Endangered Species: Babies

[cutekitten]

https://www.wfaa.com/mobile/article/news/health/male-fertility-rate-sperm-count-falling/67-9f65ab4c-5e55-46d3-8aea-1843a227d848

I wonder if these phthalates are also contributing to the increasing feminization of the male? If you compare pictures of today’s young men to pictures of young men during WW II, the softer faces today jump right out at you. Some of this is probably due to the West, particularly America, having fattened up in the intervening 70 years, but not all. The young men of today just look softer. Maybe the phthalates got ‘em. Maybe all those female hormones in the meat got ‘em. Maybe the Archdruid’s theory is right and people are being reincarnated too fast. Maybe all of the above are right; most things have multiple causes. What do you think?

Comments

Taking a bigger view

[scotlyn]

Good morning, Your Feline Cuteness!

I should say that I treat fertility (among many other things) in my acupuncture practice, and it seems to be true that the rates of those trying to conceive and finding it difficult/impossible is rising.

This is very much multi-causal, and I do not think it can be pinned down to a single factor, but biggest picture view would be that we are a species aware of being in overshoot, which all by itself might cascade back down the different levels of causation to produce both tragic and ingenious ways to interfere with our own reproduction rates. (ask me sometime about how the Irish solved this overpopulation conundrum in the years following the famine...)

But it is also true that we have filled our own life support systems with rubbish of all kinds. (I will never forget the "wow!" that went off in my own head a few years ago, when JMG pointed out that there is no "away" to which we can throw our rubbish). Inevitably it cycles around and comes right back to us, like a boomerang.

The number and amount of pollutants of various kinds that we now have to contend with is certainly having an influence on sperm counts and quality, and also on egg quality and on a woman's ability to promote successful implantation in her body and sustain a pregnancy to full term. But so, too, are the emotional components of living in uncertain and stressful times, which also have profound physical effects.

I could go on at length, and I won't. But I would hazard that the idea that sperm counts will reach zero is simply a "follow the current trend to the absurd max" fallacy, because these systems have both negative and positive feedback loops, and when circumstances and conditions change, so do people's bodies and minds. Every physiological property that can be measured is also subject to these variable feedback loops, and can go up or down in response to variations in circumstances.

I do not think there is a true danger of human extinction, but I think reductions in fertility may be seen for another generation or two, at which point increases in death rates may begin to prompt increases in cultural approbation for methods and means (different in different cultures) of increasing fertility rates among younger and healthier people.

Re: Taking a bigger view

[cutekitten]

Hi Scotlyn!

I don’t think we’re headed for extinction either, at least not by low fertility, and I bet the lady in the article doesn’t either, but she did get everyone’s attention by bringing up the idea.

Tell me about the Irish. What did they do? We have a book about potato 🥔 famine somewhere but I don’t think it went into what the Irish who didn’t flee did in the aftermath.

Re: Taking a bigger view

[scotlyn]

Well, the rough figures are that at the beginning of the famine (1845-46) the population of the whole island of Ireland was around 8 million - up from about 1 to 2 million 150 years before that. Even today, the population of the whole island hovers at around 5 to 6 million, so it has never "recovered" from that "overshoot" figure in 1840 or so.

The potato itself is credited with that huge expansion of population in the century and a half or so from 1700 to 1840, because even a small, easy-to-work plot of potatoes could keep a family fed with relatively few other inputs (the most common additions to a potato diet in the poorest would have been some milk, porridge, and trace amounts of fish or pork). tea and sugar were what you kept your eggs and butter to pay for. So large families kept dividing and sub-dividing their plots of land and succeeding generations reared whole, large families on smaller and smaller plots of land.

The famine was immediately devastating to the very poorest of sharecrop tenant farmers - around 1 million may have died within the first year or two, with around another 1 million emigrating within the first coupld of years also.

But imagine the trauma, and also the "survivor's guilt" of those who survived. Especially as survival in the classes above the poorest of the poor may have involved profiting from the export of other kinds of foodstuffs during the hungry times, profiting from higher food prices in trade, ignoring or marginalising those seeking help, etc.

What seems to have happened then is that Irish Catholocism transformed almost immediately from a Celtic Christian set of folk practices recognising the sacred nature of certain places, certain times of year, and certain practices which tied people and land together, to a "Jansenist" style of religion that was huge in the kind of sexual prudery which had never existed in Ireland before. This Jansenism has been called *Catholic Calvinism" a belief in "absolute depravity" and of the necessity for continual penance and abnegation. Whether this was useful as a path to abnegation for consciences in need of absolution for surviving a brutal famine, or whether the Jansenist focus on sexual purity and shame was a useful way to keep all the "spare" sons and daughters who could no longer either inherit a farm, marry into a farm, or emigrate, spiritually suited to a life of culturally enforced celibacy, while those who did marry were still enjoined to be fertile, and still having families as large in size as ever, is still hotly debated.

The fact is that both culture and religion were profoundly different in the before and after. And in the after, family SIZE was not reduced (or at least not until much later), while the NUMBER of people who could marry and produce a family was sharply curtailed. Not all the "spare" landless children could emigrate, and so the kind of household mostly or entirely composed of bachelor brothers and spinster sisters became very common.

Re: Taking a bigger view

[lp9]

Scotlyn - an acupuncturist was the one who initially identified my early menopause! She made a huge difference in mitigating the symptoms. I could not get a doctor (even the fancy gynecologist at Johns Hopkins) to believe me when I presented them with all the obvious symptoms, even though I was only 35.

