Male contraceptive advice: just wear a polyester sling, and let the heat and the electrostatics do all the work

Hey, it's science! 

So, is birth control just a women’s issue? Men are equally involved in producing a baby, and there are a few male-centric birth control options (i.e., condoms) available. But there’s definitely room for new male contraceptives–especially ones that aren’t permanent and don’t require last-minute application. And that’s where the polyester comes in. 

No, not this kind of sling, dummy.

Apparently, simply wearing a polyester sling (I suppose you could get one that isn't polyester, and line it yourself) around the scrotum can produce sperm-free semen (azoospermia), presumably from the heat (what’s sweatier than polyester?) and the electrostatics. The sling must be worn for months before it’s effective, and it takes another couple of months, after removal, to reverse the effects.

This makes sense, if you give it any thought (which I never have) because your balls hang low for more than one reason, and one of those reasons is temperature regulation. In order for sperm to mature successfully, they need to be kept a few degrees lower than normal body temperature, so keeping them below the body is a good way to keep things cool. 

Related stuff: 

Swinging high and low: Why do the testes hang at different levels? A theory on surface area and thermoregulation. 

and this:

Scrotal Asymmetry In Man And Ancient Sculpture which discusses the fact (?) that the left side generally seems to hang lower. 

Previous studies in dogs wearing polyester underpants showed that the dogs had reduced sperm count under those conditions:

"A recent study has shown that dogs, while wearing polyester underpants, had a diminished sperm count which was reversible when the pants were removed. In contrast, dogs wearing cotton pants showed insignificant semen changes.”

Here's the abstract from the paper on humans mentioned back at the beginning of this post (I don't, unfortunately, have a link to the dog paper), which, by the way, also fits into the "tax dollars at work" category, since it's from the NIH:

Contraceptive efficacy of polyester-induced azoospermia in normal men.

"Every 2 weeks, a physician at the Faculty of Medicine at Cairo University in Egypt examined 14 32-47 year old male volunteers wearing a polyester scrotal sling day and night for 12 months to determine if polyester fabrics can act as a contraceptive in men. 

They changed the sling only when it became dirty. None of the men dropped out of the study. The sling did not cause any complications or reactions. Their partners took an oral contraceptive until 3 sperm samples proved the men to be azoospermic. The men became azoospermic from 120-160 days (mean 139.6 days) after 1st putting on the sling. They remained azoospermic throughout the study. None of the partners became pregnant during the study. All 5 couples who wanted a pregnancy after the study period did indeed conceive. 4 had normal live births and 1 a miscarriage. The volume of their testicles fell greatly from 22.2-18.6 sd ml during the 12 months (p.05), but returned to pretest levels 75-135 days after removal. Further the mean rectal-testicular temperature difference was lower 3 months after wearing the sling than it was before they wore it (1.3-3 degrees Celsius; p.001). 3 months after they stopped wearing the sling, the mean rectal-testicular temperature difference reverted to normal. 

The polyester in the sling generated greater electrostatic potentials during the day than at night (326-395 volt/sq. cm. vs. 142-188 volt/sq. cm.; p.01). This was a result of the friction between the scrotum and the polyester sling. Germ cells of the seminiferous tubules still exhibited degenerative changes 6 months after removal of the sling. Within 140-170 days after removal, sperm concentration levels returned to pretest levels (40 million/ml). Apparently the electrostatic field effect and the disordered thermoregulatory effect of the polyester sling produced azoospermia. In conclusion, the sling is a safe, acceptable, inexpensive, and reversible method of contraception in men.”

Borat's mankini might work

 for this purpose

Somewhere in reading about this stuff I ran across this (read the whole thing), on the dangers of blogging (if you're male, that is):

When bloggers write, with laptops, seated,

Bits of them get overheated—

Sitting in their rooms, retreated

To their hidden cloisters.

If I should hear “Well done! Well done!”

