The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1638 - Dr. Shanna Swan

00:00:01.000 Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out!

00:00:04.000 The Joe Rogan Experience.

00:00:06.000 Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day!

00:00:14.000 Hello.

00:00:15.000 Hello.

00:00:15.000 Welcome to the show.

00:00:16.000 Thanks for doing this.

00:00:17.000 Thanks for having me.

00:00:19.000 I'm very concerned with what you're saying.

00:00:21.000 Your book, Countdown, says that the modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female reproductive development, and imperiling the future of the human race.

00:00:34.000 That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

00:00:37.000 I believe you, but I'm scared.

00:00:39.000 I think we should all be kind of scared.

00:00:41.000 Now what is it specifically about the modern world that scares you?

00:00:47.000 Oh, gosh, a whole bunch.

00:00:49.000 But what I write about in this book is the problem with the decline of our reproductive health and the chemicals in the environment that we're surrounded with every day, all the time, that are playing a big part in it.

00:01:05.000 Not the only part, but a big part in it.

00:01:07.000 And so they're playing a part in affecting our hormonal production?

00:01:12.000 Is that what's going on?

00:01:14.000 Yes, that's actually a good part of what they do.

00:01:19.000 They interfere with our hormonal systems in various ways.

00:01:23.000 So they could increase production of a hormone, like a pro-estrogen.

00:01:29.000 They could decrease, say, an antiandrogen, decrease testosterone.

00:01:33.000 They could mess with our thyroid hormone, and so on and so forth. 0.68

00:01:36.000 So, they change levels, but they also change how they're transported and they interfere with making them available to other parts of the body, basically.

00:01:47.000 And you got it right.

00:01:49.000 I mean, that doesn't sound so scary to people, but the consequences sound really scary, which is that we're, you know, by every measure, our sperm count, Our miscarriage rates, our fertility rates, our testosterone levels,

00:02:05.000 they're all going south, if you will, at the rate of about 1% per year.

00:02:11.000 And specifically, which chemicals are responsible for this alteration?

00:02:18.000 A whole bunch of them.

00:02:20.000 And as a group, they're called endocrine disruptors because they disrupt the endocrine system, right?

00:02:28.000 And so I spent a lot of time studying one particular class of those, which have the ability to lower testosterone.

00:02:39.000 And the reason I did that is because I'm interested in reproductive health.

00:02:43.000 And testosterone is so critical, as you know, for Men and women's reproductive health.

00:02:49.000 So that class is called phthalates.

00:02:52.000 It's a terrible mouthful to say.

00:02:55.000 Phthalates.

00:02:55.000 Phthalates, right.

00:02:58.000 And they sound weird, but they're very, very common.

00:03:01.000 And if you gave a urine sample today, And send it off to the Centers for Disease Control, you would see that you have, you know, not only phthalates, but other chemicals and plastics and other chemicals in your body right now.

00:03:15.000 You could do that.

00:03:17.000 It costs a little bit.

00:03:18.000 And are we getting these from food?

00:03:20.000 Are we getting these from water?

00:03:22.000 What are we getting these?

00:03:23.000 All of the above.

00:03:24.000 All of the above.

00:03:25.000 But the phthalates are probably mostly coming from our food.

00:03:34.000 And that's kind of surprising.

00:03:36.000 Do you want me to tell you how?

00:03:38.000 Yes, please.

00:03:38.000 Yeah.

00:03:39.000 Okay.

00:03:39.000 So let's think of a little experiment.

00:03:44.000 So go into a hospital, into the neonatal intensive care nursery.

00:03:50.000 I'll come back to the food.

00:03:52.000 And there's a baby lying there, and that baby has a lot of lines coming into her body. 0.72

00:03:58.000 Okay?

00:03:59.000 And that's delivering food, nutrients, oxygen, whatever the baby needs.

00:04:05.000 Okay?

00:04:06.000 And the tubes are soft, squishy plastic.

00:04:13.000 Okay, so as the food nutrients comes through the tubes, goes into the baby, the baby metabolizes them, goes into the urine because they're water-soluble, and then we get the urine, we measure, and we can see what's in it.

00:04:28.000 And the amount of phthalate that's in that urine is exactly proportional to the number of lines coming into the baby.

00:04:37.000 So if you understand that, you understand how food could be contaminated with phthalates, because milking machines have this, and all kinds of processing machines have this soft plastic.

00:04:49.000 So this stuff is coming into the food somewhere between the time it's picked.

00:04:56.000 And by the way, phthalates could be in pesticides as well.

00:04:59.000 I'll tell you why in a minute.

00:05:01.000 And then they're introduced not only through those tubes, but also through the packaging.

00:05:08.000 They're wrapped in soft plastic sometimes.

00:05:11.000 And then in our homes, we might cook in microwave in plastic, for example.

00:05:17.000 All of that doesn't stick to the plastic.

00:05:21.000 It's not chemically bound.

00:05:22.000 Hops into the food, gets into us, gets into a pregnant woman's womb, affects the offspring. 0.66

00:05:29.000 And I hope to be able to tell you how it does that.

00:05:32.000 But that's what I've been studying for about 20 years.

00:05:36.000 So these plastic covers, like if you buy food and it's wrapped, like if you buy peppers or something like that, and they're wrapped in plastic, that plastic is leaching onto your food, a certain amount of these phthalates,

00:05:52.000 no matter what.

00:05:53.000 Different plastics are different, and I can't speak to all plastics, and some people take a lot of care to wrap their food in safe plastics.

00:06:01.000 What are safe plastics?

00:06:02.000 Yeah, so it's a changing landscape as new things are introduced, but there's an old saying, which I think is pretty much still true, which is four, five, one, and two, all the rest are bad for you.

00:06:16.000 What does that mean?

00:06:16.000 It means that if you had a...

00:06:19.000 Plastic cup here, we could look at the bottom of it and you'd see a recycling code.

00:06:24.000 You've seen those, right?

00:06:25.000 Yes.

00:06:26.000 In the triangle, there's a number.

00:06:28.000 And that number is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. So if you want to know, is it...

00:06:32.000 It's not on there.

00:06:33.000 Is it...

00:06:34.000 Jamie doesn't have one on his?

00:06:36.000 Maybe it's in the plastic somewhere else.

00:06:37.000 Sorry.

00:06:37.000 You have to look at the bottom.

00:06:38.000 Oh, there it is.

00:06:39.000 Yep.

00:06:40.000 Plastic bottle...

00:06:44.000 It just has the symbol.

00:06:45.000 It doesn't have a number on it.

00:06:46.000 Well, some do and some don't.

00:06:49.000 Four, five, one, and two, all the rest are bad for you.

00:06:52.000 That's pretty easy, right?

00:06:53.000 So, unfortunately, the wrappings on the peppers and so on don't have a number on them, but by and large, if it's...

00:07:04.000 By and large, I can't say.

00:07:06.000 It really varies.

00:07:07.000 But I do know that anything that comes in plastic, you do not want to put in the microwave.

00:07:12.000 Absolutely do not want to.

00:07:14.000 Really?

00:07:15.000 So microwave foods that are in plastic containers?

00:07:20.000 No.

00:07:20.000 No bueno.

00:07:21.000 No bueno.

00:07:22.000 Take them out, put them in ceramic, put them in glass.

00:07:27.000 It's really good.

00:07:28.000 And in general, if you can, get plastics out of your kitchen.

00:07:32.000 When did all this come to light?

00:07:35.000 When did people start understanding the negative consequences of plastics and your food?

00:07:43.000 Well, they came to understand it first in animals, because that's the way science works.

00:07:50.000 You know, first you do animal studies and then you try to replicate them in humans, right?

00:07:54.000 And so, in around 2000, they did some experiments where they fed a rat food contaminated with phthalates.

00:08:05.000 And then they looked to see how the offspring developed.

00:08:10.000 Right?

00:08:10.000 And what they saw was that the males were born different than the females and different from unexposed males.

00:08:21.000 Do you want me to tell you how different?

00:08:23.000 Yes, please.

00:08:24.000 So this will really interest you, I think.

00:08:26.000 What happened is...

00:08:29.000 So let's go back.

00:08:30.000 Okay.

00:08:32.000 Before the phthalates, you know, early in pregnancy, the genitals are just a single ridge.

00:08:39.000 Same in males and females.

00:08:42.000 Undifferentiated.

00:08:44.000 Okay?

00:08:44.000 And then at a certain time, and in mice and rats it's 15 to 18 days of gestation, the testicles start making testosterone.

00:08:55.000 And then that gives the signal to produce the male typical genitals. 0.99

00:09:03.000 So If they don't have the testosterone, there will be ovaries and if there is testosterone, there'll be testicles and so on and so forth, right? 1.00

00:09:13.000 And that migration requires testosterone at exactly the right time and the right amount.

00:09:20.000 It's very delicately programmed, okay?

00:09:24.000 If that happens, if everything goes well, then the penis will develop, it'll have a certain size, and then there's something which is very key to my research, which is something you might know by the name of the taint. 0.94

00:09:38.000 That taint, or we call it anagenital distance... 0.78

00:09:42.000 Yeah, it's not a real, it's not really a technical term, is it?

00:09:45.000 But anogenital distance is.

00:09:47.000 Yes, but taint.

00:09:48.000 Solaris listening to a PhD.

00:09:50.000 Right.

00:09:50.000 Well, I'm saying that because I'm talking to a lot of people who might not know.

00:09:56.000 The area known as the taint.

00:09:57.000 Okay.

00:09:58.000 Yes.

00:09:59.000 Known on the street as the taint.

00:10:01.000 Yes, the streets.

00:10:03.000 Or the Gooch or the Grundle.

00:10:05.000 The Gooch.

00:10:06.000 I've never...

00:10:06.000 You know about the Gooch?

00:10:08.000 Yeah, I just saw somebody the other day that didn't know what a taint was.

00:10:11.000 And they were like, oh, you mean the Gooch?

00:10:12.000 I've never heard of the Gooch.

00:10:14.000 Yeah.

00:10:15.000 I thought the Gooch was like a baseball player.

00:10:17.000 Well, it could be that also, but...

00:10:19.000 Isn't there a guy named Gooch?

00:10:19.000 Maybe he's named after...

00:10:20.000 Sorry.

00:10:21.000 And also ABC. Have you heard ABC? ABC? No.

00:10:24.000 I have not heard that.

00:10:25.000 How does that one go?

00:10:27.000 Assball Connector.

00:10:28.000 Oh, the Assball Connector.

00:10:29.000 Okay.

00:10:30.000 Yeah.

00:10:30.000 Okay, so...

00:10:32.000 Yes, you can measure.

00:10:33.000 Yeah, it's not called an ABC. It's not called an ABC. Okay.

00:10:36.000 Sorry.

00:10:37.000 So here you got this distance and it's been measured in animals for like a hundred years.

00:10:43.000 And what they use it for was first to just sex the animal. 0.85

00:10:47.000 So the litter is born.

00:10:49.000 There's a lot of little pups.

00:10:50.000 They want to separate the males and the females because they're going to do different things. 0.93

00:10:54.000 And they just hold them up by the tail and they look.

00:10:56.000 And the reason you can do this is because in the male, it's much longer.

00:11:02.000 It's 50 to 100% longer.

00:11:05.000 Stop and think about this.

00:11:06.000 There's nothing else in the body that's that different between males and females in terms of size.

00:11:12.000 Organs, yes, but size, no.

00:11:14.000 You know, our heights don't differ by 50 to 100%.

00:11:17.000 Our weights, nothing, nothing.

00:11:19.000 It's this is it.

00:11:20.000 This is the...

00:11:22.000 The mark.

00:11:23.000 Is that in all animals?

00:11:25.000 It's almost all mammals.

00:11:27.000 Really?

00:11:27.000 The hyena's a little different.

00:11:28.000 We could talk about that.

00:11:29.000 Yeah, I know about those.

00:11:30.000 You know about those, yeah.

00:11:31.000 I have a whole bit about them.

00:11:32.000 Yeah.

00:11:34.000 So, you know, the females are masculinized, so they have a longer AGD, right? 1.00

00:11:40.000 But for most mammals, it's this way, okay, including humans.

00:11:46.000 So here's this Little pup that's born and if he's unexposed, he'll have a good, you know, standard penal size and AGD and he won't have any malformations of his penis and so on.

