondered if McDonalds got a really raw deal from Super Size Me (great documentary) and that it was just the super size soft drinks that were the cause of problems - remember the guy in there who has eaten thousands of Big Macs? But he never had the drink. And he was thin as a rake (dunno how many kids he had though!)

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.

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.

"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)."

First let's not anthropomorphize nature, or natural selection. But secondly, in 1st world countries, the more money you make, the less likely you are to have kids! We've done a terrible job at incentivizing couples to have kids since women have entered and made up a good part of the work force, and it's hard to blame someone in a good career, married to someone in a good career, to take off 10-15 prime years of their lives to have children.

I think that waiting to have children until later (late 20's to early 30's) is a big problem in terms of fertility and successful child bearing. Unfortunately the human clock doesn't really jive with the "4 years of college, work a bit and then think about marriage and kids".

I don't have a conclusion except we might want to think about increasing the birth rates among high and medium earners in our populations where they are struggling, lest we become like Japan or other countries (some in Europe which depend on importing labor in order to satisfy demand)

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.

> modern science and technology has skewed the natural selection process with a bias that may select for undesirable attributes

But that's hardly "modern" at all. Any improvement since the dawn of time that increases survivability for any creature that otherwise could not have lived and bred without it would lead to that result. Where does one draw the line?

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.

If you had to say what was the best intervention?

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!

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

> 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.

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.

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

Perhaps that has something to do with endocrine disruptors too.

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.

No, I believe it's 53.18008%

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

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.

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 later and re-tested: morphology was then at 4% - count & motability largely unchanged. DNA fragmentation was "normal" but not amazing (not tested initially)

What I did:

- significantly upped my standing desk usage - from sporadic use a few times a week, to perhaps 25-50% of every working day at a standing desk.

- changed underwear from tight-fitting "trunks" to looser "jersey" (not boxers - personally I hate boxers)

- slept naked instead of wearing trunks.

- almost entirely eliminated alcohol and caffeine, apart from the odd glass/cup maybe once or twice a month.

- anti-oxidant tablets ("condensyl") taken daily

Notable:

- exercise & weight largely unchanged (I ran a few KMs maybe once or twice a week - this remained unchanged)

- diet (apart from caffeine and alcohol) largely unchanged - perhaps some small mild "improvements" in cutting back on sugar & fat and having more veg but nothing drastic or wildly different really.

I now have a naturally conceived 1 year old boy. Pregnancy + birth + delivery totally normal, baby all A-ok. It can happen - don't loose faith if the results are "bad". Good luck.

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!

So you started drinking bottled water, turned off the Wifi, eating sushi and going commando? Doesn't sound so bad, really.

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!

Sounds like the biggest life change you made was dieting then?

What's so wrong with a biscuit?

What's so wrong with never having children?

Won't bottled water be more likely to contain plastic traces?

There are reusable glass bottles, at least where I live.

At least you know what's in bottled water, the water supply and its contents can vary wildly. In some places they still use lead pipes iirc.

If those things are bad for sperm count I'd expect them to be bad for the rest of the body as well. Sperm count is probably just a convenient metric which reveals the detrimental impact.

In my (layman’s) review of related literature, this seems to be the case. I’ve gone through phases of looking into for eg. what might optimise lean mass, testosterone, longevity, decrease cancer risk, sperm count etc. It’s all basically the same stuff. Unsurprising, really.

Can you share your study/findings? It'll help me and others who are searching for the same.

You said "temporarily", so I want to remind you that all the same things are harmful to a child's development, especially when their systems are just coming online and establishing their baselines.

Yes absolutely! Still doing the dietary things for her. She gets to have hot baths though, and wear tight fitting underpants.

FYI anyone else reading, if you have a boy Teflon is really something you should avoid.

I'm duplicating this text higher up, lest it be buried deep in the argument below:

> At normal cooking temperatures, PTFE-coated cookware releases various gases and chemicals that present mild to severe toxicity.

> Only few studies describe the toxicity of PTFE but without solid conclusions.

> There are some reports where PFOA was detected in the gas phase released from the cooking utensils under normal cooking temperatures.

> Due to toxicity concerns, PFOA has been replaced with other chemicals such as GenX, but these new alternatives are also suspected to have similar toxicity.

> The toxicity and fate of ingested PTFE coatings are also not understood.

Source:

PTFE-coated non-stick cookware and toxicity concerns: a perspective

Muhammad Sajid 1, Muhammad Ilyas 2

PMID: 28913736

DOI: 10.1007/s11356-017-0095-y

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28913736/

I wonder if it's Teflon in general or damaged Teflon pans - many people do not used them correctly, overheat them and have damaged coatings that leak chemicals.

