Get ready for a baby bust. Sperm counts globally have fallen at an alarming rate – dropping by more than 62% between 1973 and ...

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Sperm counts are dropping globally | Is this a fertility crisis?! What can you do?

total sperm counts for men are going down worldwide I'm Dr Rena Malik urologist and pelvic surgeon and today I'm going to explain a new study that came out showing that total sperm count and concentrations have gone down worldwide over the last 50 years in this study researchers did a meta-analysis meaning they took all the studies in fact 233 studies over the course of almost 50 years and looked at what happened to Total sperm count and sperm concentration and these if you don't know are essentially parameters that we look at when we get semen analyzes to assess if people are maybe sub-fertile or infertile and may be contributing to difficulty having a child they specifically looked at studies that didn't include men who were there for infertility they included two groups one that was kind of unselected meaning it was like a young group of men in the military getting semen analyzes to start their jobs and the other group was man who are fertile either men who had a biological child or their partner was pregnant with their biologic child and importantly they must have actually produced the sample in the normal way meaning they had to masturbate they couldn't have used some other way to receive a sample and what they found is really shocking that from the years of 1973 to 2018 sperm counts dropped by 50 percent and total sperm concentrations decreased by 62 percent that is insane to be specific sperm counts went from 101 million per milliliter to 49 million per milliliter and total sperm concentration went from 335 million to 126 million this was specifically in the unselected cohort meaning the men who were just getting seen analyzes for whatever reason not in the fertile group in fact the fertile group didn't really have much of a change in their semen analysis over those 50 years or it was much much less and and this study was really well done they were very strict in their inclusion criteria and their statistics were spot on and furthermore they actually saw other studies that had looked at the similar question and saw similar declines so yes sperm counts are going down but what does that even mean so in fact while the numbers are getting lower they're still not in the infertile range we know that generally above 40 million per ml it's pretty easy for men to father children and in fact we don't even get worried until they're below 15 million per milliliter so we're still in a good range and this study is done over 50 years and over 50 years this the way we analyze sperm has changed over time and so it may not be comparing apples to oranges all the time when you look at at least the United States data on the number of couples that have been infertile from 2002 until now that number hasn't really changed and infertile means they've been trying to conceive for 12 months or more and haven't had a positive pregnancy so what does this mean for men's health and Men worldwide well in fact there have been some very good studies that have been done in the past that have linked poor sperm parameters to mortality that means death why would that even make sense like why would lower sperm parameters mean that you're more likely to die from any cause so there's a few reasons why people think that this is concerning one of the reasons people think that men are having declining sperm counts is because their mothers in utero when they're in utero are exposed to endocrine disrupting chemicals or have exposure to estrogens which then affect them later on in life and these exposures can also cause problems down the line with their health another reason is that typically the problems that cause issues with sperm are due to defects in DNA so DNA is the building blocks for our cells and so usually the cells for sperm are different than the cells from your body because they carry half the genetic material as as the cells in your entire body but it's possible that the things causing DNA damage in the sperm are also causing DNA damage in the rest of your body which may eventually lead to problems like cancers another theory is that these abnormalities in sperm are caused by lower testosterone and I've made tons of videos on low testosterone but low testosterone is a risk factor for having issues with your heart and causing cardiovascular disease and so perhaps these men who have lower semen parameters also have lower testosterone which over time May link them to heart disease and other things that will lead to death and lastly we know that there are certain lifestyle factors that will cause both issues with mortality and issues with sperm production for example smoking smoking will cause you to have poor sperm production and ultimately will cause many many problems with your health including heart disease high blood pressure potential lung cancer bladder cancer and so much more so if you're watching this quit smoking today so what is the day data tell us there are two good studies that have looked at sperm concentration and linked it to mortality so in a group of 40 000 Danish men they looked at sperm concentration and they tracked these men for 40 years and they found that those who had better sperm parameters higher sperm concentrations or higher quality sperm tend to live longer and those with lower quality sperm particularly around 40 million per milliliter or less were likely to have higher rates of mortality interestingly the deaths that were seen in this study were kind of very diverse they weren't specifically deaths that were associated with things like smoking or lifestyle or heart disease that you could get from having low testosterone none of that so the thought is that maybe sperm quality is actually like a biomarker for how healthy you are and also it wouldn't be due to things that were from In Utero because some of the theories also suggest that in utero exposures may lead to heart disease and diabetes down line as well and they didn't see that specifically twelve thousand men they looked at their rates of mortality and what they found was that even after controlling for all these diseases men who had lower sperm counts had a 2.3 fold higher risk of death compared to those who had normal semen parameters however this could be a signal that there is something that we need to pay attention to that perhaps we should look at which things in our environment may be causing sperm counts to go down and try to fix those so what are things you can do I've made a whole video on optimizing your sperm health and you can check that out this video made a few years ago with Mama Dr Jones is actually very informative and very good but I'll cover a few things right here number one is environmental factors if you're getting exposed to certain chemicals in the workplace like pesticides or other toxins that can obviously affect sperm production sperm are produced in the testicles which hang outside the body for a reason they need a very specific environment to thrive in which means they are very sensitive to any sort of what we call oxidative stress and that can be from anything in our environment that includes things like chemicals pesticides and including things that are called endocrine disrupting chemicals most often you'll see them described as BPA or phthalates in Plastics and things like that so avoiding those sorts of things in your environment can be very helpful I often tell my patients try not to eat out of plastic if you get something in a plastic container transfer it to a glass if you have a bottle make sure it's in a glass bottle or a metal bottle instead of using a plastic water bottle other thing is what are you putting in your body so smoking is obviously we've discussed this a very strong predictor of having porous sperm production because it's a toxin it's similarly excess alcohol can cause the same problem it can cause reduced sperm production and food so there's not a lot of data on specific diets but the most studied diet is the Mediterranean diet which is rich in healthy oils like avocado cuddle and olive oil and nuts and seeds and unprocessed grains unprocessed foods and things like fish I think the key is to have a plant forward diet eat lots of vegetables lots of fruits and things that are unprocessed stress is another big factor obviously our lives are getting more and more stressful as time goes on with electronic devices demanding our attention all the time being accessible to people all the time can add to a lot of stress in our day so finding ways to reduce stress on a daily basis is really really valuable and lastly try to avoid hot tubs or saunas particularly if you're trying to conceive exposing your testicles to hot temperatures for long periods of times will reduce sperm production so trying to stay away from those for for long periods of times can be helpful especially if you're trying to have a baby if you enjoyed this video please subscribe to the channel below and share this Channel with your friends so that more and more people can learn each and every week as always remember take care of yourself because you're worth it foreign [Music]

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