00:12:00.000 You know, he'll be normal. 0.84

00:12:02.000 But if his mother was exposed to phthalates, everything can go south. 1.00

00:12:07.000 And what happens is the penis is smaller. 1.00

00:12:11.000 And the AGD is smaller. 1.00

00:12:13.000 And the scrotum is smaller.

00:12:14.000 And the testes are maybe not descended.

00:12:17.000 In other words, it didn't finish the process.

00:12:20.000 It was arrested, if you will.

00:12:23.000 So we say that that pup is incompletely masculinized.

00:12:28.000 Now, the amount of phthalates that get into the pup system in utero, is that possible to achieve those levels in the modern world with human beings?

00:12:40.000 Absolutely.

00:12:41.000 It is.

00:12:42.000 And I'm going to tell you what I did to show that.

00:12:46.000 I showed that.

00:12:47.000 Wow.

00:12:49.000 So, when I heard this story I was flying on a plane to Japan to go to a conference.

00:12:56.000 I was with a friend who was a chemist for the Centers for Disease Control.

00:13:00.000 And he said, Shauna, you should study phthalates.

00:13:04.000 And I'm going, why?

00:13:06.000 I'd never heard of them.

00:13:07.000 Why phthalates?

00:13:08.000 And he said, well, we have been measuring them at the CDC and they're in everybody.

00:13:13.000 They're in pregnant women. 1.00

00:13:15.000 And this group of scientists in the National Toxicology Program has shown that they altered the development of the male newborn.

00:13:27.000 And they called that the phthalate syndrome.

00:13:32.000 That's what it's called.

00:13:33.000 That collection of changes that come about after the mother has phthalates is called the phthalate syndrome.

00:13:39.000 So I thought, well, does that happen in humans?

00:13:44.000 Same question you asked, right?

00:13:48.000 So how would you answer that question?

00:13:52.000 Then I'll tell you what I did.

00:13:54.000 Well, you would hope that you're not running experiments like you're running them on animals.

00:14:02.000 Right.

00:14:03.000 Are you measuring the blood of the people that are having children that have issues with development issues in the way the children look when they're born?

00:14:17.000 Is that what you're doing?

00:14:18.000 It's really close.

00:14:20.000 So...

00:14:23.000 Phthalates have the property that they dissolve in water, water soluble.

00:14:28.000 And so they go into the urine.

00:14:30.000 So for this class of chemicals, if you want to know how much is in your body and my body, we've got to measure the urine.

00:14:36.000 Other chemicals, like flame returns, we would look in the blood.

00:14:41.000 So it depends what the chemical is.

00:14:43.000 But the right idea, look inside the body.

00:14:46.000 Okay.

00:14:47.000 Then, rather than looking at kids with problems, what I did was I just took a whole population of pregnant women and I got their urine, measured their phthalates, got their kids, measured their kids. 0.96

00:15:03.000 So then I had the problem of what to measure in the kids because nobody had made this translation from an animal genital developmental system to a human.

00:15:17.000 And so that was kind of a challenge, you know, figuring out how to do that.

00:15:21.000 But we did that.

00:15:22.000 And we developed this system for this exam for measuring all these things that you measure in a rat.

00:15:28.000 We measured it in our children.

00:15:30.000 And then we showed, and this was big news when it came out, that the mother's phthalates did alter the genitals of the boys.

00:15:42.000 So that was the first evidence.

00:15:45.000 That was 2005. And then we published some more in 2008. Fortunately, I got money to do it all again.

00:15:54.000 NIH doesn't like to pay for replication.

00:15:56.000 It's very expensive.

00:15:58.000 These things are $5 million a study, by the way.

00:16:00.000 Well, it seems like it's very important, though.

00:16:03.000 Yeah.

00:16:03.000 So they gave it to me.

00:16:04.000 They gave my money to do it again.

00:16:07.000 So the second time, I did it better because I really knew what I was looking for.

00:16:12.000 And I got urine actually in three points in pregnancy.

00:16:16.000 And I measured the kids exactly when they're born.

00:16:19.000 So everything was much more precise.

00:16:22.000 And I found it again.

00:16:24.000 So now there's no question, I don't think anyone questions, that at least this class of chemicals, which we know lower testosterone, alter the development of these boys.

00:16:39.000 And then I asked, well, what does that have to do with sperm count?

00:16:44.000 Because actually for a long time, we haven't talked yet about sperm count, but I've been studying, tracing, you know, what's happening with sperm count I'll tell you the history of that in a minute.

00:16:54.000 So then I thought, well, is this related to sperm count?

00:16:56.000 Well, these are babies.

00:16:57.000 They don't have a sperm count.

00:17:00.000 But in rats, it looked like the AGD was permanent.

00:17:05.000 So if you had a short, just like if you have a small hand, you know, your stature is set at birth, right?

00:17:12.000 So the AGD, if you're born small, and my friend Earl Gray, who was a toxicologist, said AGD is forever.

00:17:20.000 We don't know that for sure about humans, by the way, because we haven't had the 20 years yet.

00:17:25.000 But if you believe that, then a sensible thing to do was to take a group of adult men who could give you a sperm count and measure their AGD, right?

00:17:37.000 And then you could see whether those with a shorter AGD Had a lower sperm count.

00:17:43.000 And then you would have one pretty solid piece of evidence that chemicals in the environment lower sperm count.

00:17:51.000 Are you with me?

00:17:52.000 Yes, ma'am.

00:17:53.000 Okay.

00:17:53.000 So I did that study too.

00:17:55.000 So I got students in Rochester, New York to volunteer for 75 bucks to participate.

00:18:03.000 And they gave us a semen sample and they gave us opportunity to measure them, also a questionnaire, How does one measure kids' taints?

00:18:12.000 Do they just bend over and you bust out a ruler?

00:18:15.000 I happened to bring you something to show you.

00:18:17.000 I noticed you had this measuring device.

00:18:22.000 Jamie's volunteered to let you measure his taint, by the way.

00:18:31.000 So, this is not for a baby.

00:18:33.000 This is for our Rochester Young Men study.

00:18:38.000 And it looks kind of fierce, but we had the points taken down.

00:18:45.000 Yeah, I used one of those to measure pool cue tips.

00:18:48.000 There you go.

00:18:49.000 All right.

00:18:50.000 So you know all about it.

00:18:51.000 Yeah.

00:18:51.000 Turn it on.

00:18:52.000 You want 13 millimeters.

00:18:53.000 That's what I like.

00:18:54.000 But only for...

00:18:59.000 So look, I also brought you a little diagram so you can see where we measure.

00:19:06.000 Okay.

00:19:07.000 But we can't show this.

00:19:08.000 I don't know how to show this, but I'll show it to you.

00:19:09.000 So the calipers are in, they're in millimeters or in inches or both?

00:19:14.000 Both, you can, yeah, yeah.

00:19:16.000 Oh boy, you got a diagram.

00:19:18.000 Is there a chart online I could look up?

00:19:21.000 How about I just hold this up?

00:19:23.000 Okay, that works too.

00:19:24.000 All right.

00:19:28.000 Can we have a selfie with you and me in that picture?

00:19:30.000 Yes, ma'am.

00:19:31.000 Of course.

00:19:34.000 Okay.

00:19:35.000 All right.

00:19:36.000 So when I published this, the headlines were, Size Matters, But It's Not What You Think.

00:19:45.000 Right.

00:19:45.000 Right?

00:19:46.000 Yeah.

00:19:46.000 And so I got all these people asking me, What should it be?

00:19:50.000 What's good enough?

00:19:51.000 What's big enough?

00:19:52.000 So I did this translation from the millimeters for you.

00:19:55.000 So here it is.

00:19:56.000 The two inches is the median.

00:20:01.000 Okay?

00:20:01.000 Okay.

00:20:02.000 And in this population.

00:20:05.000 And here's the kicker.

00:20:07.000 If it was less than two, men who had less than two inches were seven times more likely to have a sperm count in the subfertile range, I can tell you what that is, as men who had an AGD longer than two inches.

00:20:24.000 Wow.

00:20:25.000 Seven times.

00:20:28.000 It certainly is related to sperm count.

00:20:31.000 And then another study in California showed that infertile men in an infertility clinic versus men who had born a child had smaller taint length.

00:20:43.000 When did this stuff start getting into our food supply?

00:20:49.000 Has that been estimated?

00:20:52.000 So the growth of these chemicals tracks with the growth of the petrochemical industry because they're made from petrochemical byproducts.

00:21:07.000 So if you look at a curve, it starts around 1950. So back in 1950 you have people loving science, jumping on the science bandwagon, There's this better living through chemistry that everyone's talking about.

00:21:24.000 And everybody is just wanting everything made of plastic.

00:21:29.000 It's the new craze.

00:21:32.000 And it just took off.

00:21:34.000 It went faster than a straight line, exponentially up.

00:21:37.000 And so somewhere in there, it started having an effect.

00:21:42.000 But where...

00:21:44.000 We're not sure, but I did look at the decline in sperm count over time, so we could look at that as an indication that This is not the only thing that's affecting sperm count, by the way, these phthalates.

00:21:57.000 But that's one where I feel I can say this with confidence because I measured those babies and I did it.

00:22:06.000 I did the science and I did it again.

00:22:09.000 And other people have done it.

00:22:11.000 And so I believe it's solid.

00:22:15.000 And that's just one example of the many chemicals that can affect our hormone system.

00:22:22.000 Well, it's very frightening because that's not a reversible thing.

00:22:28.000 That's correct.

00:22:29.000 That is absolutely correct.

00:22:31.000 So the development, the stunted development of these children is permanent.

00:22:35.000 That's correct.

00:22:35.000 And it's probably incredibly widespread when you think about the use of these plastics and...

00:22:41.000 That's right.

00:22:43.000 I mean, the amount of plastics.

00:22:45.000 I mean, people have plastic cups and plastic plates and plastic this and plastic that and Tupperware and stuff for me.

00:22:51.000 Yep.

00:22:52.000 Calipers.

00:22:52.000 I can measure pool cues and taints.

00:23:00.000 So, this is...

00:23:02.000 Is this well known?

00:23:05.000 I mean, I haven't heard this before.

00:23:07.000 And I'm wondering, is this because I'm ignorant of this?

00:23:11.000 Or is this because this is...

00:23:13.000 I mean, you were saying this was all discovered in the early 2000s.

00:23:17.000 And your last study was 2005. Is that what you said?

00:23:20.000 No.

00:23:21.000 The first study was 2005. That was the first one.

00:23:26.000 The animal studies were earlier, but that was the first human one, and they've been going on ever since.

00:23:32.000 The problem is that we don't talk about the consequences of this.

00:23:39.000 We as a society, we don't talk about sperm counts are going down, testosterone is going down, you know, we're having more and more children by assisted reproduction.

00:23:51.000 I don't know about you, but do you know anybody who's had trouble having a child?

00:23:56.000 Yes.

00:23:57.000 Everybody says yes.

00:23:58.000 It's quite a few people, but in general, I notice it's usually older people that have had a career, and then when they get into their late 30s or their 40s, then they decide to have children.

00:24:09.000 It's very difficult.

00:24:10.000 Yes.

00:24:11.000 Aging is definitely a problem.

00:24:13.000 But it's not the only problem.

00:24:16.000 And there are many young...

00:24:17.000 If you talk to your nice nurse that I... I forgot her name. 1.00

00:24:20.000 Mercy.

00:24:21.000 She told me about two of her young friends who've had trouble having...

00:24:24.000 It's not just the...

00:24:25.000 It's the older ones.

00:24:27.000 You know, they're more prevalent, so you hear more of them.

00:24:29.000 But young people, too, are having problems.

00:24:31.000 And it's...

00:24:33.000 It's everywhere and it's increasing.

00:24:35.000 So I think now we're going to start paying attention because we're feeling the impact, you know?

00:24:43.000 Until it comes home to roost, as you say, it's not going to make us change anything.

00:24:49.000 But I think this might happen.

00:24:51.000 Yeah, I was reading something about lowered testosterone counts and that lowered sperm counts is happening with people and they were trying to figure out why, but they had not made the connection to your work.

00:25:02.000 It was just an article about trying to recognize what's causing this trend.

00:25:07.000 So listening to what you're saying...

00:25:10.000 It really hits home.

00:25:12.000 That's terrifying because I'm thinking about how many people this affects and how many people consume things that are either wrapped in plastic or they microwave things in plastic or they drink bottled water.

00:25:26.000 We stopped drinking bottled water here a while back just because it was wasteful.

