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.

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

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.

And the only oil we’ve introduced into the diet is trans fat which the body mistakes for good fat and just starts building stuff with it, and then it all breaks down and you get heart disease.

You couldn’t make it up

Aye... This is probably the first medically/scientifically prescribed diet for society at large and it has been a disaster.

We're not good at mea culpas and the baggage hangs around.

Yes one can quibble that cooking is a chemical reaction, but it’s one that is both simple and that we’re long since evolved to tolerate.

I stick to mechanically produced vegetable oils and animal fats. It’s not only healthier but it tastes better too.

However, a healthy diet depends a great deal on your race. A traditional Inuit diet is observably healthy for Inuit persons, but probably best avoided by people like me. However there are no humans that are evolved to eat seed oils.

I am cautious about these sorts of issues and typically buy the least processed oils (and foods in general) that I can find, however it is my understanding that humans around the world have been producing and eating (mechanically expressed) sesame seed oil for thousands of years. I can't say whether that has any impact on whether people are "evolved to eat it", but it's certainly not something new: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02859136

The use of solvents to extract oils isn't a chemical reaction. It's not really different from using CO2 to extract caffeine from coffee, using water to extract tea from tea leaves, or using alcohol to extract vanilla flavor from vanilla beans. The common solvent for oil extraction is hexane, which is removed by boiling it off with a vacuum and/or heat.

The solvent-extracted oil will have unmodified molecules. The proportions of the various molecules may differ because the ease with which they are extracted will depend on the processing conditions. You get different proportions of molecules in the mix if you change the temperature, pressure, time, or solvent. For some use cases you might prefer one mix or another. You could get a different viscosity, melting point, or smoke point.

Now I see why they’re advertising the method of extraction...

Can you give examples of what you use?

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.

The main goals of GMOs are to increase yield and protect against disease / pests, which is practically the same goal we've had for thousands of years of crop domestication. Take for instance wild pre-domesticated maize vs present day non-GMO maize[1] and you'll see what "natural" crop selection does. Not only do we select for strains that are healthier and with more defenses, we also select strains that give us more bang for buck. Over the years, we've also selected for: texture, size, adaptability to different climates and soil compositions, lower concentration of toxic compounds, etc. Cassava and potatoes, for instance, can be deadly in their "natural" variety, and needed some "help" to get to the varieties we eat today. GMOs are simply the result of applying modern science in combination with what we've learnt from different cultures over thousands of years, to speed this process and hopefully prevent famine and starvation.

I'm not saying all GMOs are good for you, but I just wanted to counter this idea that we don't know what effects GMOs have on us -- we've been eating GMOs for millenia. Edit: I should also strain that I fully support questioning GMOs and holding them to a high standard as a society, especially when the modifications are made for reasons which are to a high degree simply for profit. One example of that would be crops that are engineered to be infertile / yield no seeds.

PS: I'm more concerned about chemical pesticides, especially in the scale at which they're used. Microplastics, heavy metals, soil depletion, etc. Many modern agricultural practices are not good for the environment, objectively speaking. But I wouldn't just blindly lump GMO in the same group just because it's also modern.

1. https://www.newswise.com/articles/tiny-genetic-tweak-unlocke...

That's a little like saying "There's zero difference between traditional animal husbandry and cloning."

Sorry, I think there is a meaningful distinction between traditional human intervention in plant varieties and the more recent intervention called GMO. Most of the world seems to agree that there is a distinction, enough so that we invented new language for what it is we are doing.

Edit in response to your edit:

But I wouldn't just blindly lump GMO in the same group just because it's also modern.

That's an ugly thing to say and it's not far from a personal attack. There's no blindness on my part. I'm not lumping anything in just because it's modern.

I have a genetic disorder and pay enormous attention to the details of my diet because of it. I react poorly to soy products. Research and experience suggest that my firsthand negative experiences with soy may be related to the fact that most soy in the US is GMO.

My views here have nothing at all to do with unfounded assumptions, ridiculous neurotic views of "modern" things or anything of the sort.

GMO is relatively new. We know a thimbleful of information about nutrition and health generally. We know even less than that about what more recent inventions do to the human body because there is simply less of a track record and time span in which to determine meaningful data and conclusions.

Saying "We don't know what this new thing does to our health" in no way romanticizes anything. It doesn't even implicitly suggest we know a heckuva a whole lot about the old thing. But the old thing is probably not going to randomly open up some metaphorical worm hole to some bizarre outcome and maybe the new thing will and we just haven't had enough of a track record to notice yet.

Thalidomide was briefly prescribed to pregnant women for nausea until they began having babies missing limbs because of it.

I'm not fear mongering. I live with a genetic disorder. I've paid lots of attention to food chemistry over the past nearly two decades since getting a proper diagnosis.

