Sperm Count in Western Men Has Dropped Over 50 Percent Since 1973, Paper Finds
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
As I said in that thread, this is another statistic that had a rapid and precipitous change starting in the early 1970s. I've stated this elsewhere, but it's like something(s) happened the late 60s/early 70s that totally transformed our world and I have no clue what they were nor can I find anyone who has written about it.
Wealth inequality [1], Real Wage stagnation [2], Obesity Rates [3], Divorce Rates [4]
[1] http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-...
[2] http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
[3] http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2015/11/20/6358359882436...
The late 70s was also the introduction of video games and home computers. A general explosion of electronic devices has permeated almost everywhere.
Unleaded gas was introduced in 1974. What replaced lead as the antiknock agent?
The space race? Here's a 1966 video by NASA on toxic propellants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND2TeNfcmKA
The "replacement" for lead tetraethyl is a combination of better valves, higher octane rating when gasoline is produced, and electronic control of spark plugs. There's some feedback between these too, for example improved burning of fuel and the introduction of catalytic converter lets you increase the octane rating without suffering increased pollution from benzene.
Edit: As for the wealth inequality thing, plenty of people have written about what changed in the 1970s onwards. Deregulation, free trade, workers' unions fading out...
It would be interesting to see if there are any differential analysis that can be done with more remote populations of humans which maybe don't have exposure.
And I know it's controversial and since everyone consumes sugar, everyone gets sensitive and defensive. However, in the 60's/70's nonalcoholic fatty liver disease did not exist in children nor did childhood type 2 diabeties, as to the former the first case in children wasn't diagnosed until 1983 and now 10% of US children have the disease.
And to preempt anyone from attacking my comment, as I said above sugar is an obvious contributing factor.
EDIT: Source https://aeon.co/essays/blaming-individuals-for-obesity-may-b...
>As were laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats, and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas. In fact, the researchers examined records on those eight species and found that average weight for every one had increased. The marmosets gained an average of nine per cent per decade. Lab mice gained about 11 per cent per decade. Chimps, for some reason, are doing especially badly: their average body weight had risen 35 per cent per decade.
>In fact, lab animals’ lives are so precisely watched and measured that the researchers can rule out accidental human influence: records show those creatures gained weight over decades without any significant change in their diet or activities.
Now if you don't think there is a difference in fruit today versus the fruits of yesteryear just look at the fruit itself. The bananas you eat today are not the same type from 100 years ago which died out do to disease; look at a genetically modified seedless watermelon today vs the nearly hollow watermelons depicted in (fruit bowl) art even a couple hundred years ago; or even a high glycemic vegetable such as a carrot did you know the wild carrots weren't even orange but tiny little white roots looking nothing like the elongated thing you buy in the store today?
See the difference for yourself: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3428689/What-...
EDIT: And this article is terrible. E.g. the painting of the watermelon is just a regular watermelon just like those grown today: http://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07... That's just what it looks like when it grows without enough water. Most of those examples are things that happened centuries ago.
http://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/201...
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/1139298/real-story-behind-bisphe...
The most terrible thing is that this might be partly heritable via epigenetics.
It's not really a 'theory' per sey. 2 independent scientists in UK and US ( I don't remember their names, see the documentary mentioned below) in the 70s came to conclude that Sugar is Toxic and causes fatty liver disease and Cancer. The Sugar Industry in US hired a PR firm comprised of a couple of well known Scientists in the US, and made these scientists who found out that Sugar is Toxic and causes diseases, looks like fools in the media. Then they (Sugar Industry) went 1 step further. The CEO of the Sugar Industry Association (or whatever that entity is called) got onto the FDA committee that was doing research into the toxicity of Sugar at that time, since it was all over the media that Sugar is deemed toxic and causes all kinds of diseases. And surprise, surprise, the committee declared that Sugar is 'GRAS approved by FDA'. GRAS = Generally Recommended as Safe, a label that makes the average consumer feel safe that Sugar is not bad. They (Sugar Industry) also simultaneously transferred the blamed for weight gain on excess consumption of fat * .
