Comment by nunb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nunb | Hacker News Reader

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I find this topic very interesting. My observation (anecdata-lly, but I would love to see RCTs or perhaps a cleanly designed ANOVA study) is that these symptoms of infertility are particularly (world-wide) prevalent in people who have (usually undiagnosed) metabolic syndrome & low cholecalciferol.

In almost all South-east Asian countries in particular, I have noticed high levels of sucrose consumption so I am curious if Korea is the similar to SEA, or if either of these factors apply to either of you?

Koreans have famously long working hours, but as you are not there, those stress factors should likely not apply to you.

Another point to note is that I have heard adoption is at least as difficult as IVF, emotionally & financially speaking, although there's less physical pain. At least IVF can point you to where the problem lies (the knowledge of that can be disconcerting) providing you perhaps avenues to mitigate/ameliorate those factors, which could improve your overall QoL and also lead to better health-outcomes.

Not sure why you're being downvoted.

I'm Korean born, but spent most of my life in the US. My wife is a much more recent immigrant so she is a product of the Korean education system as well as the Korean corporate world and all that entails.

We have some friends that have adopted, so are aware of the potential issues. Most of them seem perfectly fine, but one had some initial problems with the child adjusting to his new life. These were all toddlers (3-5 years old).

Probably because it comes through as tall claims based on anecdata? But I've lived in Europe, America, Asia, ME & Australia (also visited every SEA country) and the prevalence of male feminization & rich-people obesity (esp central adiposity) in certain regions is quite staggering.

And almost every single person I know personally with difficulty conceiving (various races, various countries, various diagnoses including ectopic/fibroids/undiagnosed) had some obvious-to-me metabolic-syndrome/cholecalciferol/ferritin issues going on, particularly Asian-sub-continentals in northern sun-starved climates who were not supplementing cholecalciferol.

Aside: How does one tell downvotes? I suppose I should look in the FAQ. IIRC only established members can downvote. Despite my account being from HN's 2007 inception, I do not have enough established-karma to have my own downvote button. So I generally don't bother about it, as it's a bit of a circular dead-end karma-spiral which I had thought the HN mechanics were supposed to avoid.

Downvotes: I'm so glad you asked, as I often wonder the same on "you're being downvotes because" comments. Eventually a post goes grey, but prior to that I have not been able to spot an indicator of downvotes happening. And I do have the downvote button.

There is a karma threshold for downvoting, you likely haven't reached it yet. It's in the FAQ.

However, as to HN culture, typically anyone complaining about downvotes will be further downvoted. It usually does not matter what the rest of the comment says, if you complain about downvotes, HN will give you a lot more of them. I like to think that it is a way for the community to remind individuals that these are all imaginary points anyway and to not be attached to one's karma number anymore than one is attached to the number of the nearest speed limit sign.

What do you mean by male feminisation? I get the impression from context that you're referring to biological differences but that could easily be interpreted as "man aren't real men these days and that's why they can't conceive".

Maybe he's talking about the big drop in testosterone in males? Even things like hand grip strength have decreased.

I think they mean feminization in the biological sense: It's the reason fat men usually have visible breasts: the body has a pathway for converting cholesterol into estradiol[0], excessive cholesterol causes some feminization due to that.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estradiol#Biosynthesis

This is exactly what I meant. Particularly visible in richer social strata in SEA, especially in the Philippines and to a lesser extent in Malaysia & Singapore. The amount of sucrose consumed in that first country beggars belief. Everything at breakfast is full of sucrose, even the pork & of course, bacon.

Also, I appreciate your use of the singular "they" :-)

Has anyone ever studied whether long term contraception use has an effect on fertility later on? Seems like that could be a reason too.

It’s been studied, I don’t know any links off the top of my head but they’ve consistently found that fertility returns to normal within a couple of months / menstrual cycles. The hard part is knowing when you are fertile: since there are only a few days each menstrual cycle when the egg is available to be fertilized if you’re just coming off contraception and don’t know your natural cycle length it’s easy to miss those days.

The weirdest part of it all is I see censorship, gaslighting when you bring up contraception possibly having impact on fertility. All discourse around it is stopped. We can't even question it. But we do know that contraception in developed countries were pushed heavily and is it concidence that in countries that don't have access to it have unchanged birth rates?

Even without evidence of contraceptions impact on fertility, when you repeatedly disrupt a natural process such as through abortion, is it any surprise that most development countries have dwindling birth rates? Is it a surprise that a country like South Korea with high abortion rate have the lowest birth rate?

Correlation may not mean causation but the probability is high. What doesn't help is that we censor/cancel people for even mentioning that abortion/contraception have unknown impact on fertility and we are left guessing what else it could be: plastic? air pollution? marijuana? All of these have been without previous generation but what was absent then compared to today was the ready availability of contraceptives/abortion.

Women have more power and independence than anytime in history, they can have a career, they can be sexually active, they can abort their fetus or put in their body all sorts of ways to prevent pregnancy. Is it any surprise that they are now finding it difficult to conceive?

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