I'm done with this discussion. This is the second comment accusing me of spreading fear. It's a ridiculous accusation and long experience tells me it will make zero difference how I reply. It only gets uglier from here.

One is a semi-random process where an unknown (but large!) number of genes are modified in the hopes of getting a few desired good traits to express themselves.

The other is a targeted change to the smallest number of genes to get a single desired good trait to be expressed.

Imagine you are going in for surgery to remove a lump, and the doctor tells you there are two options, he can cut out 20 lumps of flesh, and good chance he'll get the one you want removed, or he can remove just the lump that is causing a problem.

Which of the two options would you choose?

GMO is the later. Traditional breeding is the former.

If people want to criticize WHAT modification was done via GMO, great! Lots of good debate there, maybe inserting some particular gene is a bad idea. But let's have that discussion, not "all GMO is bad!"

Because "all GMO is bad" is nonsensical. GMO isn't some process that turns food into poison. It just changes it, in a more controlled way than breeding changes it.

That's an extremely gross misinterpretation of my point which boils down to "The effects may be different on different populations due to variables you are overlooking, such as (for example) they could be eating fundamentally different plants that happen to go by the same name."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26235356

The degree to which people actively twist my comments to railroad me with their bizarre garbage makes it enormously difficult to participate here in good faith at all. I should probably go get some other hobby and stop wasting my time on a bunch of people hellbent on trying to make me look like a nutter no matter how mild and reasonable a point I am trying to make.

In practice the difference is generally not that significant, but there is some increase in risks.

Personally, I would prefer a different label for new GMO foods. Presumably, the odds of finding an undiscovered issue drops over time. So using a different label for the first 20 years is reasonably appropriate. Plenty of people are going to take slightly higher risks, so they can benefit from and thus test new cultivars.

Except for random mutations, which are, well, random changes to DNA.

There is a reason the nightshade family[1] is so varied.

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

So it’s not just a question of random chance adding something harmful at this point, but also malicious actors. Someone could easily decide to try and reduce the human population by reducing fertility or whatnot and new GMO crops aren’t tested for such things.

Of course /nothing/ meets the goal posts of "arbitrary" including state of the art genetic modification.

As I said it’s probably not that meaningful of a difference, but malicious actors have serious tools to work with here not just random changes.

> That's a little like saying "There's zero difference between traditional animal husbandry and cloning."

This is a very interesting topic, actually! I can't comment on animal husbandry (much less dolly style cloning), but cutting (cloning) is a very common way to propagate crops, and has been done for longer than we care to know. It's also the natural way in which some plants and fungi propagate. There are many benefits to cloning, but there are also downsides: when disease affects one, it affects all your clones. You can protect against that by seed propagation, crossing, etc, but then you have a less predictable and consistent crop, which in the modern market is sometimes frowned upon.

I know most farmers will pick consistency over variety any time of the day because they have to make a living, and most people won't buy greenish tomatoes, yellow or green oranges, white artichokes, etc. People also expect their fruits and veggies to taste as expected, so it's difficult to sell mixed variants.

Note: I should also say I'm from a family of farmers so I'm probably biased towards defending our practices -- in our case we grow citruses, stone fruits, artichokes, aubergines, melons, etc. (not big-agro scale, think more cooperatives in rural Spain), and I do have my personal opinions on traditional techniques vs. modern vs. big-ag, use of pesticides, overstressing the soils, etc. I'm also from an area that has suffered bad droughts and deforestation over generations so I'm also not one to romanticize about traditional farming methods and some traditional attitudes. Take whatever I say with a pinch or more of salt!

My initial comment was just to make the point "Maybe you can't use Asians and their experiences as a rebuttal for some American study because maybe it's an apples to oranges comparison."

I could have said that without mentioning GMO. It's not necessarily hugely pertinent to the point.

But everyone is latching on to that detail and this has gotten enormously whackadoodle.

I stand by my original point. I even stand by everything else I've said here.

But other people reacting like I'm some strident anti GMO nutter for mildly observing that "GMO plants may be fundamentally different from non GMO plants" is not something I have any desire to engage with further.

I.e. you're going to find a lot more Roundup in GMO end products than non-GMO.

I'm sorry those risks fall under the rubric of GMO and not "corporatism" and "theft". Blame the GMO rhetoric on big agriculture.

A helpful contrasting example for the apologists:

Wheat with better nutrition and yields: good.

Wheat which requires matching pesticides, herbicides; where seeds are sterile; where seedstocks cannot be shared, reused, resold; where wheat incorporates genetic code from other plants: bad.

I may be out of the loop here, but why do you say that? Are Asians particularly more GMO-averse than Americans?

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.

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!

