Low sperm counts are a big problem for sub-fertile couples, because it really does take 'millions' to get one to fertilize an egg.
It's been about 5.5 years since I started sabotaging my fertility, using 'the old heat methods' [1]. The P.A. who ordered my first sperm test was skeptical about my ambitions, "it only takes one..." But it really does take millions of sperm per ejaculation, so that ~hundreds can get to the egg and work away at the Zona pellucida [0], which is the shell ("glycoprotein layer") that surrounds the egg. (I don't know exactly how many are required, but it's certainly >1. [2])
I have a microscope (need to get a camera attachment), and I've gotten a few lab tests: my swimmers go away, they come back. How aggressive I was with the heat treatments determined how long they'd stay away. I don't have consistent laboratory numbers, just the sense that it takes 3 weeks of consistent water treatments at 112+° before they're mostly gone. I've done some searches about spermatogenesis cycle, but haven't come up with the reason why it's 3 weeks of treatment before the heat shock proteins eliminate the tails from the sperm. I've gotten lazy and done sporadic treatments at 112+° for a week and a half (iirc)... nothing for a week. By 3 weeks the sperm are gone. If I'm lazy, and don't do the full 3-week protocol (at least 5 days/week for 3 weeks), they'll come back sooner. [<- edited to clarify. 16-18 days over 3 weeks should be enough to have 2 months of 0 sperm. 5 days of treatment for 1 week might get you to 0 motile sperm 3 weeks after the first treatment, then you'd be at 0 motile sperm for a month or so. It's been 5 years of inconsistent effort and ad hoc experimentation...]
My girlfriend was not likely to pop an egg out (on account of details covered previously) and we weren't able to get together as often as I'd've liked. So don't rely on my anecdotes: n=1, etc.
I emailed with a HN user from France, who'd linked to a French website about male fertility [3].
This year I noticed that site had a link a new site which sells a silicone ring for helping men sabotage their fertility: https://www.thoreme.com/
The French dudes are simply elevating their testicles to keep them at body temperature, thereby dramatically lowering their sperm counts. Based on my own experiments, I think a man would have to wear this silicone ring 24/7 to keep their count low enough to prevent conception. If you took it off at night, I'd wager your sperm count might only go down by 1/2 to 2/3. Which might be enough.
With that said, my tax refund just arrived. I think I'll buy one...
If I had a problem with low sperm count, I'd avoid phyto-estrogens and xeno-estrogens are the first things to avoid at all costs: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12477510/
Lots of options for improving male fertility come to mind, but avoiding plasticizers and PCB's is probably a good first step.
[edit1 - clarity]
[edit2 - added link to kahn academy)
Thanks for the questions. Sorry for the long answer. :)
I like to experiment. I'm currently the only subject who's willing to sign up for my experiments.
I was married once. She was a little off her rocker, I didn't want her getting knocked up, she didn't want to get knocked up, she'd had bad experience with "hormonal birth control" pills, so we only used rubbers. Meh. Neither of us wanted a kid, so it was okay.
Rubbers are like masks: no one likes them.
In those old comments (circa 2016), I discussed how I think women are all given the short stick [1] by the medical system. Women have all the costs of pregnancies, it's fairly easy to render men temporarily infertile, but this is not done because women are easy targets for profiteers.
> And are you not worried about messing up?
I have a microscope. The sperm come back. I'm going for a current sperm test this week. It'll have been 13 weeks (~3 months) since my last heat treatment. I don't know that my sperm count will be normal, but I expect it to be in the low-millions. I expect it'd be back to 'good enough' by six months.
I'm going to switch to the silicone ring because I recently learned that inducing the heat shock proteins is stress-inducing, and I think the French researchers I linked to are more studied in this field than I am. I have a system to facilitate the 112° heat treatments, but I need more parts to finish the next revision, and I want to experiment with the silicone ring. Maybe I'll do a hybrid approach - 5 days of baths w/ the ring... Hmm.