00:25:30.000 And I'd heard about plastic leaching into waters and how it could do something, add estrogen to your body or something like that.

00:25:38.000 I'm like, well, it just seems like a bad idea to just...

00:25:40.000 Drink out of plastic all the time.

00:25:42.000 And they said it was a bad idea when you leave, like we lived in California, it was hot.

00:25:47.000 And if you had a water bottle in your car, you should never drink it after it's been sitting in there.

00:25:51.000 The same thing.

00:25:52.000 But I never made the connection to the developmental cycle of a child.

00:25:59.000 That child is the most sensitive organism.

00:26:01.000 It affects adults too, but because there's just so much going on there, right?

00:26:08.000 Everything is developing then.

00:26:10.000 That's the most critical period.

00:26:11.000 And like you say, it's forever.

00:26:14.000 So let me give you a good example of this.

00:26:16.000 Smoking.

00:26:17.000 Smoking is not a good thing for reproduction.

00:26:19.000 It's not a good thing for sperm count, okay?

00:26:21.000 If the mother smokes, then on the average her son can lose 40% of his sperm count. 0.89

00:26:30.000 Hmm.

00:26:30.000 If the father smokes in that period before he conceives the child, there's 60 to 70 days that the sperm is being created.

00:26:41.000 In that period, that sperm is vulnerable to what he's exposed to, like smoking.

00:26:46.000 So then that child has also about a 40% lower sperm.

00:26:52.000 And that's not fixable.

00:26:54.000 However, if the man smokes himself, his parents didn't, he did, He might have a 20% reduction and then he goes off and then he's good to go.

00:27:06.000 So it's very different if the exposure occurs In utero or postnatally or in childhood or in adulthood.

00:27:15.000 So it's the unborn child that we really need to protect the most.

00:27:24.000 This is really scary information and I'm wondering why this is not more popular.

00:27:31.000 Why is this not on the news first story?

00:27:36.000 This is affecting the development cycle of how many children?

00:27:42.000 Everyone.

00:27:43.000 That's crazy.

00:27:45.000 It is crazy.

00:27:46.000 And it takes a long time to get this word out.

00:27:50.000 And I wrote Countdown for this reason.

00:27:53.000 I've been talking about this.

00:28:00.000 Yeah.

00:28:15.000 Well, over a hundred interviews in the last two months.

00:28:17.000 I mean, I'm just saying this to everybody I can because it's got to get out there.

00:28:22.000 I just can't believe I haven't heard it before.

00:28:24.000 That's what's so terrifying to me.

00:28:26.000 When I received the pitch, I read the breakdown of what your work was and what you discovered, and I was thinking, why don't I know this?

00:28:36.000 How come I don't know this?

00:28:37.000 This is crazy.

00:28:39.000 What it's called?

00:28:40.000 Okay, let's just talk.

00:28:41.000 Maybe this is grossly exaggerated.

00:28:45.000 But no, it's under-exaggerated.

00:28:48.000 It's under-reported, rather.

00:28:50.000 It's definitely under-reported.

00:28:51.000 I just don't understand how it could be.

00:28:53.000 This seems like a significant issue.

00:28:56.000 It is a significant issue and hopefully more people are recognizing.

00:29:00.000 But look, people don't, if you have a problem with your cholesterol, I'm sure you don't, but suppose you had your cholesterol checked, you go to a cocktail party, you say, I went to the doctor, I had a high cholesterol, I'm going to not eat this and this.

00:29:14.000 You wouldn't say, I went to my doctor and have a low sperm count.

00:29:18.000 Right.

00:29:19.000 Right?

00:29:19.000 People don't talk about this.

00:29:21.000 They don't talk about their reproductive health.

00:29:23.000 And here's one of the surprising things is that low sperm count that's related to phthalates, that man is going to die younger.

00:29:37.000 Nature doesn't want him around.

00:29:41.000 It affects the whole body.

00:29:43.000 He's likely to have more heart disease.

00:29:45.000 And most likely that is what's going on, right?

00:29:48.000 Like the body has, with a low sperm count body, the body is obviously damaged by this process in the womb. 0.95

00:29:55.000 Right.

00:29:56.000 And longevity, vitality, just everything has to suffer.

00:30:00.000 I mean, have you made a connection with this and depression or with anxiety or any other things that are affecting people to disproportionate amount?

00:30:11.000 I haven't looked at that but I can tell you it affects libido.

00:30:15.000 Yes.

00:30:15.000 Right?

00:30:16.000 But that is why I asked because there's a gentleman that's a friend of mine named Dr. Mark Gordon and he's worked with a lot of people with traumatic brain injuries and one of the things that happens with damage to the pituitary gland is a decrease in the amount of testosterone that's produced by the brain.

00:30:31.000 And the testes and then what happens after that is severe depression and this connection between severe depression and lower testosterone is pretty significant.

00:30:40.000 He's done a lot of work with this group called the Warrior Angel Foundation with another friend of mine Andrew Marr and they have worked with these soldiers and now he's also done some work with football players and fighters and a lot of other people with head injuries and he's shown this direct correlation between severe depression and lower testosterone.

00:31:01.000 Anxiety, a lot of mental health issues.

00:31:04.000 I would imagine that these kids that are born with this disruption in their developmental cycle and they have lowered sperm count, I bet everything is decreased.

00:31:16.000 Everything's a mess.

00:31:17.000 Yeah, I'm definitely going to follow up on that and look at that.

00:31:22.000 We've followed our kids.

00:31:24.000 Our kids are now, in our latest study, eight, nine years old.

00:31:29.000 So they're not there yet.

00:31:31.000 So I don't have those endpoints.

00:31:34.000 But we do know...

00:31:36.000 That when we asked, for example, by the way, women need testosterone too. 0.59

00:31:41.000 Yeah.

00:31:43.000 And it's related to women's libido. 1.00

00:31:46.000 So in our study, we did ask the woman about her sexual satisfaction, frequency, and so on.

00:31:52.000 And higher levels of phthalates were associated with lower sexual satisfaction.

00:31:58.000 And, you know, and of course, it's related to erectile dysfunction, which, by the way, is now...

00:32:05.000 You know, rapidly rising and testosterone replacement is being used by younger and younger men.

00:32:13.000 So it's a big thing.

00:32:15.000 It's affecting all of our, you know...

00:32:20.000 Reproductive health! 0.99

00:32:23.000 Is this in other countries as well?

00:32:25.000 Yes.

00:32:26.000 Have they measured this in different countries, like countries in the developmental world and the countries where they use less plastic versus countries where they use more plastics?

00:32:37.000 No, I don't know of a study like ours in a developing country, but we have studies in other countries for sure in Europe.

00:32:48.000 But one measure of where it's a problem, I would say, is where is sperm count declining?

00:32:58.000 I mean, the kickoff for this book, Countdown, was a paper that we wrote in 2017 in which we showed that sperm count in Western countries had declined kind of catastrophically.

00:33:12.000 So let me just tell you the numbers.

00:33:14.000 Okay.

00:33:15.000 Think back to 1973. That was the first, that's the start of our trend.

00:33:22.000 And at that point, the median, that's the middle of the distribution, was 99 million sperm per milliliter.

00:33:30.000 That's a good, healthy sperm count.

00:33:33.000 73. At the end of our study period was 2011. In those 39 years, it had dropped from 99 to 47. Yikes.

00:33:47.000 Over all Western countries.

00:33:50.000 All Western countries?

00:33:51.000 Yes, average or overall Western countries, yes.

00:33:54.000 Wow!

00:33:56.000 That's more than a 50% decline in under 40 years.

00:34:02.000 That's crazy!

00:34:04.000 Yeah, thank you.

00:34:06.000 I keep repeating myself, but I'm sorry.

00:34:10.000 I would imagine this would be a big news story.

00:34:13.000 I don't understand why you have to come to some Meatheads podcast to explain this to people.

00:34:21.000 When I'm getting the word out on things like that, it really scares the shit out of me.

00:34:24.000 Because I'm like, how is this not being picked up by major news organizations and 60 Minutes and all these different programs?

00:34:32.000 Why aren't they not sounding the alarms?

00:34:35.000 We need to figure this out.

00:34:36.000 And we need to figure it out now.

00:34:38.000 Right.

00:34:39.000 Because what if it keeps trending down this way?

00:34:42.000 It is.

00:34:43.000 So what we did in our curve, we said, okay, that's 40 years.

00:34:46.000 What about if we go 30 years?

00:34:48.000 Maybe it's slowing down.

00:34:50.000 Nope.

00:34:50.000 20 years.

00:34:51.000 Slowing down?

00:34:52.000 Nope.

00:34:52.000 10 years?

00:34:53.000 Nope.

00:34:54.000 We saw no indication that the trend was slowing down.

00:34:58.000 It's going to have to, let me just point out, because if you bring it down to zero...

00:35:04.000 Just think what that means.

00:35:06.000 Median of zero means half the sperm would be negative.

00:35:10.000 Counts would be negative.

00:35:11.000 Not possible.

00:35:13.000 Can't have a negative.

00:35:14.000 Right?

00:35:15.000 Right.

00:35:15.000 So it's going to have to, just think about the curve, coming down, coming down towards it.

00:35:20.000 It's going to have to flatten out.

00:35:22.000 There'll be none.

00:35:22.000 There'll be no sperm.

00:35:24.000 You'll have a zero sperm count. 1.00

00:35:26.000 I mean, if it's really dropping down by, it's basically 50% in the time period from 1973 to 2011, is that what you said?

00:35:35.000 Yeah.

00:35:36.000 That's bananas.

00:35:38.000 I mean, the fact that that can even happen and there's not alarms being sounded.

00:35:43.000 I know.

00:35:45.000 We're changing human beings.

00:35:47.000 Absolutely.

00:35:48.000 Like what it means to be a human being.

00:35:49.000 Developing human beings is a different thing now because of poisons.

00:35:53.000 Right.

00:35:54.000 Wow.

00:35:59.000 That's really scary.

00:36:01.000 It's really scary when you think about what you're saying about people having a hard time reproducing.

00:36:08.000 And where this could lead to, a dramatic drop-off in the population.

00:36:13.000 We're worried about overpopulation.

00:36:15.000 But if this is real, the children that are being born today, if they have this issue, and then we're looking at them 20 years from now, the reproductive cycle starts kicking in in terms of them having babies and raising families,

00:36:32.000 what's the numbers going to be?

00:36:34.000 What are they going to be for their children?

00:36:36.000 Right.

00:36:39.000 Wow!

00:36:40.000 And here, another thing to think about, So a mother is exposed to some phthalates, other chemicals, the phenols, the line tin cans, and the flame retardants, and the pesticides. 0.98

00:36:55.000 They're all bad.

00:36:56.000 They all can do this in different ways.

00:36:59.000 But let's just talk about the phthalates.

00:37:01.000 So the mother is exposed to the phthalates, and she's carrying, let's just say, a son in the womb.

00:37:09.000 And then he has within him what's called the germ cells of his sperm, right?

00:37:19.000 So she's exposed, the child is exposed, and the next generation is exposed.

00:37:27.000 So from one person being exposed, you're exposing three generations.

00:37:33.000 So you're right to say, think about the later, you know, the kids coming and the kids coming after that.

00:37:40.000 But here's the good news.

00:37:42.000 Should be some good news, right?

00:37:44.000 The good news is that in a very elegant study in the University of Washington, Pat Hunt showed that if you...

00:37:55.000 Have a guy, mouse, who was exposed and had impaired fertility and sperm count.

00:38:02.000 And then you cleaned up everything about his environment and for his child's environment and his child's child's environment.

00:38:11.000 In three generations, we can recover reproductive health.

00:38:16.000 But what happens in three generations if we don't clean everything up?

00:38:20.000 Then the trend continues downward.

00:38:22.000 Right.

00:38:23.000 And how do we clean things up?

00:38:24.000 That's the real question.

00:38:25.000 If all this stuff comes from petrochemicals and plastics, that's a significant part of our world.

00:38:33.000 That's right.

00:38:33.000 And also a part of the world that has a very strong lobby, that does not want to decrease in sales.

00:38:40.000 Absolutely right.

00:38:43.000 Has anybody fought this?

00:38:45.000 Has anybody debated you on this?

00:38:47.000 Or does anyone deny the data?

00:38:50.000 No.

00:38:52.000 Not yet.

00:38:53.000 Wait till after this podcast.