The first time I really noticed this was ~15 years ago I was on a spinach salad kick that started when I purchased an organic pre-packaged salad kit (as In I was almost exclusively eating just spinach salad for a couple weeks because I really liked it and my kitchen was being remodeled). Anyway, those kits were quite expensive, so I switched to a cheaper non organic spinach and my own dressing. I started to have some pretty severe intestinal distress over a couple days, and swapped the spinach for a 3rd organic brand and the problem went away. But because the no organic brand was cheaper I bought a couple other bags assuming it was probably just a bad batch and I had gotten hit by a bacterial infection/whatever and it returned.

So I've had similar issues with coffee (gotten ichy all over when I changed brands and couldn't figure it out for a couple months), and a few other products. My Dr describes me as "allergy prone" but its not as simple as I'm allergic to spinach, or coffee. I seem to have a low grade allergy to something that is sometimes present across multiple food sources. I suspect without any proof at this point its a pesticide or herbicide, since I seem to have far fewer reactions if I'm tending to stick with organic leafy vegetables, and away from crops which have traditionally used more industrial farming processes.

If you look at the pesticide/herbicide studies what is abundantly clear in the US, that just like e-coli its hard to predict/track which foods are affected at any given point . The food growing and distribution system is to complex. So while a farmer may be following all the rules, he may be downwind (or whatever) of another farmer growing and spraying a different crop. Then his crop gets mixed into a larger batch and it goes complexly undetected because in low doses many of these products are considered non-harmful.

There may be very different stats from one country to another on how much GMO soy gets used.

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.

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.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc

I personally find this entitlement culture annoying. If one really wants more information and leads one can ask for that without a lecture about doublespeak

Sometimes it will be useful to provide appeals to authority as a shortcut to skeptical verification of internet facts, but it seems wrong to attack the fundamental basis of clear communication - asserting a clear and concrete statement that enables you to independently check if it's true or who thinks the same.

We can't go around the internet citation-needing every statement; you should find the equilibrium of faith-disbelief-verification that works for you, that's the only thing that scales.

Here's a small study that demonstrates that losing weight can increase fertility:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3177768/

Additionally, this mechanism is why drugs like clomifene and anastrazole work for male infertility.

"This study found obesity to be associated with poor semen quality and altered reproductive hormonal profile. Weight loss may potentially lead to improvement in semen quality. Whether the improvement is a result of the reduction in body weight per se or improved lifestyles remains unknown."

I said to most of the audience, this doesn't mean anything, and to those that this means something, they probably already know this anyways.

So, for the general public (non-biologists) you have to either explain it differently (at least don't use acronyms). or at least cite a reputable website so that we, normies, know you are not trolling!

It is unreasonable and not the goal of this forum use a level of discourse here so that all comments can be understood by general public. This a bunch of nerds chatting, not US Weekly.

  * What is aromatase and what is the relationship between an overexpressed aromatase and excess body fat
  * What is estradiol and what is the possible reasons for converting testosterone to estradiol
  * What is the negative feedback loop in the hypothalamus and what is the interactions between estradiol and the hypothalamus' negative feedback loop
  * What is GnRH and what causes the lowering of my GnRH
  * What is LH/FSH and why is it obvious that low GnRH causes a lower LH/FSH
  * How are these related to fertility

IMPORTANT: To be honest I am willing to read (obviously more than 16 minutes) to learn about this stuff, as you can see in my comment, I'm asking for something to read! a link to a place that explains these. Even if it takes more than 16 minutes. Of course, I'm sure somewhere on the internet these information exist. But just writing a claim without any citation, is not helpful.

What makes that work is what the person you're replying to asked for: sources. I don't get medical advice from random strangers on the street, I get it from people who have credentials or organizations which hire those people. When I get a contractor, I'm looking at their licenses to assume that they at least know how to install a dishwasher to code.

Does this comment prove to you that there is a biological explanation? Or does it say some technical terms that might be disputed? Maybe only a small portion of biologists think this way and the majority disagree!

I understand the English part! What I'm saying is this comment without a source doesn't prove a "very clear mechanism".

Searching for this stuff is difficult due to the lack of knowledge (on my side) and all the blog spam out there.

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

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.

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

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-...

This is going to be the dominant driver for female infertility. My wife and I waited until she was 32 and I was 40 and we struggled for two years. Eventually we talked to a doctor and both got tested. I was in the 98th percentile for sperm health, but unfortunately her egg production was closer to a woman 10 years older. We did IVF and got very lucky on the first try, with one viable embryo, who is now a curious and amazing four-year-old.

Many people were grandparents by that age 150 years ago.

I too have many friends who waited until their 30s to have children. Most ended up in IVF (or adopting.)

Fertility (not precisely the right term, but one commonly used) charts — based on age — are very steep. After the peak in the early to mid 20s, it plummets very quickly. For women, anyway.

The low-sperm count issue, on the other hand, is very curious... not entirely sure if they have a grip on the true cause.

We've been trying to get pregnant now for 3 years. We tried IUIs (very different from IVF, think "turkey baster" a few times, to no success.