You can go check perfectly fine pans having 1-star Amazon reviews "Pan sticking after a month!".

Huh, all my trousers were coated in teflon when I was growing up. It was a prominent selling feature.

Good parenting is forcing your boy children to take cold baths because you need their sperm to carry on your legacy.

Cannabis was a big factor for me. My sperm morphology improved after I ceased using it. Anecdotal, but there are a few studies that support the idea (cannabis in general doesn't have a lot of studies because it is a Schedule 1).

If you're a heavy user, it can't hurt to stop while you're trying, and it may help. (I don't see it mentioned often in these discussions.)

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31267718/

2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30916627/

Anecdote: I avoided all these things and more out of pure hypochondria for decades, and I impregnated my wife the two times we didn't use some form of birth control. I even have a sort of tic I integrated where I pull my testicles out from between my legs when they get constricted, and hadn't remembered why I started doing that until you reminded me that I read something about heat being bad for sperm in the 90s.

Good to have a counter point to the ‘I drink a pint of whisky at night and smoke crack every morning and I got my wife pregnant no problem’ argument!

It's not a counterpoint because no one says crack and whiskyt are required for pregnancy. It's a supporting point that sperm can develop without any particular specialized diet.

Anecdote: same here, but did not avoid anything on that list.

You seem to be kind of shadowban (not sure what the proper term is), you might want to write an email to the hn moderation to clear that up

Anecdote: when we did everything "right" and nothing. The moment we just relaxed and said "whathever", it happened. Two kids.

We had to use donor sperm, and even then we had 8 miscarriages and 8 rounds of ivf. Every time it was at 5 weeks and 5 days. Doctor finally figured out Wife had an autoimmune disorder (presumed) and 10 mg of prednisone during first trimester solved it, for the next 2 out of 3 ivf cycles to get our 2 little boys. She had cancer cells though so had to have a full hysterectomy so we're likely done unless we adopt now...

It was horrible and miserable but our boys are wonderful and amazing. So it was worth it. Honestly, I'd given up and really was just "okay" with things but it meant "more" to wife her being Mormon (me ex-mormon) there's some cultural stuff there. Now that I'm a dad though, wouldn't trade it for anything - love my boys and have grown a ton since having them, I can't even explain how life is different as a dad and before having kids.

TLDR: Sometimes simple things like 10mg of a steroid to stunt immune system can solve the issue, if you have a recurring miscarriages anyways.

I have nothing to add to this topic, but I just want to send you a virtual hug, we had one miscarriage and it was bad, I can't even imagine how you'd feel after 8.

Similar for us - trouble conceiving and a miscarriage. Months spent improving sperm. All conventional checks on mother came back as fine - "keep trying!" they kept telling us, while writing "unexplained infertility" on our medical records.

Still nothing happening. IVF was on the horizon, but a private consultant identified some trouble with "natural killer" cells in mother. No other issues with mother (no cancer like parent post)

Prednisolone (IIRC) and some lipid infusions and baby was conceived and delivered naturally. Drugs cost maybe £80 a month (although all the diagnostic checks and stuff was much more - start to finish (including like 12 ultrasound checks and multiple sessions with the consultants) we spent perhaps about £8-10K) - conceived on second month of trying, after years of nothing apart from a miscarriage and intense sadness.

Happy customer - no other relation: http://crpclinic.co.uk

My wife and I are in the unexplained fertility category and are currently doing IVF (so far, so good).

I knew immune issues were a thing but I didn’t know it was easily treated. We were told by multiple doctors we could do more tests to see what was wrong but it wouldn’t change our treatment plan.

Just wanted to air my annoyance. We’re both healthy and at least were relatively young when we started trying to conceive.

> radiation

I don't doubt much of what you're saying, but is there any evidence to support that modern life exposes you to any more harmful radiation than life in the past did?

Cigarettes for once, can expose you to way more rads than what is healthy [0].

[0] https://www.verywellmind.com/radioactive-chemicals-in-cigare...

Fair enough. I kinda forgot that smoking is still a thing. But it's been on a big decline for years, hasn't it? Surely this isn't some new and growing danger?

Yes, there have been numerous studies showing that the radio frequencies (radiation) used by cell phones and wifi are correlated (maybe causative, but not 100% sure) to reduced sperm count and quality. This is especially true when you have your phone in your pocket or your laptop on your lap.

Stuff like wifi and cellphones were not a thing in the past. There just weren't many consumer RF products a generation or two ago - phones had cords, there was no wifi or even internet, no bluetooth headphones or refrigerators, etc. Most of the RF radiation was produced by commerical or government sources (plus some ham radio), such as FM, AM, and military communications. This generally meant that you were far away from the source, which means they where mostly using different wavelengths and the power you recieved was lower (you quadruple power loss when doubling distance). Now days, you have multiple cell phones in your home, wifi at home and work (work can really blast you with all the access points they seem to over-install), bluetooth and a cell card in many new cars, and IoT devices seemingly everywhere.