This is documented at length in the "Sugar Coated" documentary (available on Netflix) - http://sugarcoateddoc.com/
* Source: NPR: "50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat" http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/...
It's laughable it's even debated or requires modern study. Humans have been force feeding animals grains since at least ancient Egypt for the purpose of fattening animals, but specifically their liver. After a few thousand years of perfecting the practice the most famous dish is goose liver or foie gras, literally French for fat liver, and after thousands of years of best practice what is used to fatten the goose liver...corn, the same thing we concentrate to sweeten softdrinks (and about everything else).
Still I'm happy to say it's just a contributing factor for obesity, but certainly there is also correlation between obesity and sedentary life style, and coming full circle to the article there is correlation between sedentary lifestyle and lack of testosterone production (in part created/released to repair muscle As a result of physical activity). But hey, even big tobacco is marketing there product as healthy in many parts of the world, as it used to be promoted in the US, it's just where we are with sugar, "it's a healthy and inexpensive source of energy."
I hope one day we can stop this ongoing crisis after crisis caused by special interests in its tracks.
HFCS is roughly the same ratio, though not bonded. The bond breakdown is pretty much instantaneous within the GI tract from my understanding.
This suggests little actual difference between sucrose and HFCS.... keep reading ...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sucrose
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup
... though Robert Lustig who studies this now seems to be claiming that there are different metabolic effects for sucrose and HFCS:
Lustig also confirms what many consumers have intuitively figured out — that “sucrose (sugar) and HFCS have different metabolic effects,” including those that come from the much higher fructose content of HFCS which can range from 55 to 90 percent, and in the case of crystalline fructose to practically 100 percent. (Sucrose, or natural sugar, by contrast is a 50/50 combination of bound glucose and fructose).
http://foodidentitytheft.com/obesity-expert-dr-robert-lustig...
HFCS is 42% fructose, 53% glucose and 5% other sugars/polysaccharides.
Is it the fructose?
I'll suggest a more practical/simple explanation between the different glucose and fructose and the diseases I mention.
Fructose: primarily broken down in the liver.
Glucose: When blood glucose rises, the pancreas releases insulin.
Again I am talking about fatty liver disease and type 2 diabetes (insulin resistance), based on numbers alone it would seem children are more susceptible to developing fatty liver rather than insulin resistance, but that seems to be a very bizarre basis to suggest one is healthy. Moreover, even if a body doesn't develop insulin resistance, insulin itself is enlarging cells throughout the body, including fat cells, priming the body for obesity, which carries its own health issues. And again I only say sugar is a contributing factor to obesity, but no doubt insulin is a hell of a primer for obesity.
Again the first case of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease in a child was 1983, today 10% have it.
Compare the sugar content of the Hi-C, fruit loops and ice cream of the 70's and compare it with the products of today. And that's not to say if you were born 10 years later you would have non alcoholic fatty liver disease or childhood type 2 diabetes, but the point is those didn't exist at all in the 70's. And it's not exactly controversial, talk to any pediatrician, 100% of all childhood cases of type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease could have been avoided through diet.
Sure, but what I'm saying is that if sugar were the sole cause, the first case should have shown up long before 1983. I was eating tons of sugar through the seventies, and I doubt very much that I was anywhere close to alone in that.
I do not doubt that sugar (fructose in particular) is bad for you. But it seems to me that it can't be just sugar consumption that accounts for today's higher disease rates. There has to be something else going on that we haven't figured out yet.
