The title image is from IC photo
We always love to imagine longevity. But what if humanity is terminated before longevity?
It may not even be possible to wait for a futuristic and sci-fi story like the Big Bang to happen, and humans will be embarrassed to die by a small sperm.
This sounds sensational, but it’s not unfounded.
After analyzing more than 40,000 men who provided semen samples from 1973 to 2011, Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, found that in the past 40 years, Western countries (including North America, Europe, Australia, etc.) The total sperm count of ordinary men has dropped by 59.3%, and the sperm concentration has dropped by 52.4%.
In other words, nowadays, a man only has half of his grandfather’s sperm count.
In 2017, CITIC Xiangya Reproductive and Genetic Hospital also found that from 2001 to 2015, more than 30,000 adult men who applied for sperm donation from the Human Sperm Bank of Hunan Province, whether it is sperm concentration, total sperm count, or sperm test Sexual sports, etc., have dropped significantly; the proportion of qualified donors has dropped from 55.78% in 2001 to 17.8% in 2015. Sperm banks in Shanghai and Henan also suffer from this problem.
Not only that, but Swan also found that men’s erectile dysfunction is increasing and the size of the genitals is gradually shrinking. And according to the previous research model, Swan is more recently in his new book Count Down said that by 2045, the number of sperm in men may reach zero.
Of course, this is just a prediction by Swan. From her research, we can see that even if the subject’s per capita sperm concentration dropped from 99 million/ml in 1973 to 47.1 million/ml in 2011, it was higher than the bottom line of normal sperm concentration.(15 million/ml).
But this is after all a wake-up call. After all, apart from being unable to give birth or not wanting to give birth, a large part of the declining birth rate is due to physiological factors. No one can say whether the whirlpool of birth and death will truly come to earth.
Scientists are exploring how this happened.
Aside from overwork, staying up late, smoking, drinking, lack of exercise, and obesity, which are generally recognized as detrimental to health, more than one research team has found that some chemicals in the contemporary living environment can be counted as Humans-not only men-are one of the main culprits of reduced reproductive capacity, and the impact is very large.
These chemicals in the mouths of researchers include bisphenol A in the inner walls of canned food, beverages and baby bottles, phthalates that are resident in food plastic packaging, and brominated flame retardants in carpets, furniture, and clothes. Wait.
Picture source: Visual China
Of course they are very useful. For example, the addition of bromine-based flame retardants can prevent fire; phthalates are plasticizers that can make rigid plastics soft and elastic; bisphenol A can make the container itself resistant to oxidation, except for packaging such as cans , It can also be found in many medical equipment and consumables.
But the problem is that even if these substances are very small in every commodity we come into contact with every day, it can’t hold up such commodities as tightly wrapping our lives. With bags of food, bottles of water, and sets of cosmetics, these substances quietly infiltrate our bodies from our mouth, respiratory tract, skin and other channels, eroding our health.
According to researchers at NYU Langone Health, these chemicals change the way the human body works by changing the operation of hormones. Because of this, they are collectively referred to as endocrine disruptors-romantic points, or “environmental hormones.”
Be aware that hormones have extremely important regulatory effects on our metabolism, growth, and development. It is not difficult to imagine that the secretion of hormones is disturbed, and it is difficult for the human body to avoid disorder.
The aforementioned reduction in the number of male sperm is inseparable from bisphenol A. In fact, as early as nearly 80 years ago, researchers discovered that bisphenol A can play the role of estrogen, and the impact on men is self-evident.
The results of a series of animal experiments are terrible. For example, male newborn mice who took the substance orally for only a few days have fewer sperm counts; this “incompetence” can also infect offspring. “We only have a few days, but we have permanently changed the way that adult mouse testes produce sperm,” said research leader Patricia Hunt of Washington State University.
In the lake where endocrine disruptors were added by Canadian researchers, after 7 years, most of the male Fathead Minoan became bisexuals, hermaphrodite, unable to reproduce, it is a disaster of genocide. .
A number of human in vitro studies have also shown that exposure of human sperm to a certain concentration of bisphenol A in vitro will also interfere with the signal transduction of androgen receptors, destroy the mitochondria of testicular cells, and damage DNA. And so on, showing a significant decline or even loss of vitality. Chinese researchers also found that men with higher blood levels of BPA are more likely to have sexual problems, including decreased libido.
Picture source: Pixabay
At the same time, this will also change the epigenetics of male reproduction. To put it simply, the same method of hormone regulation and sperm production will be passed on from generation to generation and is irreversible.
“We are burdened with the problems of previous generations”, Swan is accepting THe Intercept said in an interview. “This means that we started from a poor level and suffered again and again.”
This is not the whole picture of the “evil” of endocrine disruptors.
In addition to poisoning male sperm, these chemicals can also endanger female reproductive ability. Swan observed that in some parts of the world, women who are now about 20 years old have worse fertility than their grandmothers when they were 35 years old.
They can also affect newborns through the mother’s uterine environment and breastfeeding pathways, resulting in premature delivery, lower IQ, obesity, hyperactivity, diabetes and other undesirable consequences. An abnormality in the genitals of a baby boy may also start from this, and will affect the size of his genitals in the future.
It is worth noting that these previous studies were carried out in animals or outside of humans, which means that there is no direct clinical evidence to prove the harm of these endocrine disruptors to human reproduction, and academic controversy still exists.
But at least, the decline in male sperm count is an unchangeable fact. Therefore, we still cannot relax our vigilance.
Swan suggested that we should buy more organic agricultural products and antibiotic-free meat, reduce eating out, and reduce the use of plastic in the kitchen-such as replacing plastic containers with glass, and timely cleaning up dust, thereby reducing endocrine in the living environment The content of interferents. Another researcher, Transande also pointed out that it is also very important to keep fresh indoor air circulating.
However, relying on personal avoidance is not a long-term solution after all. The regulation and innovation of industrial chemicals are the trump cards that can really solve the problem.