Ironically, it wasn't until we stopped trying to get pregnant that we got pregnant. We did a one-week intensive marriage counseling program (strongly recommended, not cheap, worth every penny of the $6k cost) and it possibly healed so much in our marriage we got pregnant _the week after the counseling_.

After trying, with great adherence to all the best practices, for the prior 3+ years.

I blame in part the extremely high housing costs in US metro areas. We are both in tech, but also want to live in a nice place (Golden, CO). Housing affordability is a joke, I have no doubt that the price of housing affected our child-rearing plans.

We bought a house in Golden (barely. Inflation and all, it's a stupid rigged system oppressive to everyone.)

Now I want to fix the housing cost problem here in Golden, in Lakewood, and ultimately in Denver.

It'll take some years, but if all goes according to plan, I'm going to die, peacefully, in my sleep, in about 80 years, within 150 feet of where I'm sitting right now.

I've got time to work on these affordability problems.

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!)

I, too, have tried hard to eliminate all sugar. We're not perfect, but we're way past the 80/20 principle of diet improvement.

I only eat twice a day (sometimes once) and the primary meal is a mushroom/spinach/egg omelet, usually with avocado or sardines, some tumeric/curcumin powder from Costco sprinkled on top, EVOO/Coconut oil, and usually some cheese.

Zero sugar, technically even zero carb.

Dinner varies a bit more, biased towards avoiding things that can be metabolized into blood glucose. It was my birthday recently, my wife got me an icecream cake. I protested a little as I tucked into it. :)

It's amazing the effect that avoiding processed sugar can have, and a little intermittent fasting baked in.

When my wife and I host family, I always am struck by how much work breakfast is. Extra eating, extra dishes, etc. My wife doesn't do that eating schedule, but it works for me.

Re: Super Size Me and the sugar - that's a great point! The soda is a particularly odious offender, I'd love to see the effect of eating just the burger every day.

Remember that couple in there two who went BLIND when they stopped drinking soda. Crazy.

Western medicine: "What you eat is nearly irrelevant as long as you are not fat, at which point it's not what you eat it's how much and how much you exercise."

Also Western Medicine: "We don't understand why we've lost credibility in broad swaths of the population! Don't you see the degrees we've granted ourselves?"

My dad's a doctor, firmly rooted in the western style of things. He's blind to some of the ways western medicine's gotten it wrong. Taints the conversations we'd have, when I AM trying to get medical advice from him.

It's hard for him to get over me not wanting to take max doeses of painkillers, 3x/day, for a week straight, to "heal" lingering back pain.

I'm like "yeah, yeah, lets skip the meds part, and talk about healthy rehabilitation via strength training and stretching and all that". And he lectures me for my ignorance and resistance to "Established Medical Science".

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.

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)

'Solaria' is this planet of abundance with strict population controls and where robots do all the hard work and wealthy generation for their owners.

On a serious note however, babies and a growing population is an enormous advantage to a nation. I would think it would be massively popular to increase benefits to those who are having children. Full disclosure, I found out my wife is pregnant yesterday, but still.

There are also women who are infertile due to no fault of their own (e.g. cancer, etc.), why should they be excluded from any resources whatsoever due to something that is not their fault?

For the greater good of others, taking one for the team.

A rubberizer additive put in tires was getting atomized and then washed off into the streams. It makes salmon swim in circles until they die.

Does it do anything to people? We don't know.

Quite a metaphor when applied to people.

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?

But what if you aren’t over weight and already fairly healthy, like I was?

Then you have to look at other things too.

It's amazing what a little exercise can do for your body!

Unless you’ve been trying for over a year that’s just a perfectly normal amount of time for it to take anyway

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.

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.

You might be accidentally making a counterpoint if it turns out that the retention of fake estrogens are what are mediating the effect.

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.

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!

I find it quite poetic that modern man needs to go live by a lake, foraging naked for a few months to regain our reproductive viability.

This is why anabolic steroid users can develop shrunken (atrophied) testicles.

In addition, through enzymatic equilibrium, you will also produce more estrogen (excess testosterone is converted to estrogen and vice versa), which will further decrease male reproductive ability, and in sufficient quantities will stimulate breast gland growth.

In short, administering exogenous testosterone will have counterproductive reproductive consequences.

That's it, no more donuts for me.

Nonsense. Overeating makes you fat, not a specific carb. Having a biscuit with a few grams of sugar is not going to impact your health in a meaningful way if you're not overeating.

Eating sugar creates a cascade of hormonal knock-on effects that can make you fat.

I beg of you (especially if you're struggling with your weight!) to consider the alternatives to Calories-In/Calories-Out eating.

My dad is a doctor, he's _convinced_ it's all CICO (which is what was taught to physicians in the 70s, and today), he struggles with his weight, constantly, and is super unhealthy. He eats low-fat everything, and is in miserable physical shape.