I hope they mean my writing’s fun

And not some cruel and heartless pun

About my mountain oysters.

That reminded me of the Family Guy episode "Hell Comes to Quahog" (I couldn't find it on youtube), which is the episode in which Superstore comes to town. It's just after Peter gets a job at Superstore :

Peter: Boy Meg, I am so looking forward to this job. 

Brian: Peter, I can't believe you're working for Superstore USA. How could you sell out like that? 

Peter: Because Brian, they have industrial sized air conditioning. And I'm tired of sitting in ball soup.

And, of course, it's impossible to touch on this subject without including Monty Python's classic Every Sperm is Sacred skit from The Meaning Of Life:

Related post:  

The Great Sperm Race: The Most Extreme Race on Earth. Scaled To Human Size (plus bonus Monty Python)

More at Discover, Scitopia and ScienceBlogs.

Friday links

The Great Sperm Race: The Most Extreme Race on Earth, Scaled To Human Size (plus bonus Monty Python). 

"Meet Glenn. Like most average men Glenn has no idea about the miracle of engineering tucked away in his pants." 

Medieval fitness programs.

A bank glitch gave a 24-year old, down-on-his-luck Australian man access to unlimited funds. Then he did exactly what you think he did with it.

An Interactive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actually Lead to Rome.

25 Lost Survival Tips from 100 Years Ago – with Illustrations.

The Man Who Continuously Hiccuped for 68 Years.

ICYMI, Monday's links are here, and include the practice of execution by cannon, ancient Rome's urine tax, more human feet washing up in British Columbia, and pigeons with cameras.

The Great Sperm Race: The Most Extreme Race on Earth. Scaled To Human Size (plus bonus Monty Python)

A contest with 250 million competitors; only one winner... relentless obstacles, outrageous fatality rate.

Within 30 minutes of ejaculation, over 99 percent of the sperm will be dead or dying. But for those that remain it will be a vicious 14-hour fight to the end, with only one champion!

Sizing Up Sperm (full documentary embedded below) uses real people to represent 250 million sperm on their marathon quest to be first to reach a single egg; it was made by NatGeo in 2009:

Scaled up to human size with the sperm played by real people, The Great Sperm Race tells the story of human conception as it's never been told before using helicopter-mounted cameras, world-renowned scientists, CGI and dramatic reconstruction to illustrate the extraordinary journey of sperm.

With the microscopic world of sperm and egg accurately scaled up by 34,000 times, we see the human-sized heroes negotiate some of the world's most striking landscapes when the epic proportions of the vagina become the Canadian Rockies and the buildings on London's South Bank symbolise the intricacies of the cervix.

With the female body designed to repel and destroy invaders, from acidic vaginal walls to impassable cervical crypts, the sperm face unremitting obstacles. 'The battle that sperm have in order to find and fertilise an egg is just immense,' explains Dr Allan Pacey.

'Everything is working against sperm and they're not really given a helping hand by the female reproductive tract.'

A team of Leukocytes from the female immune system are sent to kill the sperm in the uterus:

On the left you see sperm squished in the cervix, and on the right is an army of freshly created sperm waiting inside a giant testicle. 

Here's a trailer for the show - the whole documentary is below that:

I love this - it's near the beginning:

Meet Glenn. Like most average men Glenn has no idea about the miracle of engineering tucked away in his pants. 

The whole thing:



And, of course, Monty Python's Every Sperm is Sacred skit from The Meaning Of Life:



via the excellent Dark Roasted Blend, which has lots of additional images.

Friday links

Weird Al Yankovic as Isaac Newton in this historical rap battle vs. Bill Nye.

Physics, the World Cup, and Bouncy Balls.

Scientific invention du jour: Chinese hospitals introduce hands-free automatic sperm extractor.

Video supercut of the classic Star Wars line "I am your father" in 20 languages, bonus Star Wars: The Musical.

It's hard to imagine why, but dating site uses facial recognition to find matches that look like your ex.

