What male fertility has decreased significantly over the past decades, that’s a fact. Average sperm count has dropped in just 50 years from 99 million per milliliter to 47 million per milliliter. If today science has allowed us to have a much better quality of life, one can only think that this decrease in sperm count is due to the current lifestyle of the population. This lifestyle no doubt includes new technologies such as mobile telephony, so much research has been carried out to find The relationship between infertility and mobile phone use. But none of the work published so far has been as comprehensive as the one that a group of Swiss scientists has just published.
In it, they found a fairly significant link between certain sperm parameters associated with infertility and cell phone use. It has long been suspected that the problem may be in carry the device in your pocket. This, according to your research, does not matter. But they noticed that frequent mobile phone users have sperm concentration 21% lower than those who hardly use it.
was not affected neither sperm motility nor morphology, two factors closely associated with infertility. Therefore, in fact, the results are not as hopeless as one might think. But they become even less hopeless if we stop paying attention to the limitations of the study. They are included in it, never hidden, but they are left out when it comes to the big hype.
Study Linking Infertility to Mobile Phone Use
To conduct this study, we took sperm samples from 2886 menconscripted for military service in Switzerland between 2005 and 2018. All of them were between 18 and 22 years old.
After being informed about the study they were about to participate in, they were asked to provide some information about their mobile phone habits. From the frequency of use to where it was stored when not in use. Fun fact: there were participants who stated do not use your mobile phone more than once a week. Something quite rare in the 21st century, although more common in the early years of recruitment than in the later years.
As for the most frequent users, they admitted that they used their devices more 20 times a day.
When analyzing the quality of their sperm, it was noticed that the group that only used it once a week had an average sperm concentration of 56.5 million per milliliter. In contrast, the most frequent users averaged 44.5 million sperm per milliliter of semen. This means 21% less.
Limitations of the Study
Of course, the first limitation of this study is that data on mobile phone usage habits were self-esteem. That is, they were given by the participants themselves, so the agreed measurement cannot be made for everyone.
On the other hand, although all participants were young and apparently healthy men, there were differences in their body mass index and certain habits such as alcohol and tobacco use.
Specifically, it was found that those who used mobile phones more had, on average, a higher body mass index and were a larger group. smokers and alcohol abusers.
Both high body mass index and tobacco and alcohol are strongly associated with low sperm quality. This link is much more studied than the one linking infertility to cell phone use. Therefore, it is more than likely that it was these external factors that influenced sperm quality.
All is not lost anyway
We have already seen that in fact the relationship between infertility and mobile phone use is viewed with great skepticism, since only sperm concentration is affected.
When analyzing sperm quality, this This is a very important parameter, but far from significant. That is, the sperm concentration can be quite low; but if the ones that exist move well and have good morphology, there is a good chance they will reach fertilize the egg.
In addition, sperm concentration is considered too low if it is below normal. 15 million per milliliter. Thus, in the case of the study participants, the concentration of regular mobile phone users is quite within normal limits.
All this tells us is that we should not allow ourselves to panic. It’s not good that we spend all day on our mobile phone. But rather because of how it affects our social relationships or even our emotional well-being. Otherwise, if we are concerned about male fertility, there is nothing to fear. In fact, there are too many factors involved to sound the alarm about something that, based on scientific evidence, does not pose a risk in this regard.
Source: Hiper Textual