00:38:55.000 I'm sure there'll be a lot of pushback from your listeners, but first of all, We can do better.

00:39:06.000 One place...

00:39:07.000 Let me just say, we used to do terribly with drugs.

00:39:10.000 The regulation of drugs was terrible.

00:39:12.000 That's why we had thalidomide babies, you know, and other terrible breakthroughs.

00:39:16.000 And then the FDA got it together and learned how to regulate drugs.

00:39:22.000 And we're pretty safe now.

00:39:25.000 And we know, for example, how to test vaccines and so on and so forth.

00:39:27.000 So we can...

00:39:30.000 Work toward a viable regulatory system if we want to.

00:39:35.000 So I believe that.

00:39:36.000 In Europe, they're many steps ahead of us because they have instituted something called reach.

00:39:44.000 Now, under reach, if a guy manufacturer wants to put a chemical into commerce, into a plastic bottle, into a Personal care product, where they are also, by the way.

00:39:57.000 He has to show that it's not harmful before he does that.

00:40:02.000 So he has to pass a series of tests.

00:40:04.000 In this country, we don't have that regulation.

00:40:07.000 In this country, it's put it in and we'll see if it's harmful.

00:40:13.000 No prior regulation required.

00:40:16.000 You see?

00:40:17.000 So it's really, really different.

00:40:19.000 The bottom line is like, we have only like 11 chemicals that are not allowed in our personal care products.

00:40:27.000 In Europe, they have 1100. They also don't allow commercials for drugs.

00:40:38.000 We have a lot of screwed up stuff over here.

00:40:40.000 Right.

00:40:41.000 So, you know, what we have to think about is how do we get angry enough and concerned enough to change the regulations so that we're protected?

00:40:54.000 Now, what can be done?

00:40:56.000 Has that been looked at?

00:40:58.000 Well, two questions.

00:40:59.000 First, what is happening to women? 1.00

00:41:01.000 And what is happening to female babies? 1.00

00:41:03.000 We're talking about lowered sperm count.

00:41:05.000 What's the effect on female children? 1.00

00:41:09.000 So this delicate testosterone balance that I talked about can go the other way for females, but that's not through something like phthalates. 1.00

00:41:18.000 It's through other chemicals possibly.

00:41:22.000 We just published a paper that, and this is early, I'm not going to, you know, this is not the same weight of evidence at all as I have for the phthalates, but we just published two papers in which we showed that when Mothers were exposed to higher levels of a certain pesticide,

00:41:39.000 which is in Roundup, which is—have you heard of Roundup?

00:41:43.000 Glyphosate.

00:41:44.000 Glyphosate?

00:41:44.000 Yeah.

00:41:45.000 So that unigenital distance in the girls was long, was more masculine.

00:41:53.000 And that was shown in rats as well.

00:41:58.000 So that may go away.

00:42:00.000 This was the first study.

00:42:01.000 It was a small study.

00:42:02.000 I don't know that that's going to stick.

00:42:04.000 But that's the kind of thing that could be going on, that there are chemicals out there that alter increased testosterone.

00:42:13.000 They're called proandrogens.

00:42:15.000 And they can mess up females in sort of in the opposite directions.

00:42:20.000 But it doesn't have that same effect on males, correct?

00:42:23.000 Like glyphosate?

00:42:24.000 No, glyphosate doesn't.

00:42:25.000 No, I don't think so.

00:42:27.000 Not in our kids.

00:42:29.000 So the animal data is a little not clear, but in our kids we didn't see anything in the males.

00:42:35.000 But the point is that there's lots of stuff out there.

00:42:39.000 That's messing.

00:42:40.000 It's messing with our hormone systems.

00:42:42.000 And so that's where we should be looking.

00:42:45.000 We should be looking at, you know, what's going on out there that we're taking in all the time, by the way.

00:42:51.000 Right.

00:42:52.000 We call them everywhere, all the time, chemicals, you know, because they're just coming in.

00:42:57.000 We can't stop them.

00:42:59.000 We don't know.

00:42:59.000 We don't know what's in our bodies.

00:43:02.000 And you know what?

00:43:04.000 It's not fair, you know, that we as consumers should have to worry about this.

00:43:09.000 I don't think.

00:43:09.000 Right.

00:43:10.000 I mean, why do I have to...

00:43:11.000 Well, it's a complete failure on the part of the regulators.

00:43:14.000 Right.

00:43:15.000 The people that are supposed to be watching out for the general public and not allowing these things to get into our bodies.

00:43:21.000 Just the fact that Roundup is still available.

00:43:25.000 Monsanto continues to sell it and also...

00:43:27.000 The fact that it clearly is terrible for people when it gets into your body.

00:43:33.000 It's not a benign thing whatsoever.

00:43:36.000 Right.

00:43:37.000 And that's just one.

00:43:38.000 Right.

00:43:39.000 What other things are affecting the developmental cycle?

00:43:44.000 Oh my gosh.

00:43:51.000 So there are, you know, there's the chemicals that are in coatings, just to say, you know, coatings of teflon frying pans, coatings of your jacket that you wear in the rain,

00:44:10.000 you know, repellent.

00:44:11.000 Those coatings, they're also on paper, you know, keeps the grease from going through to the box when you buy a pizza.

00:44:18.000 Those coatings are also hormonally active and very, very prevalent.

00:44:23.000 I haven't studied those myself, so I don't want to talk a lot about their effects, but I know they have reproductive effects.

00:44:29.000 I know they affect, for example, fetal growth.

00:44:37.000 So rain wear, like that kind of stuff?

00:44:39.000 Yeah.

00:44:40.000 Yeah.

00:44:43.000 The repellent.

00:44:44.000 The repellent.

00:44:45.000 Anything that puts a barrier, any barrier, a chemical barrier, they're called the PFOS. Sometimes they're called PFOS and PFOA. They're different classes of chemicals, but perfluorinated compounds.

00:44:58.000 Then there are the phenols, the bisphenols.

00:45:02.000 Which, by the way, you probably, did you ever try to buy a BPA-free bottle?

00:45:08.000 I don't know if you've ever tried.

00:45:09.000 Yes.

00:45:09.000 Yeah.

00:45:09.000 Right?

00:45:10.000 So labeled BPA-free.

00:45:11.000 So what happened was people got really upset about BPA. It had a lot of reproductive effects.

00:45:18.000 And so they took it out.

00:45:23.000 And that's good.

00:45:24.000 But what happened was, and this happens over and over and over again in chemical cycles, they put something else in.

00:45:31.000 They put in BPF like Frank and S like Sam. 0.80

00:45:36.000 And BPF and BPS are, particularly BPF is equally if not more risky than BPA. And the bottle says BPA-free, that's true, but it doesn't say bisphenol-free,

00:45:54.000 right?

00:45:55.000 So I think that's a dirty trick.

00:45:57.000 And we call it whack-a-mole.

00:46:02.000 What can the general public do to eliminate as much of these harmful chemicals as possible?

00:46:12.000 It's a big job.

00:46:13.000 For one thing, I'd say by countdown and look at the several chapters where we go into detail on things to avoid.

00:46:21.000 But I could say you could think about...

00:46:26.000 Thank you.

00:46:27.000 Thank you.

00:46:28.000 Think about walking through your kitchen and looking for plastics and trying to swap out ceramic and glass or metal, not for the microwave, of course, and in your bathroom to look at your personal care products.

00:46:47.000 They won't say phthalates, by and large.

00:46:51.000 Because you're not consuming them?

00:46:54.000 I don't know why they're not required.

00:46:56.000 It doesn't say phthalates on our spaghetti sauce that has phthalates in them either.

00:47:02.000 We can come back to that.

00:47:03.000 But I don't actually know what the regulation is.

00:47:06.000 I know for sure they don't have to be labeled in fragrance products because those are trade secrets.

00:47:15.000 If you buy a jar of spaghetti sauce that's in a glass jar, you're still getting phthalates?

00:47:21.000 Probably, yes.

00:47:22.000 From the tomatoes, the packaging of tomatoes?

00:47:24.000 Probably from the processing.

00:47:27.000 So when you go from a tomato to a sauce, you have to process it.

00:47:33.000 And so that processing introduces phthalates.

00:47:36.000 If you go, think about a cow.

00:47:40.000 This is different, but it's the same principle.

00:47:42.000 So the cow is being milked.

00:47:43.000 Maybe this cow is on a wonderful farm with You know, the picture of the farmer and the grass and it's an organic farm and everybody's happy.

00:47:52.000 And then he milks the cow or she milks the cow through a milking machine that has tubes.

00:47:58.000 What are those tubes made of?

00:47:59.000 Plastic.

00:48:00.000 Plastic.

00:48:01.000 And so they go into the milk.

00:48:04.000 So I actually am hoping to do a systematic study, which I'm calling Farm to Fork, where we take a bunch of products See what's in them at the farm.

00:48:17.000 See what's in them at the table.

00:48:20.000 And see where it's introduced along the way.

00:48:22.000 Because nobody's done that.

00:48:23.000 We don't really know where they come in.

00:48:25.000 So we don't really know how to keep them out.

00:48:29.000 Yeah.

00:48:29.000 And that would be if you're trying to eat organic.

00:48:33.000 Even in that sense, if you're having milk and it's coming through tubes, if you're having anything that's wrapped in plastic, even if it's grass-fed, organic, you're wrapping it in a plastic.

00:48:49.000 Yeah.

00:48:50.000 But I would say the number one thing is do not microwave it in plastic.

00:48:55.000 And I... Is that accelerated or is that just like a way that it gets into the food much quicker or much higher doses?

00:49:01.000 Yes, because it's so warm.

00:49:03.000 And those little packets that it's sealed in are not good.

00:49:12.000 So we have a lot to do to keep these out of our bodies.

00:49:20.000 Like I said, it's not really our job to do that.

00:49:26.000 Well, it's...

00:49:28.000 I don't think most people have any idea that this is that big of an issue.

00:49:31.000 And when you're saying all this stuff, and I'm terrified of this because I feel like, and I'm glad you wrote this book, and I'm glad you did these studies, but I feel like this has caught people completely off guard.

00:49:44.000 And then I'm picturing a supermarket and just going down the road looking at, like, packages of lettuce and things wrapped in plastic and meat wrapped in plastic and chicken and, like, wow.

00:49:58.000 Wow.

00:49:58.000 You know, probably those single layer wrappers that those things are coming in.

00:50:03.000 I don't know.

00:50:03.000 I haven't tested those.

00:50:04.000 And that's one of the things I want to do with this project.

00:50:06.000 But probably those are not so bad.

00:50:08.000 I think the ones that have been sealed in are worse.

00:50:13.000 And ideally, I would say, if you can go to, like, I go to the farmer's market.

00:50:19.000 I live in New York.

00:50:19.000 I go to the farmer's market down in Union Square.

00:50:22.000 I buy stuff.

00:50:23.000 You know, I take a bunch of carrots.

00:50:25.000 I take it home.

00:50:25.000 I put it in the fridge.

00:50:26.000 I eat it.

00:50:29.000 That will definitely not introduce anything into the product.

00:50:34.000 What happens to fully developed people that encounter phthalates if they encounter them in large doses?

00:50:40.000 Like someone like yourself, if you started eating microwaved food and you've got a large dose of phthalates in your diet, what would happen?

00:50:49.000 I don't think we know.

00:50:50.000 We haven't studied the effect of adult exposures of somebody my age, but if it's a couple who's grown up but wants to go to, say, assisted reproduction, a beautiful series of studies at Harvard showed that the amount of chemicals in their urine and blood when they come in for their assisted reproductive procedure influences how that procedure comes out.

00:51:16.000 So how many eggs can be retrieved, How many are implanted?

00:51:20.000 How many actually progress to a live birth?

00:51:23.000 Is related to the chemicals in their body at the time they start the procedure.

00:51:28.000 So that's an effect of an adult, to an adult, of an adult exposure, you know, that I know of for sure.

00:51:36.000 I don't It's very possible that these are related to aging and diseases of aging.

00:51:45.000 They certainly affect the brain.

00:51:46.000 We know that from our studies.

00:51:50.000 But, you know, every one of these questions requires, like I said, $5 million.

00:51:57.000 And you got a lot of chemicals and you got a lot of questions.

00:52:00.000 So we really got to get busy.

00:52:03.000 And you also have a lot of companies that have a vested interest in continuing business as usual and they want to deny as much responsibility for having these chemicals in our bodies as they can.