He's blind to alternatives. It is unbecoming of a man of science to be so tied to a possibly-incorrect view of such an important topic.

Consider: https://josh.works/notes-gary-taubes-case-against-sugar

_However_ some calories keep you hungry so it's probably _much_ easier to limit your calories on low-sugar than a high-sugar diet.

If you find avoiding sugar helps you maintain a healthy diet than great, go for it. Do whatever works for you. But if your overall diet is a healthy balance then having a biscuit with tea is not going to negatively impact your health.

It's like saying an alcoholic can still responsibly drink by stopping at one.

While you do caveat things in your second comment, both your original and second comment basically minimize the OPs "not even one" stance, even calling it "nonsense". Replacing everything you say with alcohol shows the disconnect; you wouldn't say similar things to an alcoholic who said "alcohol makes you intoxicated", saying that's nonsense (since there are plenty of substances that can make you intoxicated) and then proceed to tell them that one drink is fine.

The difficulty of dieting (and life in general!) is decisions. By being so absolutist it made it easier to just do it automatically rather than constantly weight up whether I should eat well.

That’s in hindsight.

At the time in my mind I was really convinced that that one biscuit might make the difference.

For example, the carbohydrates in fiber are not digestable, so those calories have effectively no impact on weight. Starches take longer to digest than simple sugars, so they result in less of an insulin response than the same quantity of simple sugars (meaning, if eating in excess, less starch is converted to fat).

And even when just looking at simple sugars, fructose and glucose are processed by completely different metabolic pathways. The 5% difference in fructose content in HFCS (along with the double-digit difference in the % of "free" fructose) results in a significantly higher insulin response than plain old sugar.

Indeed, if one eats a lot of sugar, as a result of insulin response, it is possible to get fatter even though one is eating at a net deficit and losing weight.

Which is why fiber doesn't get counted towards calories on labels.

> Starches take longer to digest than simple sugars, so they result in less of an insulin response than the same quantity of simple sugars (meaning, if eating in excess, less starch is converted to fat).

That's not what it means. Insulin response cannot create fat out of nothing and doesn't result in more or less fat being stored.

If your glycogen stores are full and you consume more than you burn the excess calories are stored as fat regardless of the source or the pathway that stores it.

Calories in, calories out means you have to factor in how many calories from the food are available for your body to use. It doesn't necessarily mean the calories of the food you put in your mouth.

Or if you just want a simpler explanation - eating sugar makes you crave more sugar and so you’re a lot more likely to over eat.

What the hell is an American biscuit then?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biscuit_(bread)

Basically, a chemically (as opposed to yeast) leavened bread roll.

If you want to start a family and are struggling to do so, that is very difficult to reconcile.

But when you do, there’s a lot wrong with it.

As it had been for millennia before, I wager.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31424532/

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

> 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/

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

Did you ever hear of a canary in a coal mine? The miners would take birds in with them to alert them to dangers gasses. If there were dangerous gasses he bird would typically die before the miners did. This is because the bird has very high performance lungs so that they can supply enough oxygen to beat their wings quickly.

You basically can't own a bird in an appartment and cook with teflon cookware or run the self clean setting on the oven (they are teflon coated inside) because the fumes will kill them.

https://www.petcoach.co/article/teflon-toxicity-ptfe-toxicos...

Sure, if you're extremely careful about using it, it's possible. That's why my previous comment wasn't absolute. But the majority of people I've known who use them seem to treat the pans poorly and cook with them at all temperatures. Many times they only own nonstick pans (who has space for multiple sets in an appartment?), and use them at all temperatures.

I see the risk as being in the level where I choose not to use teflon pans, but not extreme enough to ban it or force others to follow my choices. I think the environmental impact from the manufacturers is a bigger concern that should be monitored more closely. I think they have a Netflix documentary about one place in WV. Of course the company switched to a new (largely untested) chemical for new coatings. Just a shell game to stay in compliance or public favor, like with BPA vs BPS.

The best things to use are cast-iron and cladded stainless steel. With both, you heat the pan more slowly to reach your appropriate temperature (you're looking for leidenfrost) and then you add oil, and cook. If you use healthy oils and heat before adding the oil, cast-iron is effectively non-stick once a seasoning develops and cladded stainless steel won't stick except with specific foods (eggs). But this is definitely a different methodology for cooking than most people are familiar with.

The other benefit of using non-teflon pans is you can use all types of utensils.

Don't give up on winning over your partner's mind. It may take a little while, and you have to be patient, diplomatic, and gentle. People are resistant to change. But it is not hopeless, and it is worth it in the end, because their health is at stake.