So someone such as yourself who ate a ton of sugar in the 70's, you primed your body for obesity, whether or not you were ever obese or simply overweight. What does that mean? Well when you consume glucose and it enters the blood your body releases insulin, insulin enlarges all the cells in the body but especially fat cells, and that significantly alters how your body stores and burns fat. All things being equal if you don't have a caloric surplus your body won't store the excess fat. A caloric surplus that leads to fat storage is about 30 calories per day or about 2 peanut m&ms, so it's not much. That said not knowing anything more about your childhood diet, I do know if your sugar consumption was the same but you were a child today on average you would be consuming 500-600 more calories today than in the 70's. Therefore, you would be more likely to be overweight or even obese today than in the 70's. You don't need to be obese to have fatty liver or type 2 diabetes, but statistically you would be more likely to have those diseases if you were obese. I am not suggesting sugar is the sole factor of obesity or these disease, rather sugar removal would prevent 100% of these diseases in children, otherwise I can't argue against your anecdotal evidence of eating a ton of sugar but only highlight the reality kids today are consuming significantly more sugar on average and significantly more calories on average.
See: http://www.cleveland.com/fighting-fat/index.ssf/2010/04/amer...
And I understand it does not sound reasonable, because humans had been consuming sugar, even in large quantities before 1983, so your conclusion on its face seems reasonable.
However, non alcoholic fatty liver disease isn't anything new in humans it's just new in children. It used to take until adulthood to develop the disease and now it's being developed as young as 1-2 years old. From the Liver Foundation, to the Cleveland clinic, to any pediatrician, the conclusion is all the same...it's sugar.
And for thousands of years humans have been purposefully over feeding animals for the sole purpose of causing fat livers. From the ancient Egyptians to modern foie gras, humans forcefeed these animals grains (sugars). There have been no mystery variables for thousands of years, feeding animals grains (sugars) leads to fatty livers.
As to humans it's the same thing, over consume sugar and you'll eventually develop fatty liver, it just didn't happen until adulthood until consumption of sugar exploded.
Still you are right, let's assume it's not sugar but some recently introduced variable, it is worth finding it out, but it's honestly not worth debating at the expense of kids health when we know whether or not there is some mystery variable, all that needs to be modified is sugar consumption and the disease would be eradicated. But IMO yes, kids used to eat less than some critical threshold of sugar, to claim otherwise is telling the Liver Foundation, Cleveland Clinic and American Diabetes Association they are wrong, it's even telling the sugar industry their accounting of sugar consumption is wrong. Humans have always gotten fatty liver from sugar, only the rate has increased and the age has decreased consistent with the increased sugar consumption. It really is on par with tobacco saying lung cancer or OCPD isn't caused by smoking but some other variable, and so we should find that variable rather than change our smoking habits.
No, it isn't, because the negative health impacts of smoking have always been there. The negative health impacts of sugar have only appeared (or at least dramatically worsened) recently.
> From the Liver Foundation, to the Cleveland clinic, to any pediatrician, the conclusion is all the same
I'm not a big fan of arguments from authority because authorities often get it wrong. When I was growing up the unequivocal message from the authorities was: fat is bad for you, eat less fat (no more than 30% of calories from fat was the mantra). And people did, replacing the missing fat with carbs. Look how well that worked out.
I don't think that number is correct. It appears to be more like 0.46 kids per 1,000, which is still high.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/05/03/diabet...
But whether or not it's nonalcoholic fatty liver disease or type 2 diabetes in children, they simple truth is they could have been avoided in 100% of cases through diet. And as we know many type 2 diabetes patients would be able to get off insulin and diabetes medication through diet/lifestyle changes.
http://www.liverfoundation.org/chapters/rockymountain/doctor...
I agree that kids should not be given refined sugar. I had almost no sugar until I was a teenager. I had my first soda at about age 16 or 17. I consumed sugar as an adult, but eliminated it again about two years ago with great results. Eating refined sugar is irrational behavior -- it has no health benefits and is more like a recreational drug than food.
As an example of how some viewed these challenges, the Trilateral Commission's 'Crisis of Democracy' paper[5] - though heavily criticised from both sides of politics[6] - offers some interesting insight into the perspectives held by a number of highly influential people of the period.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation#Explaining_the_197...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_shock
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission
[5] http://trilateral.org/download/doc/crisis_of_democracy.pdf
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trilateral_Commission#Criticis...
