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Are Your Sperm in Trouble?
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: March 20th, 2017
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/11/opinion/sunday/are-you...
An increasing proportion of sperm - now about 90 percent in a typical young man - are misshapen, sometimes with two heads or two tails. Even when properly shaped, todays sperm are often pathetic swimmers. Sperm counts also appear to have dropped sharply in the last 75 years, in ways that affect our ability to reproduce. Andrea Gore, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Texas at Austin and the editor of the journal Endocrinology, put it to me this way: Semen quality and fertility in men have decreased. Not everyone who wants to reproduce will be able to. And the costs of male disorders to quality of life, and the economic burden to society, are inestimable. Human and animal studies suggest that a crucial culprit is a common class of chemical called endocrine disruptors, found in plastics, cosmetics, couches, pesticides and countless other products. Because of the environmental links, The New Yorker once elegantly referred to the crisis as silent sperm, and innumerable studies over 25 years add to the concern. Related to the problem of declining semen quality is an increase in testicular cancer in many countries; in undescended testicles; and in a congenital malformation of the penis. The crisis for male reproductive health seems to begin in utero. Male and female fetuses start pretty much the same, and then hormones drive differentiation of males from females. The problem seems to be that endocrine disrupting chemicals mimic hormones and confuse this process.
Note: Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Monsanto's RoundUp, is the most heavily used agricultural chemical in human history. Even at extremely low levels, glyphosate is a known endocrine disruptor. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.
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