00:52:17.000 Yes, and not to swap out ones we put the finger on with other ones that we haven't tested yet.

00:52:23.000 And what you're talking about too is that to turn this around, in general, you're talking about multiple generations in order to bring the developmental cycle back to normal.

00:52:35.000 That's right.

00:52:36.000 That's crazy.

00:52:40.000 I wonder if there's a trend in terms of like looking at young male athletes.

00:52:45.000 Like if you're looking at male athletes and phthalate and the development and what's possible.

00:52:57.000 I think that would be a fabulous study.

00:52:59.000 A fabulous study.

00:53:02.000 In general, what has the response been when people find out about this and when people read the data and see your book and read the information in it?

00:53:14.000 Many people have a reaction like yours.

00:53:16.000 This is really serious.

00:53:17.000 We have to take this seriously.

00:53:19.000 We have to do something about it.

00:53:20.000 And there are people, I'm sure, that don't believe it.

00:53:24.000 Are there people that have been dismissive?

00:53:28.000 There have been some people that have been dismissive of the kind that say there's too many people in the world anyway.

00:53:37.000 Who says that?

00:53:39.000 I can show it.

00:53:40.000 Those people.

00:53:41.000 Too many people in the world anyway.

00:53:44.000 But imagine that that's your solution.

00:53:45.000 There's too many people in the world.

00:53:46.000 So let's ruin babies so that they can't reproduce. 1.00

00:53:50.000 Right.

00:53:50.000 And they're depressed.

00:53:51.000 Right.

00:53:52.000 And have small taints.

00:53:54.000 Right. 0.99

00:53:54.000 And penises, by the way. 0.99

00:53:56.000 Yeah, whoops. 0.99

00:53:57.000 All of this sounds really horrific.

00:54:00.000 I mean, but really that has been the response that some people have, that this is probably...

00:54:05.000 Maybe they look at it in terms of, like, nature has a way of working itself out, whether or not it's voluntary or whether or not it's just an incidental part of the system.

00:54:16.000 Right.

00:54:16.000 And that's essentially what's going on here.

00:54:19.000 This is an incidental.

00:54:20.000 It's an incidental.

00:54:21.000 This is nature's way of dealing with an overpopulation problem.

00:54:24.000 Some people say, yes.

00:54:25.000 Well, it kind of makes sense that this does sort of balance itself out in some very bizarre way.

00:54:31.000 But you know what?

00:54:32.000 It's not just humans.

00:54:34.000 Do you know that many, many species on the planet have the same problem?

00:54:39.000 And we can cause these problems in animals with these chemicals in the laboratory.

00:54:44.000 So when you say it's nature's way of working things out, well, is that working its way out for the species that are becoming in danger?

00:54:53.000 Well, I think they're just a side effect of nature working its things out with us.

00:54:58.000 You know, if our production of food and packaging of food somehow or another gets to these other animals, that's just an accidental accident.

00:55:10.000 And it's not our responsibility.

00:55:11.000 Oh, it's certainly our responsibility.

00:55:12.000 It's all of our responsibility.

00:55:13.000 But it's really the responsibility of the people that are packaging food.

00:55:16.000 It's really the responsibility of the people that are involved in getting the stuff to us and how are they getting it to us and how are the phthalates getting to us.

00:55:24.000 If there was any other thing that someone was doing that turned out was affecting the entire human race because of their business, just fill in the blank, like if we found out that, you know, whatever it is, cell phone use or driving a car, looking at your dashboard was somehow or another affecting the reproductive cycle of the human race,

00:55:47.000 there would be drastic consequences.

00:55:49.000 People would be talking about this.

00:55:51.000 I would imagine.

00:55:53.000 Maybe.

00:55:56.000 This is not everybody's favorite topic, as I mentioned.

00:56:01.000 By the way, it's painful for women, especially. 0.99

00:56:05.000 We haven't talked about that.

00:56:08.000 You know that for centuries, women have been blamed for the fact that a couple can't get pregnant. 0.89

00:56:17.000 The guy assumes he's good to go.

00:56:31.000 I don't know about you.

00:56:36.000 I think that every man should know his sperm count.

00:56:42.000 Not only because he might want to have a child, but because it might tell him something about his overall health, by the way.

00:56:48.000 So here's this woman that's being blamed. 0.93

00:56:52.000 And by the way, infertility, we now know.

00:56:55.000 It's about 50-50 in terms of blame.

00:56:57.000 I don't think blame is the right word.

00:56:59.000 Yeah, it's a weird word.

00:57:00.000 Weird word, right?

00:57:00.000 But, you know, you can find a female cause about a third of the time, a male cause about a third of the time, and a third of the time, it could be both, or you don't know.

00:57:09.000 So that's kind of 50-50.

00:57:12.000 And then you go, if they manage to conceive, then a high percent of pregnancies have miscarriage.

00:57:18.000 The miscarriage rate is probably over 50%.

00:57:21.000 And that is also attributable to phthalates, you think?

00:57:25.000 No, I don't.

00:57:26.000 I think it's going up.

00:57:28.000 It's going up.

00:57:29.000 It's the same rate as sperm count is going down, by the way.

00:57:32.000 What do you think is causing that?

00:57:34.000 I think it's a lot of chemicals that are causing that.

00:57:36.000 Different chemicals.

00:57:37.000 And I studied some of them.

00:57:39.000 I studied chemicals in water at one point.

00:57:41.000 I studied solvents in water and showed they were related to miscarriages.

00:57:47.000 Man-made chemicals are not great for our reproductive health.

00:57:52.000 What chemicals are associated with miscarriages?

00:57:57.000 Well, I can't say that off the top of my head, all of them, but the ones that I've studied, when I studied that, those were the chlorination byproducts.

00:58:06.000 So when you chlorinate water, the high levels of certain chlorination byproducts, and also solvents that are used to clean chips and other, you know, certain high...

00:58:14.000 So chlorination meaning tap water or also meaning swimming in pools that are chlorinated and getting it through your skin?

00:58:23.000 My study was on homes, tap water in homes.

00:58:27.000 But probably there's some risk from pool.

00:58:31.000 Has anybody studied the miscarriage rate of active swimmers?

00:58:39.000 Not that I know of.

00:58:40.000 It seems like that would be a big one, right?

00:58:42.000 Because you're most certainly, if you're training in a swimming pool or swimming on a daily basis, you're getting dosed with chlorine every day.

00:58:51.000 Especially if it's a public pool.

00:58:54.000 Yeah.

00:58:54.000 So here, the big picture is that we have these thousands of chemicals that we can't get a handle on.

00:59:04.000 There was a law, it was called the Toxic Substances Control Act, and it was published in 76. And at that point, when they put that in, they said, okay, here are thousands of chemicals that have been out there for a long time.

00:59:17.000 Nobody seems to worry about them.

00:59:19.000 They're all okay.

00:59:21.000 They were called grandfathered in.

00:59:23.000 They were not regulated.

00:59:25.000 We have that legacy on top of the lack of testing of new chemicals.

00:59:30.000 So there's very little regulation of all of these chemicals that are circling in our environment and entering our bodies.

00:59:38.000 And I and my colleagues, you know, are few compared to the problem and we need more resources and we need more people worrying about this.

00:59:48.000 And I think the first step is to just have people like you and your listeners and people I talk to on all these shows I've gone on, you know, recognizing, thinking about it, just thinking about it, you know.

01:00:06.000 Yeah.

01:00:10.000 Yeah.

01:00:12.000 Yeah.

01:00:15.000 There's a decrease in lifespan that's associated with large population centers, whether it's Los Angeles or New York, but living in urban areas, there's a decrease in lifespan.

01:00:27.000 They think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years.

01:00:30.000 And they don't know if it's because of breakdust or pollutants or particulates in the atmosphere.

01:00:35.000 They don't know what it is.

01:00:36.000 But has there been a study on, well, I'm sure there probably hasn't, on sperm counts in rural areas as opposed to sperm counts in high population areas?

01:00:49.000 I actually did that study.

01:00:50.000 Oh, okay.

01:00:51.000 I shouldn't have been sure.

01:00:53.000 But the answer is not what you'd expect.

01:00:55.000 Oh, really?

01:00:56.000 Yeah.

01:00:56.000 So in this study, we got four groups of people that turned out to be men and women, and I can tell you why.

01:01:07.000 And one of the centers was Columbia, Missouri, where I was living.

01:01:13.000 And that's rural.

01:01:15.000 It's agricultural.

01:01:17.000 They grow a lot of corn and soy there.

01:01:19.000 And one of them was Minneapolis, urban.

01:01:23.000 And then there were some, I'm just going to talk about those two.

01:01:25.000 And in those two centers, we saw that men in Missouri had half as many moving sperm as men in Minneapolis.

01:01:37.000 Did they associate that with farm chemicals?

01:01:41.000 Yes.

01:01:42.000 That's the next study I did.

01:01:44.000 So then I took men with good semen quality and bad semen quality and measured how much of the pesticides were in their bodies.

01:01:55.000 And there were significantly more pesticides in the sample of men who had poor semen quality as compared to good semen quality.

01:02:04.000 Now, is this because, is it airborne?

01:02:06.000 Is it like we're talking about enormous cornfields and glyphosate and all these other different chemicals, or they work their way into the air itself because they spray?

01:02:17.000 Or water.

01:02:18.000 Water.

01:02:19.000 Runoff from the fields into the water, into the groundwater.

01:02:21.000 And then it pollutes the water supply.

01:02:22.000 Right.

01:02:23.000 Or air.

01:02:23.000 I couldn't...

01:02:24.000 I didn't study how they were getting this.

01:02:27.000 But they weren't workers.

01:02:28.000 They weren't agricultural workers.

01:02:30.000 And they weren't living on farms.

01:02:31.000 They weren't farmers.

01:02:32.000 Just regular folks.

01:02:33.000 They're just regular folks living in that area, including me.

01:02:36.000 Wow.

01:02:37.000 So that was pretty dramatic.

01:02:40.000 That is very dramatic.

01:02:42.000 I've driven past corn.

01:02:44.000 I have a buddy of mine who lives in Iowa.

01:02:46.000 And, you know, you drive down there and you see these enormous fields, like huge, huge fields of corn.

01:02:52.000 And I've always wondered, like, where's all that going?

01:02:56.000 Like, for sure, they're spraying this stuff.

01:02:59.000 And the workers who are spraying it and getting on, you know, they're even more highly exposed.

01:03:04.000 And those studies of high exposure...

01:03:06.000 Here's an example.

01:03:08.000 There was a pesticide that was used to grow pineapples.

01:03:12.000 It was nematicide.

01:03:15.000 It killed nematodes and dibromochloropropane.

01:03:20.000 And so there was a picnic and the wives were talking and we haven't gotten pregnant. 0.53

01:03:27.000 We haven't either.

01:03:29.000 Really?

01:03:30.000 And gradually they did a study of these men who had zero sperm.

01:03:36.000 Zero?

01:03:36.000 Zero.

01:03:39.000 And then they banned GBCP and in about, I think, four to five months, the men's sperm returned.

01:03:48.000 So that's the thing about adult exposure.

01:03:50.000 You can reverse it.

01:03:52.000 So that's kind of the good news, that you can reverse it.

01:03:56.000 The only good news all day.

01:04:00.000 Wow.

01:04:00.000 But I don't know, when you talk about monocrop agriculture on large scale, like these enormous cornfields, I don't know how they do that without pesticides.

01:04:12.000 Yeah, I honestly don't know, but I hope there's a way.

01:04:17.000 And I think there are people that are working on that, you know, regenerative farming and so on.

01:04:22.000 I don't know.

01:04:23.000 The thing about regenerative farming, though, they don't do monocrop agriculture.

01:04:27.000 That's true.

01:04:28.000 The whole idea of regenerative farming is that you try to mimic nature.

01:04:32.000 The cows eat the grass, they poop, the poop becomes the fertilizer, the fertilizer helps the plants.

01:04:38.000 This is not what you see when you have these enormous cornfields.

01:04:42.000 So maybe those enormous cornfields are not good for us.

01:04:45.000 They're not good for us.

01:04:46.000 Yeah, I think that's pretty safe to say.

01:04:48.000 They're not good for us.

01:04:49.000 It's just not a natural scene.

01:04:52.000 When you see the amount of manipulation that's required to grow a thousand acres of corn or whatever in one spot, you don't see that anywhere in nature.

01:05:03.000 Right.