If you’re a math geek who doesn’t like sharing, you’ve been cutting cake wrong your whole life.

ICYMI, Tuesday's links are here, and include honest Disney posters, report cards of famous authors, and 18th- and 19th-century patent models.

Tuesday links

The Art of Kissing: A 1936 Guide for Lovers.

Holy crap - look at the size of this bone: scientists have discovered the biggest dinosaur ever (so far).

A Retiree Digitizes 27 Million Old Newspaper Pages in His Living Room (and Libraries Fight to Catch Up).

Game of Thrones infographic chronology: 4 seasons of the 4 main families (Stark, Lannister, Baratheon, Targaryen) and the Night’s Watch.

Peter Mayhew, the 7'3" actor who played Chewbacca, turns 70 years old today. Here are 15 Chewbacca Facts in Honor of His Birthday.

Godzilla Park, 2014 Godzilla Trailer Mashed Up with Footage From Jurassic Park.

ICYMI, Friday's links are here, including the Great Sperm Race scaled to human size, cooking some of literature's most famous meals, and raising pigs to taste like whiskey.

Friday links

Au Bon Pain is being sued for $2 undecillion (which is a 2 followed by 36 zeros). What if they lose and have to pay? 

The Great Sperm Race: The Most Extreme Race on Earth, Scaled To Human Size (plus bonus Monty Python). Related: Giant Fossilized Sperm is Oldest Ever Found.

Operation Margarine: Tracing the wartime rise of ersatz butter.

Mathematics Of Murder, Autonomous Cars and Robotic Soldiers: Should A Robot Sacrifice Your Life To Save Two?

What it Takes to Cook Some of Literature's Most Famous Meals.

Someone alert the Nobel Prize committee: Iowa Distillery Raising Pigs to Taste Like Whiskey.

ICYMI, Thursday's links are here, and include the reason red M&Ms disappeared for a decade, calculating Star Trek's Tribble problem, pain management via orgasm, and impossible Godzilla anatomy.

Science! 2014 Wellcome Image Awards winners

Wellcome Images is a source for medical imagery, and, on an annual basis, awards "the most informative, striking and technically excellent images recently acquired", as chosen by a panel of judges.  A few favorites below:

Scanning electron micrograph of part of a thale cress flower, showing the male and female reproductive organs. The female part of the flower, the pistil (the blue feathery structure on an olive green stalk), is at the centre of the image and contains egg cells (ovules) housed in an ovary. It is surrounded by the male parts, the stamens, which have their anthers coloured light green and their filaments brown. Some of the anthers are open, revealing pollen grains ready for dispersal (the light green/yellow spherical structures, for example in the anther in the top-left of the image). The pollen grains contain the male sperm cells. After an egg cell is fertilised by a sperm cell it develops into a seed. The petals are coloured purple. 

Light micrograph of a stained slice of a lily flower bud showing the male and female reproductive organs. At the centre of the image is the pistil, the female part of the flower, which contains six egg cells (ovules) housed in an ovary. This is surrounded by six male anthers (the white material) each containing four pollen sacs (the red circles), which are filled with pollen grains. Pollen grains contain the male sperm cells. After an egg cell is fertilised by a sperm cell it develops into a seed. Around the outside of the bud are three petals (small, circular in shape) and three sepals (large, triangular in shape). The width of the image is 10 mm.

Scanning electron micrograph of waste (sludge) from an industrial farming process, after having been burned. In the foreground, silver oxide structures (coloured pink, purple and green) and structures rich in calcium carbonate (coloured brown) can be seen. The background (coloured blue) shows the surface of a zirconia crucible (a container that can withstand very high temperatures), which was used to hold the sample as it burned.

X-ray projection of a brown long-eared bat

X-ray projection of a brown long-eared bat hunted and killed by a domestic cat. The brown long-eared bat has relatively large ears and is common in the UK and across Europe. These bats are nocturnal, sleeping during the day in roosts, and hibernate from October/November to March/April. They tend to fly at low altitude close to vegetation where they hunt their prey - insects taken directly from leaves or the ground. 