Not to mention it seems we have more commercial exposure too. We have GPS, satellite TV, StarLink, cell towers, etc all vying for 100% coverage. However, I didn't look up the wavelengths, so these might not be an issue, or might cause some other kind of issue. I guess I'm just saying it should be no surprise that sperm count and quality is decreasing if we know that certain RF is linked to it and we are increasing that RF exposure.

> Yes, there have been numerous studies showing that the radio frequencies (radiation) used by cell phones and wifi are correlated (maybe causative, but not 100% sure) to reduced sperm count and quality.

Do you have some references?

> This is especially true when you have your phone in your pocket or your laptop on your lap.

Are you sure you're not mixing up heat and radiation here? OK, technically radiative heat is radiation, but surely that's not what you meant. Sitting outside on a warm day with a pillow on your crotch probably isn't good for your sperm either, but it doesn't seem honest to chalk that up to radiation (even though technically radiative may have warmed you in the first place).

> Not to mention it seems we have more commercial exposure too. We have GPS, satellite TV, StarLink, cell towers, etc all vying for 100% coverage. However, I didn't look up the wavelengths, so these might not be an issue, or might cause some other kind of issue.

I'm sorry, this is pure speculation unless you can back it up by something. "We didn't have all these things in the past" isn't an argument for anything. It's like claiming that the cumulative number of HN comments is rising while sperm quality is decreasing, hence HN is killing sperm.

> I guess I'm just saying it should be no surprise that sperm count and quality is decreasing if we know that certain RF is linked to it and we are increasing that RF exposure.

Do we know that those kinds of RF are linked to it? X-rays to your balls, sure! But GPS and cellphones? Evidence, please.

Non ionizing radiation doesn't have an effect on our bodies unless it's very high energy e.g. you're right next to a high powered transmitter (radio tower).

Having a warm/hot laptop on your lap is definitely not a good idea for fertility.

what’s the solution? cabin in the woods and commute to work, fewer IoT devices, keep phone out of pocket, and?

The above ground nuclear testing in the Atomic Age certainly increased background radiation levels.

To the many people arguing about mobile phone radiation - just move your phone to your back pocket & move on with your life. Your body will act as a shield. Will it matter? Maybe. Maybe not. Now go think about something else.

If you need something else to think about: non-antibacterial soap is better anyway, and a RO filter is less than $200.

Ok, NOW go do something else.

Good luck doing that anywhere outside the 1st world and still having a phone after the first hour.

Tim Ferris wrote about radiation from mobile phones reducing sperm count in rats, and tested it on himself (as he usually does). Banned the mobile from his pants and got one of those attach it to your arm thingies. Spermcount went up.

Tim Ferris is half conartist half motivation speaker.

I don't really love his shtick generally (a bit too try hard and salesman for my liking) but I think he's honest and not trying to con anyone. For example I tried the slow carb diet he proposes and I lost tonnes of weight.

4x is a large jump, is that referring to sperm count? It might be anecdata but given that you were seeing a fertility specialist it could be more valuable to hear your lifestyle changes rather than much of the noise that is out there.

It’s certainly anecdata since it’s just me but it was multiple tests over that period and showed a steady increase from not going to work for IVF to the level where it would.

They test a number of things from total count, count per ml, motility, correctness of shape. Everything went up. The shape was my main issue and that was the thing that increased 4X

I should say I also took some supplements too.

The problem with all this is isolating your variables - since you’re on a very limited clock and sperm tests cost £200 you don’t have time or money to figure out which things made the most difference. You just try everything and hope you got some of the right things.

All the things I listed above have some evidence for them affecting sperm so I just cut them all out.

For what’s it’s worth my tests were all over the place (as low as 12mil total and as high as 80) with no large lifestyle changes. My doctor at Mayo said that’s normal and they look at the average over a year or so.

Also, in case it comes up in the future, doing you own sperm counts on a microscope isn’t that hard. I didn’t bother with morphology and the like as that was typically fine, but total counts are easy.

How did you cut out tap water, heat, microplastics, teflon, and the western diet?

> I also took some supplements

Which ones? Our specialist recommended CoQ10

4x is totally believable, I did two 25 day rounds of clomid so I could cryobank and I saw over a 10x jump in less than a month.

The reason why is pretty obvious, I'm overweight so I'm aromatising more. Taking clomid blocks the estrogen negative feedback loop in the hypothalamus, so you make more GnRH, so therefore more LH/FSH.

