Gentlemen, I've got some bad news. You've read those stories about declining sperm counts across the world over the past 40 years, right? Well, the trend shows no sign of abating. What's more, our testosterone levels are tanking, too. Oh, and we're also losing our grip.
The results of a joint study between the US and Spain released late last year indicate that the sperm counts of men in both countries are declining by 1.8 per cent a year. This is echoed by a review of 185 earlier studies, led by Israeli researchers in 2017, which found an overall drop of 52 per cent in sperm concentration among Western men between 1973 and 2011.
The figures are jarring: a joint study between the US and Spain indicates that the sperm counts of men in both countries are declining by 1.8 per cent a year.Credit:Getty Images
Reports coming in from other non-Western countries appear to show the same trend: sperm banks as far afield as China and Brazil are reporting drops in the number and motility (swimming fitness) of sperm.
The obvious question here is, if men are firing twice as many blank shots as they were half a century ago, why hasn't this been mirrored in a fall in natural conception rates? The reason is, you only need one determined swimmer to fertilise an egg, not 50 million, which the average man still produces in each ejaculation. Most men can still conceive a child naturally with poorer sperm quality than their fathers and grandfathers.
Over the years, the decline in sperm counts has been blamed on everything from too much TV to eating a high-fat diet to tight underwear. But the star offenders now appear to be hormone-disrupting plastics and chemicals in the environment, says Dr Orly Lacham-Kaplan, a reproductive biologist at the Australian Catholic University who specialises in male infertility. "We can't pinpoint any one reason, and it's likely lifestyle factors such as obesity, alcohol, drugs and lack of exercise also play a role."
As testosterone works with follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) to generate sperm, studies also pointing to a fall in the man-making hormone aren't too surprising. Nor is an apparent decline in grip strength – a strong predictor of future mortality – revealed in a 2016 US study. This showed that the average 20- to 34-year-old man has a nearly 20 per cent weaker grip than his counterpart in 1985.
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