01:05:04.000 Or a thousand cows in a...

01:05:06.000 Yeah, a small enclosure.

01:05:10.000 We're so strange.

01:05:12.000 Human beings are so strange. 1.00

01:05:13.000 Like what we've done to the environment in such a short time.

01:05:17.000 What's crazy to me is if you go back to, you know, 1820, 200 years ago, there's none of this.

01:05:24.000 There's none.

01:05:25.000 Zero.

01:05:27.000 So in 200 years, we've completely ruined the ground.

01:05:31.000 We've completely changed the way we cultivate food.

01:05:36.000 We've added all these chemicals to our environment, to our water, to our air, changed sperm counts, changed reproductive cycles and reproductive quantity. 0.69

01:05:48.000 It's very strange.

01:05:51.000 And I would say post-war is where it really took off.

01:05:55.000 Post-World War II? When the use of plastics increased.

01:05:59.000 Yeah.

01:05:59.000 Well, what's terrifying to me is like, if we can have that significant a change in 200 years, what's possible in another 200 years?

01:06:07.000 And is all this happening exponentially?

01:06:08.000 Which it probably is.

01:06:11.000 The declines that we see in miscarriage and fertility and sperm count are not exponential.

01:06:18.000 They're linear.

01:06:20.000 But the growth of the plastics industry is exponential.

01:06:25.000 How come the exposure isn't exponential if the growth...

01:06:28.000 I don't know.

01:06:29.000 I don't know.

01:06:31.000 I don't know.

01:06:33.000 Maybe it isn't exponential.

01:06:35.000 Maybe I misspoke.

01:06:36.000 It seems to be faster than linear, though.

01:06:39.000 Yeah.

01:06:41.000 So would you like to take a quiz?

01:06:44.000 Sure.

01:06:44.000 Okay.

01:06:45.000 I love quizzes.

01:06:46.000 Oh, good.

01:06:46.000 So we have something called the Jizz Quiz.

01:06:52.000 Okay.

01:06:53.000 But you have to go, you have your phone?

01:06:55.000 Yes.

01:06:56.000 Okay.

01:06:56.000 And your listeners can take it too.

01:06:59.000 Okay.

01:06:59.000 Yeah.

01:07:00.000 So you go on to Dr. Shauna Swan.

01:07:04.000 All right.

01:07:04.000 This is your website?

01:07:05.000 This is my Instagram.

01:07:06.000 Oh, okay.

01:07:07.000 I'll go to your Instagram, Dr. Shauna Swan.

01:07:10.000 Hold on, please.

01:07:16.000 And you should see, under the highlights on the left, you should see the jizz quiz.

01:07:22.000 Oh, it tells me I have no internet connection.

01:07:24.000 Hmm.

01:07:25.000 There's no internet in here?

01:07:26.000 Well, you might have it.

01:07:26.000 I might not be logged in.

01:07:27.000 So maybe you can do it.

01:07:30.000 I gotcha.

01:07:32.000 Do you see a page that looks like this?

01:07:34.000 Yeah, I have the night mode on, but I gotcha.

01:07:37.000 So you see the jizz quiz?

01:07:39.000 Jamie's got it there.

01:07:40.000 Oh, perfect.

01:07:41.000 You're great.

01:07:41.000 The jizz quiz.

01:07:42.000 Click on the jizz quiz, young Jamie.

01:07:43.000 Here we go.

01:07:44.000 Come one, come all.

01:07:45.000 You're hilarious.

01:07:47.000 Okay.

01:07:48.000 What's your fertility IQ? Many men and women feel fairly confident about their fertility intel, but research shows a surprisingly high percentage of people don't know as much as they think they do.

01:08:01.000 Are you one of them?

01:08:02.000 Answer these six questions and find out. 0.89

01:08:05.000 Well, I've reproduced, so I'm pretty sure my sperm works.

01:08:09.000 But I could be wrong.

01:08:10.000 As far as sperm go, which of the following can contribute to whether a man is likely to be considered infertile?

01:08:18.000 One, his sperm concentration.

01:08:21.000 A, excuse me. 0.99

01:08:22.000 B, the size shape of his sperm. 0.99

01:08:24.000 C, the way his sperm moves, swim. 0.95

01:08:27.000 D, all the above. 0.99

01:08:29.000 I would say D. Is that correct?

01:08:32.000 Yeah.

01:08:32.000 Click that.

01:08:33.000 Click that.

01:08:34.000 You have to click D. D. Can you do that?

01:08:37.000 This is your Instagram.

01:08:39.000 You can't really click on that.

01:08:41.000 That's like an Instagram story.

01:08:43.000 Okay.

01:08:43.000 Answer D. Aside from a total absence of sperm, total bummer we know, no single sperm parameter can predict that a man will be completely infertile.

01:08:52.000 Turns out When the sperm concentration, motility, the sperm's movement or swimming ability, and morphology, the size and shape of the sperm, are measured, each one matters in identifying infertile men, but there is an additive effect.

01:09:07.000 When one of these measures is in the infertile range, a man is two times more likely to be infertile as a man with none of these measures in the infertile range.

01:09:17.000 When two measures are in the infertile range, a man is five to seven times more likely to be infertile.

01:09:24.000 And when all three fall are subpar, his odds of being infertile are 16 times higher.

01:09:34.000 So you're really messed up.

01:09:37.000 That's not good.

01:09:38.000 Okay.

01:09:39.000 What's next?

01:09:40.000 Okay.

01:09:41.000 Question number two.

01:09:42.000 Does the size of my taint matter?

01:09:44.000 Well, we already know that.

01:09:46.000 Totally.

01:09:47.000 Yes.

01:09:48.000 Wow, a lot of people don't get it.

01:09:51.000 That's people with little taints.

01:09:52.000 They're in denial.

01:09:54.000 Okay.

01:09:54.000 The answer is yes.

01:09:56.000 While the official term for taint, people that are listening, it was like 40% said no.

01:10:01.000 Or 40% said yes, 60% said it didn't matter.

01:10:04.000 But it does matter.

01:10:05.000 While the official term for taint or gooch is anogenital distance, ACD, size really does matter.

01:10:12.000 The length of the guy's ACD will reflect his exposure.

01:10:14.000 We talked about this.

01:10:16.000 Okay, we already know this one.

01:10:17.000 Let's go next.

01:10:18.000 Number three, what proportion of infertility cases can be attributed solely to the man?

01:10:26.000 A, less than 10 percent.

01:10:28.000 B, about 11 to 24 percent.

01:10:30.000 C, 25 to 33 percent.

01:10:33.000 D, 34 to 45 percent.

01:10:35.000 I'm saying D. We can't click on it. 0.62

01:10:40.000 Won't let you.

01:10:40.000 Let's go.

01:10:42.000 Answer C. Interesting.

01:10:44.000 Less than I thought.

01:10:45.000 Infertility used to be considered mostly a woman's problem. 1.00

01:10:48.000 That seems so sexist.

01:10:49.000 Yeah.

01:10:51.000 In recent decades, it has become increasingly recognized that male reproductive issues can cause approximately one-half to one-third of infertility cases.

01:11:00.000 I would assume it was more than that.

01:11:02.000 Same proportion as female reproductive challenges do. 0.97

01:11:05.000 The rest are believed to stem from a combo of male and female factors. 0.90

01:11:10.000 It takes two to make things go right.

01:11:12.000 Oh, it takes two to make things go right.

01:11:14.000 Here we go.

01:11:15.000 Testosterone replacement therapy can increase sperm count in men with low testosterone levels.

01:11:20.000 That's false.

01:11:22.000 Good.

01:11:23.000 Only 47% think that.

01:11:25.000 Oh, they better check it out.

01:11:27.000 They don't understand that your body produces less when you exogenously introduce it.

01:11:36.000 It's true that a connection between testosterone levels and sperm count, but testosterone placement therapy doesn't help sperm.

01:11:41.000 Here's why.

01:11:57.000 Okay, next.

01:12:05.000 Question number five.

01:12:07.000 Besides a lack of exercise, which of the following lifestyle-related factors is associated with male infertility?

01:12:13.000 A, smoking cigarettes.

01:12:14.000 B, alcohol, sugar-sweetened beverages.

01:12:17.000 C, lots of TV. D, all the above.

01:12:19.000 Most certainly D. Right.

01:12:23.000 Okay, D. This may seem like a whole lot of bad news, but the upside is...

01:12:29.000 Oops.

01:12:31.000 Okay.

01:12:31.000 No, it's okay.

01:12:34.000 This means that if a man cleans up his lifestyle, gives up cigarettes, heavy alcohol use, sugar-sweetened drinks, and couch potato habits and takes steps, literally, to slim down and be physically active, his sperm count and his sperm integrity may increase significantly.

01:12:50.000 Next.

01:12:51.000 A man's age can affect his female partner's miscarriage risk.

01:12:55.000 True.

01:12:57.000 82% agree.

01:12:59.000 True.

01:13:00.000 Research suggests that for men ages 40 and older, their female partners have a 60% increased risk of miscarriage compared to the aspiring dads under 30. This may be largely because with advancing age, there is an increase in the presence of abnormal genetic material Within the sperm at any age,

01:13:18.000 a pregnant woman is more likely to miscarry when sperm is faulty, but neither partner may realize this.

01:13:24.000 That's a miscarriage of reproductive justice. 1.00

01:13:26.000 That's a big thing with men who drink heavily, correct?

01:13:29.000 Yeah.

01:13:30.000 Yeah.

01:13:30.000 Okay, number seven.

01:13:32.000 Oh, that's it.

01:13:33.000 The jizz quiz.

01:13:34.000 How'd you do?

01:13:35.000 I got them all.

01:13:36.000 I'm a jizz whiz.

01:13:37.000 Woo! 0.99

01:13:38.000 I think I cheated, though.

01:13:39.000 I cheated because I knew because of you we talked.

01:13:44.000 I aced the jizz quiz.

01:13:46.000 Yay! 0.99

01:13:47.000 I don't know if I should say that.

01:13:50.000 It's very funny, though.

01:13:51.000 It's very catchy.

01:13:53.000 So people can take that.

01:13:55.000 Oh, let me make sure I follow you on Instagram.

01:13:57.000 Definitely need to do that.

01:13:58.000 Thanks for playing.

01:13:59.000 Bam.

01:13:59.000 Thanks for playing.

01:14:00.000 And then there's the book.

01:14:01.000 So, all those factors, I mean, all that stuff's very interesting.

01:14:08.000 But, what, like, now that we know this, how do we get this word out?

01:14:14.000 Other than this podcast, what can we do?

01:14:18.000 How can we let people know how big this issue is?

01:14:24.000 Any ideas?

01:14:25.000 Yeah.

01:14:26.000 Well, this isn't...

01:14:28.000 This is just a little piece, but I'll tell you that I have...

01:14:30.000 We're going to make a film.

01:14:32.000 I have several producers.

01:14:33.000 You're going to make a documentary?

01:14:34.000 Yeah.

01:14:36.000 That's good.

01:14:37.000 Get that on Netflix or something.

01:14:38.000 Yeah.

01:14:38.000 Freak people out.

01:14:39.000 Scared the shit out of them. 0.99

01:14:40.000 Maybe even lie a little bit. 0.86

01:14:42.000 I'm just kidding.

01:14:43.000 What else you got there?

01:14:45.000 You got more quiz notes?

01:14:46.000 Oh, yeah.

01:14:47.000 I actually have another quiz here.

01:14:50.000 Yeah.

01:14:51.000 But these are what we call revelations.

01:14:54.000 Okay.

01:14:55.000 And these are things that you might not know.

01:14:57.000 Try to talk into the microphone.

01:14:58.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:14:59.000 These are things you might not know.

01:15:02.000 And you can just turn them over.

01:15:05.000 Some of them are about the man, some are about the woman, some are about both.

01:15:10.000 So they're in the book.

01:15:12.000 Okay.

01:15:13.000 But try.

01:15:14.000 Just turn them over.

01:15:15.000 Oh.

01:15:16.000 So what do I do?

01:15:17.000 Turn them over and read the revelation.

01:15:19.000 Okay.

01:15:19.000 Well, it doesn't matter.

01:15:21.000 Doesn't matter?

01:15:22.000 Should I do it this way?

01:15:23.000 Those are the male ones on top. 0.77

01:15:25.000 Oh, on top.

01:15:26.000 Okay.

01:15:26.000 The bottom ones are the female ones?