The whole endocrine disruption thing seems pretty sketchy to me. If you're infertile and/or have low testosterone, chances are your diet and lifestyle are horrible.

You... avoided all that? How?

You didn't wear underpants or what?

One can wear underwear, just not tight-fitting. There is a reason balls are free-hanging. They should not get too warm.

I'm not the parent poster, but here's my take:

Heat - Live somewhere North. There's very little of it.

Radiation - No wi-fi at home, put phone in breast pocket.

Plastic, micro plastics - Never buy anything plastic, if possible. Buy food whole in paper bags from local market; prefer glass and carboard containers. Buy cotton/silk/etc clothing, never anything made of poly-anything.

Tap water - Live where it's clean.

Teflon - All my cookware and utensils are titanium, steel, or wood. No aluminium, no coatings.

Antibacterial soap - Buy the simplest, free-est of additives soap you can, intended for sensitive skin and allergics. Wash clothes with Sapindus saponaria fruit ("soap berries") and vinegar.

Underpants - Just don't wear them.

An interesting side-effect of such a clean lifestyle is that a fungus clogs my drain about twice a year, since my graywater has no chemicals in it. Had to learn to take it apart and clean it :)

> Radiation - No wi-fi at home, put phone in breast pocket.

This is pseudoscience. Unless you're storing wifi devices next to your testicles they won't do anything, and in that case it's due to heating.

> No aluminium

I missed that one, what is wrong with Aluminium for cookware? Can you point to any source on that?

Why would you need underwear when you could just freeball every day?

Some fabrics aren't kind to sensitive bits. I prefer to have cotton boxers between my bits and whatever rugged exterior cloth is worn.

because denim

antibacterial soap, too? how do you keep yourself clean?

and underpants, how? because of how tight they are?

> antibacterial soap, too? how do you keep yourself clean?

Regular soap?

>and underpants, how? because of how tight they are?

Temperature control is the reason the testicles are in a vulnerable unprotected spot outside of the body. If they were inside the rib cage they would be better protected but warmer.

Underpants that keep them warm are working against this.

Nudism at home is weird but works. Works wonders on the testo level as well if the wife does it too. Avoid hot beverages.

i dont know. i did all of the bad stuff and surely wasnt a very health aware person (smoking, drinking, weed, late nights, slight overweight, city life) but got my wife pregnant within one period cycle and we did that two times (two kids).

its probably a factor.

but very nice to hear that it worked out for you. most have been a stressful period

Well, lucky you I guess. For some of us it’s a harder road and requires more work.

For me, cutting out those things did make a difference on multiple tests that trended up as I cut these things out. All of the above have varying degrees of evidence to support that they affect sperm.

The problem is that you’re on a tight deadline and have no time to isolate your variables. Your only option is to go 100% on everything.

And what are the behavioral effects of such large physiological changes en masse? Surely neurochemical changes will manifest everywhere, from mental health to politics

Shorter attention spans, more lethargy, lower overall intelligence. You could point at a number of cultural and political developments over the last decades and argue that these neurochemical changes could be a contributing factor. However, it must be pretty much impossible to know for sure. The supposed effects are too intangible and the compounds are too pervasive. We can only speculate.

This might well be true, and there may be a measurable correlation if someone is willing to investigate it.

However i m not sure what s the way forward: policies to reverse this health crisis, or adapt politics to this new reality?

If the causality is correct, then this "new" reality is already here. Hence, adaptation is too currently happening. Big policy changes to curb plastic use is only a favor for our grandkids.

Correct me if I'm wrong but being overweight or obese is an endocrine disruptor. Such conditions exist in what ~50%+ of USA adults. Worse there are children growing up who are effectively unhealthy from age 5 forward.

Add in other disruptors (e.g., chemicals) and naturally there are going to be problems; problems despite the narrative, are not due to the healthcare system.

It wouldn’t surprise me if we discover that the exogenous disrupters are causing the high obesity rate.

Causing? Maybe. Contributing to? Probably. Toss is compromised gut bacteria (due to other environmental factors) and it all adds up.

That said, drinking soda as if it's water, regularly consuming junk "food", as well as going weeks without breaking a sweat is a great foundation to build such a crisis of convergence on.

In the list of: "practical suggestions" in the article, they talk about literally everything except for weight-loss and getting in shape.

This is not limited to US men, similar pattern everywhere in western world

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sperm-count-dropp...

Well, it's the Western diet. The US created and exported so we're ahead by a decade or so. But yes, the USA isn't the only country eating itself to death. Slowly.

Can these endocrine disruptors also contribute to gender dysphoria?