Re: Taking a bigger view

[scotlyn]

I am glad to hear you got the attention and help you needed from an acupuncturist. There are things we are trained to pay attention to, and that, really, every single person practicing any modality of medicine should be paying attention to. But attention to the person is the largest casualty (IMHO) of the current, more bureaucratic style of statistic-based medicine. Thankfully, there are still doctors who remember their practice is centred on their patients. But, sadly for them, the costs they face to continue doing so, is increasing daily.

infertility

[ritaer]

Estrogens in the water from people taking female hormones, hormones in the meat, vegans and vegetarians eating too much soy product which has proto-estrogens. On the other hand, most young men of today have had a softer life than their grand dads did. An Iowa farm boy who was up to help feed at 5am, working in the hot fields, etc. or a kid raised in the depression, quitting school to go to work in the local factory. Also, more young marriages. Lots of difference between a 19 year old playing Grand Theft Auto in his room in parents' house and a 19yr old married with a kid on the way and having to earn a living for the family. Just read an article about the free range child movement pointing out that in the 1950s being able to walk alone to school or a local store was a normal development marker for 6 year olds. Now we have "how to adult" classes for college graduates.

In any case, I applaud any decrease in human fertility. Too dang many of us. Admittedly, I have three kids and 4 grandchildren. But my last child was conceived despite endometriosis, only one Fallopian tube, use of the cervical cap and contraceptive jelly, and breastfeeding older sibling. Eris was determined to get her way. (I think Eris is the goddess of unplanned pregnancy, esp. of contraceptive failure.) Two of my grandsons express no interest in having children--of course that can change--they are only 25 and 19.

Rita

Re: infertility

[cutekitten]

Oh gosh, we’re having our first discussion! This is so exciting! Thanks, ladies!

I didn’t want a baby, as I didn’t think I’d be a good parent. He arrived anyway. Pushy of Eris!

I definitely think the estrogens in the environment have had a feminizing effect on males, and not just humans—I know I remember an article about frogs. Frogs, it seems, are the canary in the environmental coal mine.

I have days when I could use adulting classes, and I’m 61, so they are not necessarily all bad. 😳

[lp9]

NYTimes also has a big story this weekend on declining fertility rates across the globe; basically everywhere except Africa. China and India are even declining.

I, for no apparent reason that any medical professional can figure out, went into very early menopause at age 35. No family history. Luckily I already had my two kids, but my younger sister now seems to be following that same trajectory (without the kids). Hearing the same thing from other friends from high school Based on where we grew up, I am 99% convinced it's due to some sort of as-of-yet-unidentified environmental/industrial pollution.

[methylethyl]

One totally non-plastics reason men look different now is that modern foods are very soft. We don't chew our food anymore, which results in under-development of the jaw and mid-face: receding chins, noses that look too big for the face, crowded teeth, narrower bone structure, and nobody has good cheekbones anymore. There's only so much an orthodontist can do to "fix" this. And more and more people need "fixing". If you look at the bones of athletes, sometimes it shows what sport they played, because the "workload" the muscles put on the bones triggers bone growth. So if you think of chewing as just another "workload"...

Bread used to be quite chewy and dense. People ate meats that were rather tough by modern standards. We slaughter and harvest meat animals the *second* they reach ideal weight. Our forbears ate a much higher proportion of "stewing hens" and tough retired milk-cows, not to mention wild game. Even fruits and produce were probably a bit on the tougher side-- "progress" in plant-breeding always tends toward fruits that are sweeter, and more nicely crisp. I remember as a kid eating the alligator pears from the tree in our yard-- it's an older, less popular cultivar. When fully ripe, the things take real effort to bite. No mistaking them for a Bartlett! We mostly used them as missiles... Breeding of root vegetables has made them less fibrous and more calorie-dense: with the result that getting enough calories to survive requires vastly less jaw-work than it once did.

Plus, all evidence says our neolithic ancestors used their teeth as tools quite a lot more than we do: they chewed hides to soften them, and probably a lot of other things modern tools and tech have rendered obsolete. The archaeological record indicates our practically-genetically-identical ancestors had *all* their teeth, hardly any cavities, robust dental arches nearly 2-3cm wider than average modern adults, no impacted wisdom teeth... and much, much more wear. They would have looked very different from us: big, broad faces! But also, short, nubbly teeth in older adults.

[emmanuelg]

Hi LCCoLC--

It is an interesting article, but does not tell us what we need to know;
Fortunately, the disagreeableness of humans can help us get the clues we need to figure this one out.
Different people are set in their ways--different ways.
Do the Amish use plastics, or plastic-processed items? Maybe they use a lot less than the rest of us. If their sperm counts are higher, maybe it IS the phthalates--or some difference between Amish life and the life the rest of us live.
What about Patagonians?
You see where I am going with this-- If there are certain groups or cultures that do not have a diminished sperm count what common features do they have that differ from ours?
On the other hand, if there is the same decline in widely differing locations and cultures, then we are likely in big trouble.

Dr. Swan

[peter_van_erp]

I watched her on Joe Rogan several weeks ago, and she made an impression. We've been conducting a chemical experiment on the ecology for more than 2 centuries now, and the blowback is coming. Low sperm counts, autoimmune diseases, less nutritious food. Perhaps in the next life we'll be on the rebound... I notice that official Bad Man Putin has banned GMOs from Russia, so at least they have a lower level of crap to deal with.