The argument is quite clear when it comes to the divorce rate; Being alone, if financially tenable, is better than being in a bad relationship, so if you make being alone financially tenable for another half of the population, divorce rates will go up, and in that case, it becomes quite difficult to argue that increased divorce rates are bad. In fact, one could argue the opposite, that increased divorce rates indicate people being able to leave unpleasant relationships.
The argument is a lot less clear for wages. The strongest argument, I think, is that if you are measuring average per worker pay, women on average make less than men, and thus you will get a lower rate for 'average worker' than for 'average male worker' - even today, those numbers are stark, and before the 1970s, your 'average worker' demographics looked a lot more like what you'd see in today's "average male worker" statistics; I think you'll find that 'average male pay' has climbed rather a lot more than 'average pay'
The other argument, I think, is a lot weaker; if you double the number of workers, some would argue, you will naturally depress wages. (Of course, others would argue that the secondary effects of having more workers in an economy would make the economy more wealthy and drive wages up overall.)
I've also heard that is attributable to woman having to bear the brunt of childbirth.
I'm just saying that whatever the reason for the disparity in pay, adding a group of workers who make less to the average is going to push down that average.
For long term things, maybe. Do you have any good reads on that relationship?
If I was going to add more evidence for that argument, I would point out that women were added to the workforce at a rate that is greater than what population growth usually is, but certainly, there is a good case to be made that adding more workers doesn't always push down wages.
A twin-engine plane with two fault-prone engines, where the failure of one can result in the failure of the other, and without the ability to fly on a single (or no) engines, is not safer than a single-engine plane.
Marriage in an environment of high employment risks, and where the marriage itself can contribute to personal risks (abuse, legal, financial, or others) may well not be an attractive, or stable, institution.
It is becoming increasingly clear that our gut microbiome has a wide-ranging affect on many aspects of our health; and that the standard western diet is not good for a healthy gut microbiome and that taking antibiotics can have a detrimental affect on the gut microbiome as well.
Our gut bacteria are not only responsible for digesting much of the foods we eat. They regulate our immune systems. They also create chemicals that pass into our blood steam, and even pass the blood brain barrier, affecting our behavior.
There has been a severe decline in the health of our gut microbiome in recent generations. The extent this has had an impact on our lives is yet to be determined ––
I suspect the rise of food allergy problems is at least one of the issues. There is also the possibility that this has been a major factor in the rise of autism (which is commonly accompanied by IBD), as well as the significant increase in IBD diseases.
It certainly seems possible to me that sperm count could be affected by our body's digestion system, and the health of the gut microbiome that is so central to it.
- obesity: fecal microbiota transplants, when used to save patients from antibiotic-resistant clostridium difficile, resulted in unintended weight gain (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4438885/)
- allergies: using probiotics (or perhaps better, synbiotics) in conjunction with immunotherapy improves outcomes (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5209480/, http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanchi/PIIS2352-4642(...)
- emotions: brain-gut interactions affect emotional responses (http://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Abstract/publi...)
We aren't at the point where we can say "yes, this caused all of the changes in the 70s" but it seems to be a fruitful area of study.
A much more sedentary lifestyle for people at work.
There is plenty of surface information which will blow your mind, look into recent revelations(and historic) of M0n and the EPA colluding.
I'd suggest using a less popular search engine, due to the fact that unprecedented amounts of money are spent on disrupting discussion; and no company could admit to knowingly committed such crimes, not at the scale they've operated at. So it stands to reason that if they intend to continue to exist, somehow dominating google would the most cost-effective vector available to fragment and discredit criticisms.