It sounds plausible that anything with the ability to disturb hormone production could also indirectly affect things like sexuality and one's gender identity. A quick googling suggests it has been suggested before, and that it's a highly controversial topic as it indicates that something is inherently wrong with being transgender.

At best, it's something that needs much more research before any conclusions can be drawn.

As somebody with a friend who has gender stuff going on, I can tell you the friend just wants an honest answer out of science and couldn't care less about indirect implications.

It doesn't affect me at all either, but I'd still be cautious before making any claims hinting that being trans is a medical condition -- if it does indeed turn out to be related, then it could turn a lot of people's lives upside down.

Given that there isn't a dramatic increase of homosexual population, its probably not a major cause. In fact IIRC homosexual men with high T tend to be "more exclusively homosexual".

It doesn't help that most research on the subject seems to be from the 70s, and i don't find many recent studies. ( I guess, because contemporary science)

Gender dysphoria is usually associated with gender identity rather than sexual preference.

there would be a significant correlation however

Probably not Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. That's social.

Additionally transexuals have appeared in every extant civilization. Some women have felt more like themselves passing as men and some men have felt more themselves passing as women. From Indian to Chinese to Native Americans there's always been people like that. I'm pretty sure any impression of there being more of them is due to news cycles, fast communications, and increasing overall empathy.

As mentioned in the sibling comment

"it's a highly controversial topic as it indicates that something is inherently wrong with being transgender."

Whether ROGD exists or not, there isn't going to be useful discourse about it on public social media, where 99.9% of the time anyone talking about "endocrine disruptors" or "ROGD" or "social contagion" is only using it to invalidate the entire notion of being trans. Sometimes because their child is questioning their gender and they want to shut that down without just having a parent-child conversation about it.

Did environmental microplastics and soy milk and Wifi radiation and being friends with trans people make me into a woman?

We can raise that hypothesis in good faith, but I'm not going to quit transitioning even if it turns out to be true.

The evidence for ROGD is 1 study. It assumed teenagers tell their parents everything. And selected for parents who refused to accept their children coming out as trans.

I followed this girl on youtube that built a tiny house in the mountains. She carries her own water, makes bread from wheat she mills, makes her own hummus and cabbage and eats copious amounts of each and vegetables. Hardly has phone/internet service because she lives in a mountain valley. Plays music with friends, reads and does yoga for entertainment. Surprise, surprise. You are your habits! She looks very fit and healthy. I'm not advocating for traditionalism, but more like, optimizing your habits.

The simple basic, inexpensive things she does, and eats are pretty optimized for health and personal growth.

Isabel's Channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4cght8xNnI

If she didn't look very fit and healthy, you would not be following her on youtube, and would not know she existed, even with the same lifestyle.

I don't know if you've ever been to the mountains[1], but if you do you'll find out most of the people living there are and look super healthy, even (especially) at an advanced age.

The main difference I can see between my experience and the one of the youtube girl is that people in the mountain don't necessarily eat what would be considered healthy, but a lot of meat and animal products.

It definitely deserves more actual research, but a mountain lifestyle does seem to push towards regular exercise, which in turn provides overall good health.

As a singular data point, you can see from BMI comparisons that countries with mountains (Switzerland, Austria, France, Italy) fare pretty good in comparison to others: https://www.euronews.com/2019/05/09/which-country-has-the-hi...

[1] At least the Alps

We have mountains here and they don't look all that super healthy. They also tend to be poor.

Thats true to a degree. But I'm betting many unfit people would get fit if adapting the same diet/lifestyle habits.

Anecdata: As quarantine drags on, I've stopped eating fast-food/restaurants and only eat things that I 'make'. I'm not going to say that it's healthy food, because I like cookies and beer and burgers. But just not eating fast food resulted in ~20lbs lost. I sleep better, I'm not as exhausted in the early afternoon, and I just 'feel' better. We'll see how post-pandemic life goes, but I'm going to try to stay on this diet at least.

http://archive.is/gwyni

Some time ago I realized that modern life wasn't that good for your health so last year I bought a farm on the country side with my gf and now we are trying to grow our own food and make our way into a more self-sustainable life.

I'm interested in this. Care to share more about how you learned? How do you handle water collection, filtration, and distribution? What types of fertilizers are you using to improve the nutrients in your growing soil? What crops are you growing, and are you managing livestock?

My family and I did the same a few years ago. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Why do you think the solution is farm life and not something more primitive?

We see similar things happening with digestive diseases between the West and Asia. Diverticulitis is pretty rare in Asia (and Africa for that matter) and fairly common in the West. But what’s interesting is that it is just as common for Asians that move to the West after about 12 years or so which rules out genetics. Additionally we are seeing it occur in younger and younger people. This was once a disease for ages 60+ and now it’s not uncommon to find it in people in their 40’s and 30’s and occasionally their 20’s now!