01:15:27.000 Yeah.

01:15:28.000 Okay.

01:15:29.000 It was once believed that each sperm contained a miniature preformed human being called an...

01:15:37.000 How do I say that word?

01:15:38.000 Homunculus.

01:15:39.000 Homunculus.

01:15:40.000 Really?

01:15:41.000 That's how you say that?

01:15:42.000 It's spelled animacule?

01:15:46.000 Oh, animacule.

01:15:47.000 Yes, that's another name, right?

01:15:51.000 I was like, wow, why is it spelled so weird?

01:15:55.000 Okay, it was once believed that, I would say that's true.

01:15:58.000 Well, these are all true.

01:16:00.000 Okay, they're all true.

01:16:00.000 This is not true or false.

01:16:01.000 This is just fun facts.

01:16:03.000 Oh, okay.

01:16:04.000 More fun facts.

01:16:05.000 So, just to go on that one for a minute.

01:16:07.000 So, this guy who developed the microscope was the first person to see this, and he saw sperm.

01:16:13.000 He was the first person to see his own sperm.

01:16:15.000 He thought it was like a little person swimming around? 0.54

01:16:16.000 No, but he imagined that.

01:16:18.000 Of course.

01:16:19.000 Yeah.

01:16:19.000 Well, look at that guy.

01:16:21.000 That's hilarious.

01:16:22.000 Aha! 0.94

01:16:22.000 He gets! 0.94

01:16:23.000 There he is!

01:16:24.000 And he probably thought it looked just like him.

01:16:26.000 Van Levenhoek.

01:16:27.000 It's a little tiny me trying to reproduce.

01:16:31.000 Right.

01:16:32.000 Yeah.

01:16:35.000 I'm sure you're aware of that Sperm Wars controversy.

01:16:40.000 You're aware of that book, Sperm Wars?

01:16:43.000 Yes, remind me.

01:16:44.000 There was a guy that theorized, and I don't think it was supported by facts or further research, but people started repeating it.

01:16:53.000 It was one of those things that people would repeat at cocktail parties or whatever, and you'd be like, wait a minute, what?

01:16:58.000 And I remember, this is pre-podcast, I remember being super skeptical, but the idea was that there was more than one kind of sperm.

01:17:05.000 There was a sperm that was attacking the other sperm and killing sperm of other men.

01:17:09.000 Right. 0.92

01:17:10.000 Yeah.

01:17:10.000 I've heard that too.

01:17:14.000 That actually there are physiologically the way the woman is shaped and her vagina is shaped and is to make it easier for the earlier sperm to kill off the later ones that are coming in after them. 1.00

01:17:29.000 So I think there is something to that. 0.64

01:17:31.000 The sperm do kill? 1.00

01:17:33.000 Because what I've heard is that there's only one real kind of sperm.

01:17:37.000 Oh, I don't know about the two kinds, but it may be that There's some battle.

01:17:43.000 There definitely is a battle to get, you know, to the target first.

01:17:46.000 Right.

01:17:46.000 There's a race.

01:17:47.000 There's a race.

01:17:48.000 But I don't think they're killing each other.

01:17:49.000 I don't think there's a war going on in there.

01:17:50.000 You know, I don't know.

01:17:52.000 I don't know.

01:17:52.000 Let's Google.

01:17:52.000 I don't know.

01:17:53.000 Sperm wars.

01:17:54.000 Just Google sperm wars. 0.85

01:17:55.000 I'm looking up the book right now.

01:17:57.000 The one claim that already sounds a little...

01:18:01.000 Skeptical?

01:18:02.000 Yes. 0.87

01:18:03.000 Male masturbation is said to discard old dying sperm so that ejaculate contains younger sperm so that it will stay active inside the cervix longer with more of a chance of being present during the window of ovulation. 0.95

01:18:13.000 That could be. 0.96

01:18:14.000 That could be.

01:18:15.000 Really?

01:18:15.000 Yeah.

01:18:16.000 Because, you know, you're producing sperm all the time, right? 0.71

01:18:19.000 Right. 0.76

01:18:19.000 Right? 0.76

01:18:21.000 And certainly the ones that are ejaculated are going to be the ones that are already ready and get rid of those and make room for the new ones.

01:18:27.000 I don't know. 0.99

01:18:28.000 With that logic, should a man masturbate before he tries to impregnate his partner? 0.94

01:18:33.000 I'm not going to give any advice on that. 0.98

01:18:36.000 But you already gave a jizz quiz.

01:18:38.000 You can do whatever you want now.

01:18:42.000 I'm pretty sure I read that it was debunked, that they've never found...

01:18:47.000 Study studies.

01:18:48.000 I think what they were saying is that they've never found any real physiological differences in sperm.

01:18:54.000 Like, there's not, like, a different kind of sperm.

01:18:56.000 Right.

01:18:58.000 Yeah, I don't know that I've heard there's been a different kind, but I've heard that maybe the timing of the sperm and, you know, the place in the, you know...

01:19:09.000 In the race, so to speak, might affect the survival of the later ones.

01:19:14.000 Here's one.

01:19:15.000 These days, 26% of men who present to doctors with erectile dysfunction are under age 40. Wow.

01:19:24.000 That's crazy.

01:19:25.000 That's crazy.

01:19:26.000 And you think that has probably something to do?

01:19:28.000 Oh, absolutely.

01:19:29.000 I mean, testosterone is going down worldwide at the same rate as sperm count.

01:19:35.000 All right, here goes another one.

01:19:38.000 Each time a man ejaculates, he releases as many as 100 million sperm. 0.97

01:19:44.000 That's true, unless you're Tom Segura.

01:19:46.000 And then it's probably 1100 million sperm.

01:19:50.000 Did you know that?

01:19:50.000 No.

01:19:51.000 Now you do.

01:19:54.000 Did he have a sperm count?

01:19:55.000 It's an inside joke. 0.99

01:19:56.000 Tom Segura apparently has an enormous quantity to his ejaculate. 0.99

01:20:02.000 I see. 0.99

01:20:02.000 And he was alerting us to this. 0.99

01:20:04.000 And he is not a liar.

01:20:05.000 He is an honest man.

01:20:07.000 That's volume.

01:20:08.000 Yes.

01:20:09.000 The volume and the count and the concentration are not the same thing.

01:20:14.000 Maybe with other men.

01:20:16.000 Not with Tom Segura.

01:20:20.000 You got a good sense of humor.

01:20:22.000 She can hang, right?

01:20:24.000 You're great. 0.99

01:20:26.000 The testicles of a healthy, fertile man produce 200 million to 300 million sperm cells each day. 0.94

01:20:34.000 Again, see Tom Segura. 0.57

01:20:37.000 Because it's quite a bit more than that.

01:20:38.000 How about overkill, though, huh?

01:20:40.000 Yeah, Tom's all about overkill. 0.51

01:20:43.000 Men with low sperm counts and infertile men have a shorter life expectancy.

01:20:48.000 That makes sense.

01:20:50.000 Yeah, that makes sense.

01:20:51.000 It just means...

01:20:52.000 It makes sense that you're less...

01:20:53.000 There's less vitality.

01:20:56.000 There's also...

01:20:57.000 There was something about...

01:21:01.000 Something I read recently about the immune system and muscle quality, like the amount of muscle mass a man carries on his body is a direct correlation to the health of his immune system.

01:21:14.000 Really?

01:21:15.000 Yeah.

01:21:18.000 Here's an article from Science Magazine.

01:21:20.000 No evidence for sperm wars. 0.96

01:21:22.000 There we go.

01:21:25.000 Looking through here, though, to test the idea, an ecologist took sperm samples from 15 men and combined them in various ways.

01:21:34.000 An ecologist.

01:21:35.000 What a weird evolutionary ecologist.

01:21:37.000 He took a bunch of jizz and just combined it in a soup.

01:21:40.000 And nothing happened is basically what they found out.

01:21:42.000 Yeah.

01:21:43.000 Well, they probably, maybe the sperm were smart and they realized like, hey, or maybe they were dead by the time they got out.

01:21:49.000 Or maybe they only do it in place.

01:21:52.000 In the womb.

01:21:52.000 In the critical place.

01:21:54.000 Right, in that warm environment.

01:21:55.000 Yeah.

01:21:55.000 I don't know.

01:21:56.000 Maybe.

01:21:57.000 Okay, here we go again. 0.70

01:21:58.000 After sexual intercourse, sperm can stay alive in a woman's reproductive tract for five days. 0.96

01:22:03.000 I've heard that. 0.88

01:22:04.000 That's crazy.

01:22:06.000 That's a lot.

01:22:07.000 And you know what it means is that what people think of as, you know, that you have to get it all in one day is not correct.

01:22:14.000 That also makes sense that if a woman is not ovulating, but a man has sex with her before she's ovulating, and then all of a sudden she gets pregnant, that's what it is.

01:22:25.000 The sperm stuck around.

01:22:27.000 The sperm was like, look, I'm not giving up yet.

01:22:29.000 I'm telling you, this door's going to open.

01:22:31.000 Men who take testosterone supplements can suffer from reduced sperm counts.

01:22:35.000 We already went over that one.

01:22:41.000 The riskiest period for a man's reproductive development is while he's in the womb. 0.85

01:22:47.000 You know that now.

01:22:48.000 Yeah, we know that now.

01:22:49.000 That's very...

01:22:51.000 Kind of shocking.

01:22:52.000 This is all shocking.

01:22:54.000 Everything you've said is shocking today.

01:22:56.000 A man today has only half the number of sperm his grandfather had.

01:23:01.000 Yeah.

01:23:02.000 You never met my grandfather.

01:23:03.000 I'll tell you that.

01:23:06.000 I don't know what that means.

01:23:07.000 It's trying to be funny.

01:23:08.000 It didn't work out.

01:23:09.000 A female is born with all the eggs she will ever have. 0.91

01:23:13.000 Approximately 1 million to 2 million eggs.

01:23:15.000 I've heard that.

01:23:15.000 But see what the imbalance is there.

01:23:17.000 That's a big imbalance.

01:23:20.000 Here's this guy mating 100 million every day.

01:23:23.000 The girl has 2 million for life if she's lucky. 1.00

01:23:26.000 And they die off for her pretty quick.

01:23:32.000 Wow.

01:23:33.000 Wow.

01:23:40.000 So it's not just delaying your first child until you're older that's making fertility decline.

01:23:48.000 This is something that has to do with chemicals.

01:23:50.000 Right.

01:23:51.000 All right.

01:23:54.000 50 to 60 percent of pregnancies that ended in miscarriage are chromosomally abnormal.

01:24:01.000 Wow.

01:24:02.000 That's high.

01:24:04.000 50 to 60 percent.

01:24:06.000 Yeah.

01:24:08.000 A lot of those are very early.

01:24:10.000 Maybe the woman didn't even know she was pregnant, right? 1.00

01:24:14.000 She might have just had some spotting. 0.93

01:24:16.000 And there's just some error.

01:24:18.000 Yeah.

01:24:19.000 Because, you know, you don't want to put all those resources into a chromosomally abnormal fetus.

01:24:25.000 This is bananas.

01:24:27.000 Worldwide fertility has dropped more than 50% over the past 50 years.

01:24:32.000 Well, I told you it was the same rate of sperm decline.

01:24:34.000 I know.

01:24:35.000 It's just weird worldwide to read that.

01:24:38.000 Yeah.

01:24:39.000 So back in 1960, fertility is the number of children that a woman has or a couple has.

01:24:48.000 So back in 1960, it was five across the whole world. 0.86

01:24:52.000 So on average, people had five children, right?

01:24:56.000 And now they have less than two and a half.

01:25:00.000 Now, is that from choice or is that from being fertile?

01:25:05.000 We don't know.

01:25:06.000 But it does directly correlate with all the chemicals that you're talking about.

01:25:09.000 And with sperm count. 0.89

01:25:13.000 And here's what's happening in some countries.

01:25:17.000 It's a lot worse.

01:25:18.000 So like in Singapore and Korea, they're down to 1%.

01:25:27.000 But is that by choice?

01:25:29.000 No.

01:25:30.000 The government is subsidizing them having children, paying them to have children, building apartments for them to go into if they have children.

01:25:39.000 They can't get the number up.

01:25:42.000 Whoa.

01:25:44.000 Did they have a higher use of plastics over there?

01:25:48.000 I don't know why it's more difficult there.