If you really can't fathom the extent of what I suggest after doing some research, here is a quick 'red pill': Make a few well informed posts, blogs, reddit comments, Medium column, whatever, but obscure the spelling just as I did, and publish. Then do the same without obscured spelling. The # of responses you get on the latter, will blow your mind. I'd go as far as to claim substantial related credentials, and present your comment/article as a brief sneak-preview.
[1] Swap o for 0 & remove the hyphen. Subsequently abbreviated by 'M0n' [2] Swap nuffin out for proper spelling.
Dr. Swan, who conducted a 2008 study about phthalate exposure, said that scientists have had the ability to measure exposure to plasticizers only since about 2000, via urine. That has led to a 20-year lag in the process since researchers cannot enroll men to produce sperm until they are in their 20s.
That evidence is the “missing piece of the puzzle,” she said."
Here in the Netherlands several partie are trying ot get hormone disturbing substances on the political agenda but even BPA is apparently not even illegal here. There was even a show where they measured BPA in the urine of politicians and still, very little attention is given to such substances. [0]
[https://radar.avrotros.nl/uitzendingen/gemist/14-11-2016/hor...]
People have significant levels of Phthalates in their blood: http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/phthal...
People who have higher levels of Phthalates in their blood tend to have lower testosterone: http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/830137
There are several pathways how Phthalates might cause this to happen in the human body, including: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26385792
Testosterone levels in Men have been dropping about 1% per year for at least the past 20 years, about the same rate as sperm counts: https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/hormone-therapy/news/pr...
Low Testosterone causes low sperm count: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6772497
2) it is very hard to limit exposure, they're too widespread. The main effects happen in childhood and adolescence. They may last for life.
3) not clear and not studied, but likely yes. This might not help at all like with many endocrine toxins that act on development.
One particularly bad source of exposure is certain enteric coated medicines and supplements. I would strongly advise anyone to not take anything that is enteric coated unless you know what the coating is made of. Some pills can spike Phthalate levels by 50x in a single dose.
Almost all foods that contain animal fat will contain Phthalates, and this is a big source of exposure. Milk, meat, cheese, etc, all contain them, as they are fat soluble. The good news is that your body seems to clear these chemicals fairly quickly, but the problem is that you're constantly exposed to them.
Ultimately, these are chemicals that we've produced over a billion tons of. It's just not possible to avoid them entirely. If you have a baby on the way though, make sure that the new mom does everything she can to minimize exposure, as what happens during that time really can never be taken back.
It's also weird to refer to the Asian countries north-west of Australia as "Far East"; though that usage is also fading.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world#/media/File:The_...
Here's another map of Western countries: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/The_West...
The definition you're alluding to seems to be widespread within the US, but is by no means the most widespread on a global level.
I think this map is closer to what most people consider western: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Westernc...
It'll be interesting to see more research in the field, probably spurred on by this study. Questions that need to be answered include, why only Western countries? Does that imply a correlation between technological development and fertility? What are the trends in Korea and Japan looking like considering they modernised a while before many of their neighbours? Halving counts sounds like a lot, but it isn't really and teasing out the ultimate causes is probably going to be incredibly difficult.
Another possibility is that baseline was actually higher than normal, because maybe it fluctuates depending on context (e.g. under certain stressors like war time).
Or maybe we are just seeing the pr0n effect.
> In the recently released research, no significant decline in sperm quality was seen in men from non-Western countries, but this segment made up only about a quarter of the results.
There is something in developed countries that the male do not experience during his lifetime. It can be lack of fear, adrenalin, less activity, or something else. I think statistics hold up with the historic wars as well. As WW2 ends and people starts living without any fear of life, male sperm quality drops.
I think it is about what male experiences and which hormons are triggered in his lifetime.
That said, infertility on the man or woman doesn't matter much in a "we want to make babies scenario." The end result is the same: a world like that in The Children of Men.
Soda though, it's what keeps me awake/engaged at work, coke it's nasty as hell but... There is also unsweetened tea, I don't know if it's too strong, seems to have the opposite effect of feeling more alert. Often I go to work without sleep but that's my own problem, that's why I look forward to being self employed haha.
