Tech comes to the rescue amid reports of falling sperm counts
As men’s health comes under the spotlight, there is a host of ways to test your swimmers
It’s Movember, the month in which we focus on men’s health via some questionable facial hair. The movement started in 2003 in Australia when a group of 30 men defied fashion convention to grow moustaches, but it was only in 2004 that their fun was turned into a foundation and online movement, which SA joined in 2010.
Movember is now recognised in 21 countries, with 5.5million “Mo Bros” and “Mo Sistas” participating.
In 2015, the charity reported that it had raised R6.6bn since inception, which has funded 1,200 men’s health projects and an Australian TV series that addressed gender stereotypes and the pressures of manhood.
It all started as a way to raise funds for prostate cancer research, and has since branched out into suicide prevention and general health awareness for men. “Across the world, men die an average six years younger than women, and for reasons that are largely preventable,” the foundation’s website reads. “Which means it doesn’t have to be that way: we can all take action to live healthier, happier and longer lives.”
This includes going for a walk, “knowing thy nuts”, making “man time” and having open conversations. “Seventy percent of men say their friends can rely on them for support, but only 48% say they rely on their friends. In other words: we’re here for our friends, but worried about asking for help for ourselves. Reaching out is crucial.”
The foundation and the movement are examples of how concern over men’s health can be a vehicle for positive change; how a bit of facial-hair fun can go on to drive research and make a genuine and muchneeded positive impact.
But, curiously, there is a new tech trend in Silicon Valley that uses men’s health issues to drive a different narrative. In July 2017, a paper called “Temporal trends in sperm count: a systematic review and meta-regression analysis” was published. The paper investigated the combined research of 185 studies into semen collected in the past 40 years. After analysing 42,935 semen samples from 50 countries, the paper concluded that “among unselected Western studies, the mean [sperm count] SC declined, on average, 1.4% per year with an overall decline of 52.4% between 1973 and 2011.” Total sperm count tested among the same samples also displayed a total decline of 59.3%.
SA swimmers’ place in the paper is inconclusive, seeing as we were thrown into the “non-Western” pile that comprised just 25% of the analysis. Just one paper — “Impaired semen quality associated with environmental DDT exposure in young men living in a malaria area in the Limpopo Province, SA ”— made it onto the list.
Online men’s rights activists have been quick to blame the lower counts on feminism and try to create an uprising in what is dubbed the “manosphere”. The research is now used as evidence that there is a weakening in men in a “soy boy” age — the name based on the notion that eating soy influences testosterone levels.
Scientists who support the study instead want to use the research to show that infertility and reproduction problems should not always fall on the shoulders of women, and that the taboo of men’s sexual health should be addressed more openly. “Men with low semen quality die earlier than other men. They have more cardiovascular disease, they have more diabetes, they have more cancer,” says Shanna Swan, one of the study’s authors and a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s department of environmental medicine and public health.
However, the New York Times reported in July that though no further research has been conducted into the matter, a host of tech start-ups have seized the opportunity to make money. “Semen! It was a game changer,” Greg Sommer told the Times. Sommer is a biodefence researcher who developed a small portable centrifuge for testing blood after a chemical attack. He and his colleagues, who have now founded Sandstone Diagnostics, realised there was an untapped consumer market. “It’s a whole new approach to semen testing that we’ve invented.” The device costs $200 and runs on AA batteries. It spins your sample at 7,500 rpm and, when it’s done, spits out your sperm count.
Unsurprisingly, there is also a company that has developed what it likes to call “a sperm microscope for smartphones” that works with an app.
The Yo Home Sperm Test uses your phone’s camera and light to create a high-resolution video of your sperm to reveal how many moving specimens you have. And if they are not as lively as you would like, the app suggests easy solutions such as not using a Jacuzzi and wearing looser underwear. Drinking zinc, exercising regularly and minimising stress are also advised, according to healthline.com.
Within three weeks, some Yo customers apparently experienced a marked improvement in their counts. “It went from like a graveyard to a rave,” said Gabriel del Rio, a 35-year-old publicist in Los Angeles who went on to get his wife pregnant two months later.
Locally we have the “Swim Count sperm quality test” which, according to Takealot, is “an easy-to-use device you can use in the privacy of your own home that measures your sperm quality and their ability to swim”.
If the R799 is a bit too much to swallow, there is always R70 worth of Sela Strong Man Tea to support your male sexual health, which boasts of enhanced performance and improved sexual arousal. Not to mention all those helpful pamphlets pasted on dustbins downtown.