It’s assumed the types of foods more common in a Western diet are the cause of this but there isn’t concrete proof. It’s a strong hypothesis though.

It’s thought the main cause is foliage ingestion, or lack of. People in Asia and Africa eat a lot more plants which are high in fiber.

So I don’t think it’s just obesity and being overweight that are the issue but how we get obese and overweight and I believe that all this, from infertility to early onset of digestive diseases are related in large part to our diets.

Similar effects have been seen with Multiple Sclerosis. People of the same genetic background who move to Western countries are more likely to develop MS than those who stay behind. I can’t remember the specific countries unfortunately.

On this topic I can recommend the dystopian movie “Children of Men”. It’s about modern world of basically our time where nobody can get children and what issues arise.

Off topic tangent: "Children of Men" is also a great litmus test for search engines. Searching for "movie without babies" in Google yields "Children of Men" as the first result (and has since before 2010). Other search engines generally return movies about babies and stuff like that

Shoddy endogenous androgen production in men is likely a function of excess adipose tissue causing higher rates of aromatization of T to estrogen

Being overweight or obese makes it more difficult to lose weight and put on muscle, a feedback loop

Clean diet and regular exercise goes a very long way, but nutrient deficient soil is making micro-nutrient deficiencies more difficult to resolve. Anecdotally, eating a whole foods diet consistent of high quality protein usually sourced from local farms (I'm in rural upstate NY), I still find myself needing to supplement magnesium, zinc, D3 and K2.

A friend of mine is working on a supplement that may help in this regard, at least on the female part of the equation.

> There is a a very interesting substance that could also increase fertility: nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN).

https://novoslabs.com/can-nmn-supplements-restore-fertility/

(Disclaimer: I've invested in his company)

Generations of low dietary fat, franken-foods and just eating garbage. Plastics, it's all part of it.

I don't have any data but I wonder if stuff like this will affect the gene pool. If the cause is environmental then it shouldnt have an affect. But genes are weird considering epigenetics.

Almost like the the movie 'Children of men'

If the cause is environmental then that means the environment changed, and environmental change causes a change in selection.

As a scientist I hate articles like this. Apparently putting the word “may” in the title allows one to pontificate wildly about what might be the cause of falling sperm rates and other reproductive trends.

Little to no comments about other possible causes, no data that shows a relationship between “endocrine disruptors” and sperm counts, no comments about levels of these chemicals in the population or what levels they become active at.

After reading the article all I can firmly conclude is: 1) reproductive changes are happening, 2) endocrine disruptors are suspected, but there is no direct evidence.

Not very helpful.

The blanket statement of 'endocrine disruptors' takes away clarity.

They mainly refer to Bisphenol and Pthalates which are present in the majority of Plastics and cleaning products/cosmetics. These compounds are chemically too similar to estrogen and are processed by your body in pretty much the same way as the female hormone.

Evidence on the health effects of Bisphenol and Pthalates:

- Influence in hormone dependent types of cancer https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31471387/

- Influence in Cardiovascular disease https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32438096/

- Influence in Female and male fertility https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31238688/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32046352/

- Cofactor in Diabetes https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31286379/

Not going to lie but that 2nd reference is terrible. It’s a meta-analysis and a bunch of the odds ratios overlap with 1 (no effect).

I’m not saying endocrine disruptors are harmless, but multiple things need to be proven before you can make any conclusions:

1. A specific endocrine disruptor has a negative biological effect.

2. That specific disruptor is found in common items.

3. That specific disruptor can be leeched out of that item through normal use.

4. The amount leeched out actually gets into the body.

5. The amount that gets into the body is at a high enough level to cause a toxic effect.

I see cell or animal data for #1, #2, but I don’t see data for #3,4,5.

If there is anecdotal and circumstantial evidence that something is bad for you, and most of the people who avoid that thing are visibly healthier than those who don't, shouldn't you avoid it out of caution?

This is also a sensitive topic to research because it impacts an enormous part of the economy if these things are shown to be harmful, and in many cases there are not good substitutes that are safe and economical.

Edit: And if you disagree with my first point, are you consistent in your own life, e.g. did you treat coronavirus with the same skepticism? How about mask wearing? There's not much high quality of evidence on masks, or at least there wasn't early on.

My publicist used to do this all the time. We'd even go as far as ghostwriting the articles ourselves.

This is an advertisement for the epidemiologist's book, which may contain the depth of information you are looking for.

You might be right.

> Now Swan, an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, has written a book, “Count Down,” that will be published on Tuesday and sounds a warning bell.