I used to have teflon cookware. It's great in theory. But in practice, I find indestructible stuff that you don't have to baby works much better for me. Of course, if you don't have much upper body strength, other approaches may work better.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deglazing_(cooking)

Cast Iron or High-Carbon steel for steaks, eggs/pancakes, stir-fries (wok). You will have to maintain a non-stick seasoning and that has a learning curve, most people don't get it right at first. Make sure to always dry them as they can rust.

You can look at enamel or copper if you have the $$$.

That said I wish they'd test the Granitestone Pro as other reviewers have said the Granitestone holds up better than other ceramic pans.

Stainless is durable, but I suspect there are issues with chemical reactions between the food and bare metal.

I think that enamel is the best, being inert and durable, and old technology, though you also don,t want to drop or overheat it.

Cast iron is also good, just unwieldy and difficult to clean if you,re cooking meat, eggs, cheese, basically animal proteins.

My primary use case is high heat wok cooking. A lot of ceramic woks exist, they just don't last long!

Carbon steal is my daily pan now (lighter than iron skillet - it's what chefs usually use). Once you get a good coating of fat built up it's pretty decent non-stickiness, but you have to take a lot more care of it.

I wish teflon was more healthy because it's damn good for cooking with, especially scrambled eggs.

Ceramic

Cast iron

Stainless steel

In that order, in my opinion.

I don't buy frying pans, so I take what I can get.

AFAIK this is a non-issue because teflon is inert in its finished form. It's only an health risk during manufacturing and when it's heated too high.

> 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 don't think it means what you think it means. Reading further into the paper, it says

>At normal use conditions [< 230 °C], total emissions of PFCAs were 4.75 ng per hour

Which seems absolutely tiny. If spread out the emissions across the hour (because the 4.75 ng figure was cumulative emissions), the exposure to the cook would be in the parts per trillion range.

4.75 nanograms may not seem like a lot, but when you consider that, at 414.07g/mol it is 6,908,293,060,000 parts of the stuff, it seems like quite a bit to me. And that's in just one cooking session.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, it's been a while since my chemistry class.

The EPA drinking water standards, the ones watered down by industry influence, are measured in parts per trillion.

Here is a science question for you: If the EPA limit for PFOA in drinking water is 70 parts per trillion, what volume of water would need to be mixed with 4.75 nanograms of PFOA in order to bring that water to within the allowable limit for drinking water?

Now, here is a quote from the EPA:

> These studies indicate that exposure to PFOA and PFOS over certain levels may result in adverse health effects, including developmental effects to fetuses during pregnancy or to breastfed infants (e.g., low birth weight, accelerated puberty, skeletal variations), cancer (e.g., testicular, kidney), liver effects (e.g., tissue damage), immune effects (e.g., antibody production and immunity), thyroid effects and other effects (e.g., cholesterol changes). There is limited information identifying health effects from inhalation or dermal exposures to PFOA or PFOS in humans and animals.

Based on this question, do you think there are any "health effects" if exposed to PFOA and PFOS below these "certain levels".

This doesn't prove anything part from molecules being really small. What's more important at what doses do negative health effects materialize.

>And that's in just one cooking session.

I'm not sure about you but 1 hour is an usually long time to be using a frying pan. Unless you're cooking a huge slab of meat, letting anything sit in a 230C degree pan for an hour would result it being burnt/overcooked.

>The EPA drinking water standards, the ones watered down by industry influence, are measured in parts per trillion.

Looking through https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/national..., the only one that I can find that's near 1 part per trillion is dioxin, at 0.03 PPT. The rest are well above that. Furthermore, even 1 part per trillion is a high estimate for actual exposure. In addition to being spread out across an hour (3600 seconds), the emissions are also dispersed across the room and vented out. Finally, like I pointed out earlier, what maters more is the toxicity of the compound. Dioxins and PFCAs are both "bad", but it doesn't mean they're equally as toxic. The limit for mercury is orders of magnitude higher at 2 parts per billion.

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking...

Did you get a chance to take a crack at the chemistry math problem I posed?

Once you've solved that one, here is another one for you:

If 4.75 nanograms of the material is aerosoled out into the air, what amount is absorbed directly into the food which is cooking on the pan?

>While PTFE is stable and nontoxic at lower temperatures, it begins to deteriorate after the temperature of cookware reaches about 260 °C (500 °F),

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

The same Wikipedia page also reads:

>Pyrolysis of PTFE is detectable at 200 °C (392 °F), and it evolves several fluorocarbon gases and a sublimate.

My completely unscientific, unsubstantiated guess, based purely on obsessively researching food safety for years, is that it begins to leach at a much lower temperature.

Most vegetable oils smoke before 500F. If you're just frying up an egg or sauteing some vegetables you'll be fine.

>The same Wikipedia page also reads:

The sentence after it:

>An animal study conducted in 1955 concluded that it is unlikely that these products would be generated in amounts significant to health at temperatures below 250 °C (482 °F).[

but you're willing to believe unsourced statements based on your own intuition?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238226

But yes, I'll side with my intuition when it comes to my health and those dependent on me.