OH - PRO TIP: IF YOU'RE GOING TO DO THE HOT BATH TREATMENTS, HAVE 'GATORADE' WITH SUGAR AND ELECTORLYTES AVAILABLE WHILE TAKING HOT BATHS. (I use salted fruit juice when I'm doing the heat treatments, if I skip this I get light headed. Very dangerous.)
> why are you doing this?
From my earlier comments:
"There is a problem with birth control that the media doesn't like to talk about. While millions of women take birth control, almost all of them eventually (or immediately) hate the side effects. So most women take these awful drugs only because they are seen as the best way to prevent pregnancy." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11934396
"There is quite a gap between modern "medical science" and physiology. The core problem is that it is much more profitable for Wall Street to suppress women's difficult menstrual cycles with drugs, than to implement what was figured out long ago." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11763145 (emphasis added)
[1] "To get the short end of the stick or to get the wrong end of the stick means to get the bad end of a deal, to come out on the bottom of a contest or exchange, to be gotten the better of in any given situation. The connotation is that one has not been treated quite fairly or that one is unlucky." - https://grammarist.com/idiom/get-the-short-end-or-the-wrong-...
It's been about 5.5 years since I started sabotaging my fertility, using 'the old heat methods' [1]. The P.A. who ordered my first sperm test was skeptical about my ambitions, "it only takes one..." But it really does take millions of sperm per ejaculation, so that ~hundreds can get to the egg and work away at the Zona pellucida [0], which is the shell ("glycoprotein layer") that surrounds the egg. (I don't know exactly how many are required, but it's certainly >1. [2])
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zona_pellucida / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrosome_reaction
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12869969 / https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1501200000&dateRange=custom&...
[2] "Only about 1 in 1 million sperm that are ejaculated into the vagina will reach the site of fertilization." - https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/cells/embryology/...
I have a microscope (need to get a camera attachment), and I've gotten a few lab tests: my swimmers go away, they come back. How aggressive I was with the heat treatments determined how long they'd stay away. I don't have consistent laboratory numbers, just the sense that it takes 3 weeks of consistent water treatments at 112+° before they're mostly gone. I've done some searches about spermatogenesis cycle, but haven't come up with the reason why it's 3 weeks of treatment before the heat shock proteins eliminate the tails from the sperm. I've gotten lazy and done sporadic treatments at 112+° for a week and a half (iirc)... nothing for a week. By 3 weeks the sperm are gone. If I'm lazy, and don't do the full 3-week protocol (at least 5 days/week for 3 weeks), they'll come back sooner. [<- edited to clarify. 16-18 days over 3 weeks should be enough to have 2 months of 0 sperm. 5 days of treatment for 1 week might get you to 0 motile sperm 3 weeks after the first treatment, then you'd be at 0 motile sperm for a month or so. It's been 5 years of inconsistent effort and ad hoc experimentation...]
The whole spermatogenesis cycle takes between 74 and 120 days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spermatogenesis#Duration
My girlfriend was not likely to pop an egg out (on account of details covered previously) and we weren't able to get together as often as I'd've liked. So don't rely on my anecdotes: n=1, etc.
I emailed with a HN user from France, who'd linked to a French website about male fertility [3]. This year I noticed that site had a link a new site which sells a silicone ring for helping men sabotage their fertility: https://www.thoreme.com/
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20201203165532/http://www.contra...
The French dudes are simply elevating their testicles to keep them at body temperature, thereby dramatically lowering their sperm counts. Based on my own experiments, I think a man would have to wear this silicone ring 24/7 to keep their count low enough to prevent conception. If you took it off at night, I'd wager your sperm count might only go down by 1/2 to 2/3. Which might be enough.
With that said, my tax refund just arrived. I think I'll buy one...
If I had a problem with low sperm count, I'd avoid phyto-estrogens and xeno-estrogens are the first things to avoid at all costs: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12477510/
Lots of options for improving male fertility come to mind, but avoiding plasticizers and PCB's is probably a good first step.
[edit1 - clarity] [edit2 - added link to kahn academy)