Check out the full winners’ gallery here, via It's OK To Be Smart.  Previous awards are here.

Wednesday links

The history of Coca Cola.

How to Mummify Yourself.  It's less painful to fossilize yourself but takes a really long time.

Good bones, though: Derelict Houses on the Billionaires Row.

Russian Wedding Photos That Will Make Your Eyes Bleed.

Geek Alert: Supercut of Every Single Robot Transformation in the Transformers Film Trilogy.

Mosquito sperm have a sense of smell.  Here's everything you need to know about how that evolved and how it affects their reproduction.

ICYMI, Monday's links, including the excellent (and safe for work) Married Kama Sutra are here.

Monday links

Beer concentrate for backpackers.

These awkward Christmas photos are a hoot.

Scientists create 'robotic sperm'. And speaking of scientists, This is What Happens When You Ask Scientists to Explain Their PhDs in Dance: the winners of the 2013 Dance Your PhD Contest.

Two Brothers Have Been Taking Pictures With Santa For The Last 34 Years.

Little Drummer Boy played by a doggie band (with a few humans).  And here's the Canine Version of The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Bourbon hack: create your own Pappy Van Winkle.

ICYMI: Friday's links are here.

Does smoking pot cause man boobs?

(CNN) -- A young man in his 20s -- let's call him George -- sits across from me in the exam room.

"Dr. Youn," he says, "I have man boobs."

I notice a not-so-unfamiliar smell wafting from his body. It's the same odor that floated my way during a rock concert I recently attended.

"How long have you had a problem with this, George?"

"Hard to say. But it seems to have gotten worse over the past year or so."

"George, the first thing you need to do is stop smoking pot. Marijuana could be causing your man boobs."

Gynecomastia, otherwise known as man boobs (or moobs for short), is a condition that affects approximately 33% to 41% of men between the ages of 25 and 45. It's even more common during puberty, affecting 60% of 14-year-old boys. Interestingly, it also affects 55% to 60% of men aged 50 and older.

Although most cases of gynecomastia resolve spontaneously within a few months to a few years, in 2012 nearly 23,000 people underwent surgery to correct the condition. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), it was the fifth-most common cosmetic surgery in men.

Gynecomastia is caused by a hormone imbalance between testosterone and estrogen. When the ratio between testosterone and estrogen tips in favor of estrogen, the body responds by creating excessive breast tissue. Hence, man boobs.

Animal studies have shown that exposure to the active ingredient in marijuana can result in a decrease in testosterone levels, a reduction of testicular size, and abnormalities in the form and function of sperm.

In humans, the effects of marijuana on testosterone and estrogen levels aren't as clear. Lower testosterone levels have been reported in chronic marijuana users compared to nonusers, but not all studies support this.

Few studies have examined a direct causative effect between smoking marijuana and gynecomastia. A report in 1972 made the initial connection between cannabis and gynecomastia. This study is contrasted with a 1977 survey of U.S. Army soldiers which showed no association between smoking marijuana and gynecomastia. This study was limited, however, due to its very small sample size.

The legalization of marijuana in some state could make it easier for researchers to determine the exact effects of cannabis use on hormone levels, gynecomastia and other bodily functions. If a true link between smoking pot and gynecomastia does exist, then we should expect to see a spike in gynecomastia treatments in those states which have legalized marijuana.

Interestingly, according to ASAPS, the number of men undergoing surgery for gynecomastia nationwide rose nearly 30% from 2011 to 2012.

So can smoking pot really give you man boobs?

Probably. Although the association between marijuana and gynecomastia hasn't been conclusively proven, it appears very plausible. For this reason, the majority of plastic surgeons I've consulted with routinely inquire with their gynecomastia patients about cannabis use and recommend they stop smoking pot immediately.