And it's a book that just happens to be coming out this week. In the opinion column.

I noticed the book mention as well. I immediately figured it was a PR play.

My dad (professor at University of Arizona) interviewed Shanna Swan, a scientist profiled in this article, recently. Anyone interested can find the episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reproductive-health-sh...

Some of the other episodes look great as well. Thanks for sharing!

https://www.givelegacy.com/ is helping men protect their fertility.

The biggest source of endocrine disruptors are plants. It's as simple as that. And they're all natural to top it all off.

Please add this to the column of "things evil right wing twitter anons were investigating years beforehand", so you can update your estimates of their future credibility.

Is this really so bad? Assuming humans are hit the hardest, the planet will be better off.

Obviously we wouldn't want it to kill our civilization, but for the mean time, it doesn't sound so bad with less homo sapiens

1. This is happening in the western world, not in places the population is growing fastest

2. It's not just less humans, it s of worse quality

1. The per capita environmental footprint is at least an order of magnitude, if not closer to two, higher in the western world 2. The subtext of this point is so distasteful to me that I can't figure out how to engage with it. How do you measure the quality of a human?

> 2. It's not just less humans, it s of worse quality

what do you mean by this? that humans not of the western world are "lower quality"?

jeez point 2, western chauvinism strikes again.

What global human population could we stabilize at in a climate change and/or ecological collapse worst-case? Personally my guess is around 500 million or so.

The biggest source of endocrine disruptors are plants

something something Alex Jones something something

//edit// This is semi-facetious, but he did mention something similar in his, er, unique fashion.

He also would rant about jeffrey epstein years before the media caught on.

Sounds like Johnny Rotten and Jimmy Savile: https://louderthanwar.com/interesting-1978-clip-of-johnny-ro...

Related: http://vhemt.org/

(one of the oldest websites on this here internet, as well.)

The point of that movement is to restore balance to earth, but what’s the value in doing so if no one is around to appreciate it? There’s really no difference one way or the other; it’s just a sphere in the universe.

The biosphere consists of more individuals than just humans. The argument is that humans, specifically, do quite a lot more harm than good to the rest of earth's population.

With perhaps a few exceptions, most other species would be much better off without us.

Humans are with high probability the only chance Earth's ecosystem has of surviving the death of the Sun.

I think of it as evolution.

And the great paywall

This affects not only humans, but the entire ecosystems.

This disruption is happening right now, and is the cause of the die off of many species.

It's a true emergency. TODAY.

Preservation of state is not a feature of evolution, and as elegant and informative a theory as it may be, it has as long a history of negative selection as of positive survival.

Are you condoning the destruction of our earth for short term profits?

I cannot believe you think my opinion is going to alter the profit motive, but no, for what it's worth, I am not condoning the destruction of the earth. I'm describing a way to think about our influence on the environment that is most likely to actually happen.

Damn, having watched Children of Men recently, this article is chilling

The biggest problem we have is we keep making things that we have no idea of the consequences and then to get rid of them takes a while because industry says no we can't do this, there will be too much economic damage. Same with all environmental issues, the speed of damage is much faster than the ability to control the economics created as a result. As a result unless something is shown to be immediately fatal, it's hard to prove without a doubt it's fatal and often the damage done is cumulative and distributed across the whole industry. There is no easy solution to this.

Upvote for one of the (in my opinion) best movies of our time

That movie is terribly depressing, and terribly good.

> Now Swan, an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, has written a book, “Count Down,” that will be published on Tuesday and sounds a warning bell.

This article is a submarine[1] for some guy’s book.

1. http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Sure, but it is also true.

I went to glass containers for food storage and transfer food out of plastic packaging as soon as possible.

Precocious puberty: I had a mental health hit (near collapse) from something that happened in my mid 20's. I started dating the stepdaughter of a neighbor (upper-middle class area) who said she was 19, and she definitely seemed it by being smart, chill, age-mature, sensible, and fully-developed (Tanner V). Lo and behold: she was not 17, 16, or 15, but 12. 12! WTH? I felt awful, ashamed, and like a perv monster. Thankfully, nothing illegal progressed but it was way too close and that would've been the end of my life. The worst part was I really liked, respected, got along with, and was attracted to her. Why, human condition, why? Torture. Sigh.

If she was biologically mature, being attracted to her doesn't mean you are a pedophile. Attraction is a result of biology, not of man-made laws. It would of course still be illegal to date her. The last psychiatrist has written about that, but I couldn't find it right away.

You confused a middle schooler for a 19 year old? Yikes.

Confused? No. She passed herself off as that, acted, and looked the part completely. Size D. Extreme precocious puberty. You would've been fooled too, so please don't judge with perfect knowledge and 20/20 hindsight from afar if you weren't there.