01:25:52.000 I know that, yeah, I don't know.

01:25:56.000 We don't have a lot of information about the distribution of these things across the globe, except to know that they go everywhere.

01:26:05.000 So I don't know what the explanation is for that very low fertility rate in Asia, but I know they are extremely concerned.

01:26:13.000 Once a child is born, is there any potential way to mitigate some of the effects of these chemicals in utero?

01:26:22.000 None that we know of.

01:26:23.000 So it doesn't close the door to some invention or some innovation in the future?

01:26:28.000 No, no.

01:26:29.000 But right now, nothing.

01:26:30.000 Right now, we don't know.

01:26:33.000 Anyway.

01:26:36.000 Alright, I'm going to keep going.

01:26:38.000 The riskiest rooms for your fertility...

01:26:44.000 Are your kitchen and your bathrooms, not your bedroom.

01:26:47.000 That makes sense.

01:26:48.000 The products we're talking about.

01:26:52.000 This is all stuff we already know.

01:26:54.000 Damage from a man's or pregnant woman's exposure to problematic chemicals are...

01:27:02.000 And lifestyle influences can harm the reproductive health of multiple future generations.

01:27:08.000 That makes sense.

01:27:09.000 We talked about that.

01:27:09.000 Yeah, we talked about that.

01:27:10.000 See, now you know it all.

01:27:12.000 I'm learning things from you.

01:27:14.000 Some experts are now considering reproductive function as a sixth vital sign for health.

01:27:21.000 That makes sense.

01:27:22.000 Right.

01:27:22.000 Yeah.

01:27:23.000 And that's why I'm saying everybody should know theirs.

01:27:25.000 It's a thing, though, that people...

01:27:28.000 I think you're correct in that men don't want to admit that they have low testosterone or low sperm count or low vitality.

01:27:37.000 It's a pride thing.

01:27:39.000 That's right.

01:27:39.000 Yeah.

01:27:41.000 They're less men.

01:27:42.000 They feel themselves to be less of a man, right?

01:27:46.000 Yeah.

01:27:47.000 But on the flip side, a woman feels something like that also.

01:27:50.000 Sure.

01:27:51.000 She feels like she can't produce...

01:27:54.000 Well, then you have the added effect of the man blaming her.

01:27:56.000 Right. 0.96

01:27:57.000 If the guy has sex, if he manages to get erect and ejaculate, he's like, I did my part.

01:28:07.000 Guys aren't really checking to make sure that they got good stuff. 0.72

01:28:11.000 Increasing numbers of fish, frogs, and reptiles are being born with ambiguous genitalia, including both ovaries and testes.

01:28:19.000 Alex Jones covered this.

01:28:22.000 Remember? 0.98

01:28:22.000 You said the frogs are turning gay. 0.98

01:28:24.000 That's literally because of pesticides, right? 0.97

01:28:27.000 I wouldn't say they're turning gay. 0.90

01:28:28.000 But they are ambiguously sexual. 0.64

01:28:31.000 Yes.

01:28:31.000 Yeah.

01:28:31.000 Yes.

01:28:32.000 And that's correct.

01:28:33.000 He wasn't really saying they were gay.

01:28:34.000 He was just saying.

01:28:35.000 Yeah.

01:28:37.000 Homo sapiens are already fit in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service standard to be considered an endangered species.

01:28:44.000 Really?

01:28:45.000 Yeah.

01:28:45.000 But there's so many of us.

01:28:49.000 Where there's almost 8 billion of us.

01:28:51.000 Even though we're declining in fertility, we're increasing in numbers.

01:28:56.000 Isn't that bizarre?

01:28:57.000 Yeah, but the criteria...

01:28:58.000 I opened the book because I thought this might come up.

01:29:01.000 The place where I have that...

01:29:03.000 Oh, okay.

01:29:03.000 You want me to read it?

01:29:04.000 Sure.

01:29:05.000 Okay.

01:29:05.000 All right.

01:29:08.000 So...

01:29:08.000 Oh, you have the bookmark.

01:29:10.000 That's right, to this place, in case it came up.

01:29:14.000 So, some scientists suggest that it's hard to fathom, but an argument could be made that Homo sapiens already fit the standard for an endangered species based on U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's requirements,

01:29:32.000 okay?

01:29:33.000 How would that be?

01:29:34.000 Well, of the five possible criteria for what makes a species endangered, only one needs to be met to be called endangered, okay?

01:29:42.000 So, the first is that we're arguably experiencing destructive modification or curtailment of our habits.

01:29:50.000 This is wording from the Fish and Wildlife.

01:29:52.000 Well, this means that we're messing up our air, our food, our water in a way that modifies or destroys our habitat.

01:30:04.000 And we're definitely, clearly doing that.

01:30:06.000 Clearly.

01:30:06.000 We talked about that a lot.

01:30:07.000 Okay, the next thing is, the next one...

01:30:13.000 The second is that we have, quote, an inadequacy of existing regulatory mechanisms.

01:30:21.000 Bingo.

01:30:21.000 We talked about that.

01:30:23.000 The third one is that there are man-made factors affecting our continued existence.

01:30:33.000 That's three.

01:30:34.000 So we meet the criteria for endangered.

01:30:38.000 Wow.

01:30:39.000 Even though there's so many of us.

01:30:40.000 Even though there's so many of us.

01:30:45.000 This is all hard to swallow.

01:30:47.000 You're not painting a very rosy picture of the future, ma'am.

01:30:52.000 We all, males and females, start life with the same genital apparatus.

01:30:56.000 Yeah, we all know that. 0.99

01:30:57.000 That's why guys have nipples, right? 0.99

01:30:59.000 That's that single – yes, the guys have muscles. 0.98

01:31:03.000 But that's that single ridge I told you about that starts out – the default is female, by the way, right? 0.99

01:31:09.000 If the testosterone doesn't come along, then it's female development. 1.00

01:31:13.000 So that's what that's about.

01:31:15.000 And last but not least, declines in sperm count and testosterone levels and increases in testicular cancer and miscarriage rates are all occurring at the same rate, 1% per year.

01:31:30.000 Wow.

01:31:31.000 I call it the 1% effect.

01:31:36.000 Shanna, this is all very disturbing.

01:31:41.000 There's no rosy outlook on this because when I'm looking at what potential steps can be made to mitigate it, I see all these obstacles.

01:31:51.000 I see lobbyists.

01:31:52.000 I see enormous corporations.

01:31:54.000 I see habits that people have had that will be very difficult to break.

01:31:57.000 I see people getting skeptical.

01:31:59.000 Even when I read the breakdown of this, I didn't think it was as bad as you described it.

01:32:04.000 I thought, like, oh, maybe we can just stop using these plastics and your testosterone will come back. 0.99

01:32:11.000 I didn't think about the developmental cycle of children in the way that you've described it.

01:32:16.000 And now I'm genuinely terrified.

01:32:19.000 Because I don't see people changing their habits that much.

01:32:21.000 And it seems like you need a monumental shift, a gigantic change in order to do something about this.

01:32:30.000 Is that safe to say?

01:32:32.000 Yes.

01:32:33.000 How do you feel about all this?

01:32:35.000 Like, after you've done your research, and granted, you've lived until you started studying this in the early 2000s, right?

01:32:43.000 This is when it started to become a factor.

01:32:45.000 That's not that long ago.

01:32:46.000 Now all of a sudden you have this view of humanity and the future, and it's got to be pretty disturbing. 0.99

01:32:54.000 You're the Paul Revere of tiny testicles and taints. 0.99

01:32:58.000 I love that. 0.99

01:33:01.000 But jokes aside, I am very disturbed, but I feel – I guess I'm an optimist at heart.

01:33:11.000 I still believe that we can do something about this.

01:33:16.000 We got lead out of gasoline, right?

01:33:19.000 Yes.

01:33:20.000 We do make changes.

01:33:22.000 We got pretty much asbestos under control.

01:33:25.000 We got mercury out of thermometer.

01:33:27.000 I mean, they're just small things, but we got an hour off of apples.

01:33:30.000 So when people...

01:33:32.000 If you multiply that by hundreds of times having people go after specific problems that they're concerned about, I think we can do this.

01:33:42.000 We've done amazing things.

01:33:44.000 We produced this vaccine in a year when people said it wasn't possible.

01:33:49.000 We put the lander on Mars.

01:33:52.000 I have a lot of faith that technologies that I haven't thought of You know, chemicals that haven't been designed yet will come in and take the place of these chemicals.

01:34:04.000 Well, I hope so too, but it's not like BPFs. 0.99

01:34:08.000 Right.

01:34:08.000 You know, the solution is worse than the original problem.

01:34:12.000 That's right.

01:34:12.000 I'm just skeptical because I think so many industries would have to make a big change and it would cost them so much money that they're going to deny this as long as they can.

01:34:21.000 That's my concern.

01:34:23.000 Look, we know that glyphosate's bad for you.

01:34:27.000 Yeah.

01:34:28.000 Monsanto's never stopped selling it.

01:34:29.000 But they have in other countries.

01:34:31.000 Other countries have put the brakes on it.

01:34:32.000 Right.

01:34:33.000 They have it in America.

01:34:34.000 Right.

01:34:35.000 And we know it's not good for you.

01:34:38.000 So we have to, as a society, recognize that we need more governmental regulation.

01:34:43.000 Yeah.

01:34:43.000 And a lot of people don't want that.

01:34:45.000 A lot of people don't want that.

01:34:48.000 This has been a really confusing podcast because it's not just scary.

01:34:57.000 It's scary and I don't...

01:34:59.000 Sometimes you go, oh, we have to go do this.

01:35:01.000 But this one is one where like, oh, there's so many problems here.

01:35:04.000 There's so many problems to stop.

01:35:06.000 I didn't know that it was as bad as it is.

01:35:10.000 Well, I'm actually glad you're disturbed because you have a lot of followers and maybe they will listen to this and think about this and, you know, help to turn this around.

01:35:23.000 By the way, I ask people to use the hashtag count me in.

01:35:26.000 Count me in.

01:35:27.000 Yeah.

01:35:28.000 That could be used.

01:35:29.000 That could be hijacked.

01:35:32.000 You should be careful about that one.

01:35:34.000 Count me in is not very specific.

01:35:38.000 I might have just started something accidentally.

01:35:40.000 Count, capital M, capital I. Okay, yeah.

01:35:43.000 I don't think the capitals matter with hashtags, do they?

01:35:46.000 No, I don't think they do.

01:35:49.000 Is there anything else you wanted to talk with us about that you need to get the word out on?

01:35:56.000 I don't think so.

01:35:57.000 I think we covered pretty much everything.

01:36:00.000 I think it's the next problem, you know, I just say in closing that we had Denial of climate change, and then some recognition of climate change,

01:36:16.000 and then finally people saying there's things we can do about it.

01:36:19.000 And I see the same pattern happening here.

01:36:22.000 Initially there was a study saying sperm count had declined in 1992, which was dismissed.

01:36:30.000 I was actually skeptical of it myself at first.

01:36:35.000 And then when my paper came out in 2017, it went viral.

01:36:39.000 It was the 27th most cited paper in the world that year.

01:36:44.000 It was on the cover of Time and you name it.

01:36:48.000 And then people didn't say, sperm count has not declined.

01:36:51.000 They said, yes, we do have a problem.

01:36:54.000 But they didn't make the next step, which is doing something about it.

01:36:58.000 And I think the same progression will happen here as has been happening with climate change.

01:37:05.000 Well, I hope so.

01:37:06.000 I hope we become aware of that.

01:37:09.000 I hope we helped sound the alarm with this podcast.

01:37:13.000 And if anybody wants the full story and all the information, do you have an audiobook of this available as well?

01:37:19.000 Yes.

01:37:20.000 Countdown.

01:37:22.000 It's available right now, ladies and gentlemen.

01:37:23.000 Please go get it.

01:37:25.000 Thank you very much for being here.

01:37:26.000 I really enjoyed it.

01:37:27.000 I really enjoyed talking to you.

01:37:28.000 You're very funny and very insightful and brilliant.

01:37:31.000 I really appreciate you.

01:37:33.000 Thank you very much.

01:37:34.000 Thanks for having me.

01:37:34.000 It's been really great.

01:37:36.000 My pleasure.

01:37:36.000 Bye, everybody.

01:37:37.000 Bye.

The Joe Rogan Experience - April 21, 2021

Joe Rogan Experience #1638 - Dr. Shanna Swan

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