325: Sperm count is declining & everyone should care | Shanna Swan, Ph.D.

The mindbodygreen Podcast

mindbodygreen

Alternative Health, Health & Fitness

4.5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 August 2021

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Shanna Swan, Ph.D.: “[Sperm count] is not just about having babies. It's about how healthy you’re going to be as you get older.” Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist, joins mbg co-CEO, Jason Wachob, to discuss why sperm count is declining (and what it means for overall health), plus: - Lifestyle factors that can affect fertility - The best & worst foods for reproductive health - How city dwellers can limit exposure to endocrine disruptors - The connection between environmental chemicals & erectile dysfunction - How to increase sperm count & enhance fertility Referenced in the episode: - Swan's book, Countdown. - Swan's meta-analysis showing sperm count dropped 59% from 1973 to 2011. - Swan's podcast episode on The Joe Rogan Experience. - Environmental Working Group's consumer guides. - A study showing prenatal exposure to phlathlates associated with decreased penile size. - Defend Our Health website. - A study showing male exposure to BPAs at work associated with sexual dysfunction. - A 2015 study in Denmark showing smoking marijuana more than once a week associated with 29% lower sperm count. Enjoy this episode! Whether it's an article or podcast, we want to know what we can do to help here at mindbodygreen. Let us know at: podcast@mindbodygreen.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the MyBuddyGreen podcast. I'm Jason Wackeb, founder and co-CEO of MyBuddyGreen and your host.
0:08.7	Dr. Shanna Swann is an award-winning scientist based at Mount Sinai and one of the leading
0:13.6	environmental and reproductive epidemiologists in the world. She has published more than 200 scientific
0:20.6	papers and has been featured in extensive media coverage globally. And now she is the best-selling
0:27.0	author of Countdown. How our modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female
0:33.7	reproductive development and impaling the future of the human race.
0:41.9	Shanna, welcome. Thank you. So Countdown is filled with extraordinarily disturbing data as
0:51.6	we are experiencing a bit of fertility crisis to say the least. And you say in the book and I
0:58.6	quote, the problem isn't that something is inherently wrong with the human body as it is of
1:03.7	all over time. It's that chemicals in our environment and unhealthy lifestyle practices in our
1:10.5	modern world are disrupting our hormonal balance, causing varying degrees of reproductive havoc
1:19.1	that can foil fertility and lead to long-term health problems even after one has left the
1:26.0	reproductive years. End quote. So I'm going to go straight to the next piece of data.
1:31.8	We're going to start with male fertility because we don't typically start there in the conversation
1:36.6	around fertility. And wow, this statistic from 1973 to 2011, the total sperm count of men in
1:44.3	Western countries dropped by 59%. So what's, I know this is a big question, but what's driving this?
1:53.3	And are you concerned that sperm count were headed towards sperm count zero?
2:01.2	So those two questions probably cover most of the book, right?
2:05.1	Yes, I know. It's a big question. I will close the books fantastic and it's scary, but you
2:13.0	also close with them. We'll get there. Here are the things we can do to avoid. There is a message
2:17.5	of hope at the end, but wow, some of these statistics, wow. Yeah, so what is, to start with what is
2:25.4	yes, yes, yeah, let's talk about the men first. We don't usually talk about the men first as we
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