So for now, if you have moobs, it's probably best to put out that joint.

The fluid dynamics of sperm vs. the fluid dynamics of a sperm whale

TED-Ed video (Full lesson here), via It's OK To Be Smart.

Why are testicles kept in a vulnerable dangling sac?

Read the whole thing at Slate.  Excerpt:

Why, on the path from the primordial soup to us curious hairless apes, did evolution house the essential male reproductive organs in an exposed sac? It's like a bank deciding against a vault and keeping its money in a tent on the sidewalk.

Some of you may be thinking that there is a simple answer: temperature. This arrangement evolved to keep them cool. I thought so, too, and assumed that a quick glimpse at the scientific literature would reveal the biological reasons and I’d move on. But what I found was that the small band of scientists who have dedicated their professional time to pondering the scrotum’s existence are starkly divided over this so-called cooling hypothesis.

Reams of data show that scrotal sperm factories, including our own, work best a few degrees below core body temperature. The problem is, this doesn’t prove cooling was the reason that testicles originally descended. It’s a straight-up chicken-and-egg situation—did testicles leave the kitchen because they couldn't stand the heat, or do they work best in the cold because they had to leave the body?

Powder your eggs for home storage - just add water and sperm.

New Scientist:  "You can keep the powder at room temperature forever – and just add water to bring it back to life," says Amir Arav of Core Dynamics in Ness Ziona, Israel, who developed the method.

via Instapundit.

Tuesday links

Gallery: Vintage Drink Stirrers and Cocktail Sticks

Herring Sperm DNA Shows Surprising Flame-Retardant Properties.

Gallery of Soviet anti-alcohol posters.

Top Ten Afterlife Journeys of Notable People.

Infographic: History of Home Heating.

"I just found out my wife and I came from the same sperm donor"

At Slate:

On the one hand, I love my wife more than I can say, and logically, done is done, we already have children. I have had a vasectomy, so we won't be having any more, so perhaps there is no harm in continuing as we are. But, I can't help but think "This is my sister" every time I look at her now. I haven't said anything to her yet, and I don't know if I should or not.

But the best part is that, apparently without realizing the pun, this "Dear Prudence" starts her answer with, "This is a seminal question about the nature of assisted reproduction." Really? Seminal?

via Instapundit.

The Sperm Bike

More here.  And here are other weird and wonderful high-tech inventions of the world.

Six Ways TV Affects Your Brain and Sperm

Not much new here but I like the headline.

Researchers are only just beginning to understand the effect television has on the brain, and what they’ve found so far sure isn’t good. From decreasing your chances of procreating to cutting years off your life...

Why is Spanish sperm declining in quality?

The journal Andrology has published a multidisciplinary and international study, headed by the Department of Preventative Medicine and Public Health of the University of Murcia (UMU), which demonstrates that "total sperm count and concentration has declined amongst young men in the south-east of Spain in the last decade." More specifically, the decrease amounts to 38%.

Sperm Trajectories, Evolving Humans and a Tomato Tapestry: The Best Scientific Figures of 2012

My personal favorite is this graphic on embryonic forms from between 640 million and 540 million years ago.  More at Wired.

Underground sperm trade thrives in China

The eleven available sperm banks fail to accommodate the population of over 1.3 billion, leaving Chinese women less than satisfied.

Huang, the couple’s donor, channels the DIY ethic and injects the specimen himself. “I will keep my sperm in a small vacuum cup after masturbation, and then inject it into the wife’s body through a plastic injector” he says. He also claims to have much experience in the line of work. So much so that medical professionals are not required to assist in this procedure. Huang has so much belief in his conception abilities, that he recommends sexual intercourse would be his preferred method to success. This should surely restore some faith in expectant couples. And allow their husbands to sleep well.

It would be safe to say that the Chinese law does not cover this nor is this accepted as an advised method of reproducing. So please do not try this at home.