Just because someone says the gun is not loaded...

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/710/124/9ce...

It is common in many cultures in eastern europe and elsewhere and the health benefits are well known.

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/

"We just got really drunk and stopped worrying an HEY, we made a baby! You Should try that!"

OR

"My best mate smokes a spliff every morning and they had a baby no problem, you shouldn't bother giving up caffeine"

The 'advice' is almost as painful as the not conceiving.

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.

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

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.

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?

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

Considering how many people still do it, it could be considered as part of our culture.

Otherwise i don't know any sources of radiation. Besides some places where the atmosphere is getting thin, and getting skin cancer is very normal, like Australia.

I thought the ozone situation had been getting a lot better since the 90s?

[0] https://www.villageinframe.com/ozone-layer-hole-in-australia...

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.

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.

Here's one of many if you google. https://natural-fertility-info.com/study-wi-fi-laptop-comput...

"Are you sure you're not mixing up heat and radiation here?"

I'm not. If you look at my other statements in my comment, you will see that distance plays an important part in RF exposure. Energy dissipates rapidly and is generally minimal beyond 6' when we are talking about sub-watt consumer devices.

"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."

You quoted me in the above and complained about speculation. You can see in the italics that I acknowledge that I don't know if the distant transmitters cause problems or not.

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

I've already linked one study. I'm not going to google everything for you. You can us PubMed too.

I'd also like to ask where your evidence is that it is harmless? Did you also miss the study that said specific brain cancer incidence is raised by holding a cell phone to your head? It seems your position that it's all harmless is just speculation.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cell-phones/what-the-cell-ph...

A blog post by "Dalene Barton - Certified Herbalist, Birth Doula". Lol, you've got to be kidding me?!

> You quoted me in the above and complained about speculation. You can see in the italics that I acknowledge that I don't know if the distant transmitters cause problems or not.

So why bring them up? Moreover: You also don't know if the close ones do. I mean, your herbalist does, but that doesn't count ;-)

> I've already linked one study.

"Study". Something peer-reviewed, please. It can be done by a herbalist if you insist, but it needs to be peer-reviewed by actual experts.

> I'd also like to ask where your evidence is that it is harmless?

That no harm has been found. The same class of evidence you rely on when you eat a carrot and wonder whether it's poisonous or not.

> Did you also miss the study that said specific brain cancer incidence is raised by holding a cell phone to your head?

Glanced at it now. Please correct tme if I'm wrong, but is it really true that that they did a study with n=90 rats and used the occurrance of 2 cases of tumors in them, versus 0 in the control, as evidence???

I'm not citing the blog. The blog merely explains the results of the study. It is a peer reviewed study available through Elseiver.

"That no harm has been found. The same class of evidence you rely on when you eat a carrot and wonder whether it's poisonous or not."

Let's see your peer reviewed articles that prove it - that was the standard for evidence that you set in your comment.

"Glanced at it now. Please correct tme if I'm wrong, but is it really true that that they did a study with n=90 rats and used the occurrance of 2 cases of tumors in them, versus 0 in the control, as evidence???"

I gave you one example. Please do some research of your own instead of just trolling.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25738972/

There is a lot of speculation and no confirmed mechanism for a milliwatt microwave transmitter to damage human sperm.

Would you be worried about a blinking led light near you? Thats the power levels we are dealing with and the visible light has much higher photon energy closer to ionizing being in the terahertz range.

Meanwhile go take a nice walk outside under the 1000 watt per square meter nuclear fusion radiator that includes many watts of actual cancer causing near ionizing radiation.

So, a quick rebuttal to this trash blog post recounting a trash publication. This is a cut-and-paste from a real rebuttal (Dore & Chignol, Fertility & Sterility, 2012), transcribed here for easy browsing. Link at the end:

"We think that the evidence presented in this article cannot support the claim that the observed effects are non-thermal and caused by exposure to a Wi-Fi radiofrequency electromagnetic field."

1. Keeping constant the temperature under the computer by an air conditioning system is not sufficient to ensure homo-geneity of the temperatures within the experimental area, be-cause the heat source from the laptop is not homogenous itself, and to exclude that there is no local variation in the samples temperatures. If the exposure design can be justified by the desire of being as close as possible to the actual conditions of use of a lap-top computer, the dosimetry used in these experiments is much too simplistic. There is no indication of the homogeneity of the field under the laptop, which may greatly depend upon the location of the Wi-Fi antenna within the computer.

2. The control samples,‘‘kept in another room away fromany computers or electronic devices,’’were not actually keptunder identical conditions. A more suitable experimental de-sign would have been a sham exposure design in which con-trol samples would have been exposed under the sameactively working computer, but with its Wi-Fi emission turned off.