If they look under 30 ask for ID. ID could be fake so get to know family friends and story too. I think a few good questions about life could spot a 12 year old from a 19 too.

> I think a few good questions about life could spot a 12 year old from a 19 too.

It would take a really good liar to be able to pass for a 19 year old at 12 years old. You'd have to weave a really complex web of lies around being almost out of high school (I'm not American so not sure if this is true), drinking, driving. At 19 your life is so different, I find it very hard to believe, except if she's some highly intelligent sociopath.

Jokes on you, my sperm count fell 100% three years ago, and I like it that way.

How comes? A disease, a condition, or what?

I think OP is hinting at a vasectomy.

technically not a drop in sperm count

I wonder if the divergence between Asian and Western countries in sperm count is due to cultural reasons. Maybe the fall of traditional culture in the West, and all the allowances it made for male behavior, has had psychological effects that have something to do with it.

Plastics are massively used in Asia, which is why I speculate the cause could be psychological as opposed to chemical.

Pick a random essential nutrient. For instance, take zinc.

Human body needs it. It needs to be taken in. You need to ensure the right food items, or the right supplements, doesn't matter.

Where does that source come from? plants? animals? imported? produced? What goes into that? What's the prevalent intake level in developed countries? developing countries? what should be the right intake level? where (which parts of the world) do we have excess? where do we have deficiency?

How is zinc flushed? where does it go? rivers? recycled? ends up in ocean?

Keep going. And you realize there is a massive, highly complex, global zinc-supply-chain-cycle that has a crucial role in zinc ingestion in different parts of the world. And that's just one of the hundred or so nutrients.

Now multiply that with all the rest of the nutrients and nutrient groups. It's a behemoth of a multi-nutrient-supply-chain-cycle! Somewhere there's tremendous waste going on. Somewhere else there's tremendous deficiency going on, resulting in, possibly idiopathic, diseases among whole groups of people.

Now (the most important and the most interesting part) turn that "scientific" (observed) system into an "engineered" (planned) one!

Go figure!

Or just stop, or reduce as much as possible, the amount of crap we eat? There is no reason why meat has to be that low cost. Or that we cannot cook ourselves with fresh ingredients, ideally grown and sourced locally.

Nutrition, being a basic of human survival, has been sovled for millenias. We just lost it with pushing industrialized food production, of any kid, way to far over the point needed to get rid of starvation.

Nutrition, being a basic of human survival, has been sovled for millenias.

Humans were mostly subsistence cultures for millennia (which means a period of a thousand years, so you are saying we solved this thousands of years ago). We routinely starved to death and only recently figured out something called "nutrients" exist in food. It isn't that long ago we discovered Vitamin C as the cure for scurvy and it's the reason we have nicknames like "limeys."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limey

That's from the 1850s. Not from two thousand years ago.

I'm currently in the process of reducing animal product intake. I'm going about it methodically to make it into an actual habit rather than a fad where I give up a month or two later.

What really got me to accept that maybe animal products might be detrimental is Dr. Gregor talking about the exogenous endotoxin theory. Dead bacteria in your food, no matter how or how long you cook it, will produce an inflammatory response. Animal fat may assist these endotoxins due to the structure of the gut wall.[0]

When it was put into these terms, it makes it way more apparent. The plan is to reduce consumption of animal products and when I do want to eat meat, get it from a high quality source with a lower endotoxin load.

[0]: https://nutritionfacts.org/video/dead-meat-bacteria-endotoxe...

> Or that we cannot cook ourselves with fresh ingredients, ideally grown and sourced locally.

Anecdotally, over the last four years I went from eating pre-packaged ready meals every day to knowing my local butcher and cooking properly, and I feel a thousand times better than I used to.

People ask what future generations will cringe about from our lives today and prepackaged foods, ready meals, and fast-food will be my pick. Zapping a plastic container in a microwave for 3 minutes cannot be good for the food, the container or human eating it.

> Or just stop, or reduce as much as possible, the amount of crap we eat?

Finding out what crap is, is really really hard if you want to be scientific. It may be possible for some bigger categories.

Reducing is also really, really hard.

Nutrition hasn't been solved for millenia, humans just ate what they could eat, if they had enough.

I agree with you, though, there is no reason we need to eat meat at all. The cost to the planet is way too high. Vegetarian diets are far healthier for us and our Earth.

A simpleton tree-hugger mindset will automagically solve our biggest global challenges for 8 billion people in the 21st century. After all, it "feels" like it will work for millions, so it'll end up working for billions too. And it makes you feel all comfy and angelic inside.

Got it.

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