I am not sure if this data was collected in the study. Does anyone know about any such study?
1. Jet fuel
2. Sugar
3. Plastics
4. Space Rockets
5. The gays
Water contamination is my favorite, animals share water with us and it is treated with obsolete technologies (and people fantasize about springs and pure aquiferes when it is mostly about recycling used water or polluted water from rivers and swamps)
The data doesn't show a significant decrease outside the West.
Anecdotally, I have felt (and sounded) a whole better ever since I stopped consuming porn. There is also a very real drive and stubbornness that I feel in myself, markedly higher than before.
I would chalk (without evidence but as a hypothesis) decreased levels of T to: - not working out (and having a desk job), - increased consumption of porn, - harmful substances in mass produced food that we don't understand fully.
Packaged food is literally toxic at this point.
Is that actually a thing? I didn't find any sources definitively showing it was enough to warrant a concern.
they pee and flush
this water gets processed and re injected back into the pipes
if you make the mistake to drink the tap water where they re purpose it from the canalisations, you just drink birth control water.
From what I was reading, this seems to be an anti-BC talking point, but I couldn't find any evidence to suggest that any estrogens in tap water is caused by BC.
http://ussec.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/SOY13_7_Soy-and-...
"In a Harvard study published last year in the journal Human Reproduction, Jorge E. Chavarro, M.D., Sc.D., and his colleagues found a strong association between men’s consumption of soy foods and decreased sperm counts."
The study in question seems to be this:
https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898/S...
"The intake of 15 soy-based foods in the previous 3 months was assessed for 99 male partners of subfertile couples who presented for semen analyses to the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center. ... There was an inverse association between soy food intake and sperm concentration that remained significant after accounting for age, abstinence time, body mass index, caffeine and alcohol intake and smoking. In the multivariate-adjusted analyses, men in the highest category of soy food intake had 41 million sperm/ml less than men who did not consume soy foods." (For reference, various sources say anywhere from 20 to 150 million sperm/ml is average.)
Contrariwise, the Wiki article on soy points to this meta-study (from four years before the above):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106
"Clinical evidence also indicates that isoflavones have no effect on sperm or semen parameters, although only three intervention studies were identified and none were longer than 3 months in duration."
Here's another from a few months after the meta-study:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19819436
That last one seems to be a randomized controlled study, where they gave a bunch of college men either milk protein or one of two variants of soy protein.
I don't know if there's anything in soy that isn't in the "soy protein isolates" from the last study. If there isn't, then the last study seems like strong evidence. The first one could conceivably come down to some sort of selection bias.
I've also noticed that a lot of male pop stars have really high voices.
I've long suspected these observations are more than cultural. Recent studies seem to back this intuition.
This seems to be a really weird talking point of the right wing (although I'm not saying that it's only the right, or that hyperdunc is right wing), that people have stopped caring about hyper-masculinity, and it must be caused by hormones and not just a change in cultural values.
I really don't believe you can explain cultural phenomenon through medical science.
Male pop stars had really high voices long before 20 years ago - the BeeGees, the Beach Boys, Freddy Mercury are three off the top of my head. I'm sure I could come up with some more if I thought about it for more than 5 seconds.
Such a statement claiming western men as becoming more effeminate is obvious.
I think this is a far more sensible and defensible position and a simpler explanation than something in water, unless that was a facetious comment.
There's been a noticeable increase in effeminate men in NYC over the last 6 years. Maybe it's due to the increased acceptance of LGBT, maybe it's something else...
Basically no one wants to just say "No one knows, let's keep researching." Everyone has to chime in. That'd be one thing if it was relegated to HN or forums, but it's true in the "scientific" community [1] and the media as well; perhaps moreso.
[1] Of which I am sadly a part of, so don't think I am an anti-science person, just anti-parts of this ridiculous industry.