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Comment by jonplackett | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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?

Not completely obviously!

Micro plastics was hard since you kinda have to choose between bottled water or tap water! We got a water filter for this one.

Heat meant loose underpants and no warm baths ever.

Teflon- easy. Replace with a carbon steel pan. Improve your chef skills AND sperm!

Western diet is basically high sugar and refined carbs. Just didn’t eat anything with refined sugar on the label in any amount whatsoever (I lost weight fast)

also switched to organic meat and dairy to minimise antibiotics. Can’t say if that made any difference but at least I was being nicer to animals

> We got a water filter for this one.

Is that enough?

I keep reading about how microplastics can be too small for a carbon filter and that you would need a reverse osmosis device, to completely remove plastics.

I can't say am really sold on using a device with a plastic membrane to completely remove plastics.

All the online materials on the topic are for the majority just product placements, it feels very disorienting to be able to make a data driven decision. Do you have any insight.

> Is that enough?

It must have been enough since his sperm count increased 4x, no?

Either the filter worked or microplastics don't effect sperm count much.

I’ve got an anti-tiger rock to sell you…

“Something changed, therefore this must be the reason” is a fallacy if there isn’t additional supporting evidence.

To be fair, this is a personal story and not a scientific study.

We are talking about an anecdote here, not giving general advice based on scientific literature.

That said. If I lived in a village that was attacked by tigers regularly for 6 months, and I installed a tiger filter which stopped the attacks, I would gladly pay 30 bucks for that ($30 is what a faucet water filter costs).

Disclaimer: I don't own a water filter or a tiger filter.

Would love to hear more about the mind of brands/foods you ate with no sugar. I’ve attempted this before and it’s extremely hard to find products with 0 sugar! Guessing you avoided the local Tesco?

Not OP but I do this by avoiding processed foods, making everything "from scratch".

Examples:

- Pizza sauce from crushed tomatoes, tomato puré and spices.

- Marinade for marinating meat from spices and olive oil and either balsamic vinegar or lime.

- Pick my own blueberries that I freeze and put in plain yoghurt.

Word of caution: most food cans are lined with BPA. Try to avoid canned food products and make the puree yourself if possible.

Most food either comes canned or in plastic containers. Even the "fresh" foods will likely have pesticide residue so I guess grow our own garden? Of course that's probably out of the question in urban environments due to many toxic chemicals in the soil so ugh, we're truly excrementing where we sleep aren't we?

Thanks for the advice! I buy the puré in glass jars.

This is the kind of thing I was getting at about everything about modern life being bad. It's like someone declared war on sperm a few decades ago and is just slowly modifying everything they can think of to kill them all off.

Rice, meat, potatoes, eggs.

And seeds. Lot's of seeds! Gotta eat those plant-sperm if you want to make good sperm yourself!

Yeah it's crazy how so much stuff in a supermarket is then totally off limits to you.

I just ate a lot of vegetables and meat. Old school diet!

Plus like the comment below, just making things from scratch. Often they taste just as good - the sugar was just in there because they used cheap / unripe ingredients that don't taste of anything.

> Micro plastics was hard since you kinda have to choose between bottled water or tap water!

Micro plastics have been found in the muscle tissue of ocean fish[1].

Micro plastics are everywhere, not just in water bottles.

[1]https://adfpi.org/2020/04/15/microplastic-particles-identifi...

> I also took some supplements

Which ones? Our specialist recommended CoQ10

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