3. Moreover, Avendano et al. state that‘‘[radiofrequency electromagnetic waves] from mobile phones may cause DNA damage’’and that‘‘research has shown negative consequences of electromagnetic fields on biological mechanisms,’’and they cite in support of their contention a highly controversial article(cite2). Genotoxicity of radiofrequencies is not a matter of opinion: radiofrequency energy absorption cannot break DNA molecules, and it should be kept in mind that there is no known biologically plausible mechanism by which non-ionizing radio waves of low energy can disrupt DNA(cite3). Recently, while classifying radiofrequency electromagneticfields (RF-EMF) as‘‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’’(group2B), the International Agency for Research on Cancer Working Group reached the overall conclusion that there is only weak mechanistic evidence relevant to RF-EMF–induced cancer in humans(cite4)

The conclusion of the rebuttal: "There is a serious message behind our rebuttal. Citing Avendano et al.(cite1) among the evidence of an association between Wi-Fi exposure and a genotoxic effect on humans perm would demonstrate how studies with an erroneous methodology can be used to support important public health claims and also the weakness of the evidence purporting to demonstrate a non thermal effect of Wi-Fi RF."

cite2: Diem et al. 2005 Non-thermal DNA break-age by mobile-phone radiation (1800 MHz) in human fibroblasts and in trans-formed GFSH-R17 rat granulosa cells in vitro.

cite3: Moulder at al. 2005, Mobile phones, mobil ephone base stations and cancer: a review.

cite4: Baan et al. 2011, Carcinogenicity of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields

Link: https://sci-hub.do/10.1016/j.fertnstert.2012.01.102

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=cell+phone+sperm+count

And all of the studies that claimed to show a link between cell phone use and decreased sperm were based on surveys of patients at fertility clinics, or were based on subjecting rat testicles to 1000x the amount of radiation that a human would encounter in the real world.

You may want to rethink your citations.

Where do you see the radiation level being 1000x? I see various studies using real cell phones on the market for between 2 and 6 hours per day.

Cell phones put out about 1000 times less power than your 100w ham radio. Which in itself is not enough to cause ocular heating damage unless perhaps it was within inches of your eye, I have never seen a case of it caused at that power level please point me to citations.

Remember these are omni radiators only a small fraction of the 100w ham radio power would strike your eye even inches away and it would fall off with the inverse square law.

Putting a 100w lightbulb against your eye would also cause damage or a 1 watt laser both due to ocular heating. This is all about the amount of wattage absorbed by your body tissue which is why exposure levels are rated in watts per kilogram, the more tissue the more power it takes to raise that tissues temperature to damaging levels. This is a why a focus laser with little power can cause damage vs a omni directional light or radio source.

Radio waves are much lower frequency and therefore the ONLY KNOWN mechanisms for biological activity is thermal but you seem to dispute that.

And yes it is true you will not get significant ocular heating unless next to a high power radio tower. This will not occur a 100w ham radio levels as you said and certainly won't occur from cell phones 3 orders of magnitude lower than that.

1. https://ehs.princeton.edu/book/export/html/363

I'm not saying everyone should do this, but that's what I do.

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.

I googled his SCD and yes its the same schema f with his book and everything else he does.

It is not new at all.

His website uses the same technics to promote 'his' revolutionary things while never ever having done anthing new anything relevant at all.

And i read his 4-hour workweek. I payed for that book. His charisma triggerd me to get it.

This still doesn't mean he ever achieved anything you haven't read in any other blog or whatever.

He is selling himself very well. I personally would not be proud of myself though if i had his 'career'.

It's interesting how we are primed to assume a psychological burden for anyone who is financially successful. Perhaps to help ourselves cope? I'm not singling your comment out specifically, as I often have the same reaction.

For all we know, Ferriss is probably highly satisfied, completely at ease with himself, and enjoying a great and varied existence.

He sells himself and in my opinion he does use marketing tools and mechanisms i don't like.

Nonetheless, the only reason why i care about him as he gets mentioned on HN every year or so. I care enough to write a comment but not to do anything else.

How he does it and what he does feels for me like mental esotherism.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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...

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.

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.

Which ones? Our specialist recommended CoQ10

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 didn't wear underpants or what?

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 :)

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.

This was actually one of the most annoying things to change, but since radiation diminishes by inverse square, even a small distance change (if originally very close) could make a difference.

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

Searching for "aluminium toxicity" will bring up many results.

Titanium, on the other hand, is so safe to our bodies that it's used in surgical implants.

So is Teflon used surgically and considered safe but only at biological temperatures and slightly above. Maybe titanium doesn't have such dark secrets as Teflon.

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

Regular soap?

Proof point- look how hard antibacterial soap is being advertised during the pandemic, which is cause by a frikkin VIRUS

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.

its probably a factor.

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

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.