ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS ???? Reason for INFERTILITY ???? [new research]
Transcription :
What if I told you that from 1973 to 2011, sperm concentration dropped by over 50%, and what if I told you that in some parts of the world, 20 somethings were less fertile than their grandmother was at 35. That’s astounding. Fertility is declining for both women and men, and it’s scary, but I think I know why, and more importantly, what you can start to do about it, so keep watching this week’s video so that you can learn more about this important topic and what you can do to change it. My name is Dr. Marc Sklar, also known as The Fertility Expert, and welcome to Fertility TV, your YouTube channel dedicated to helping you get pregnant. I’ve been working with couples from all over the world for over 18 years through my online programs and right here in San Diego at both of my clinics, and one thing that I know is true, is that fertility rates have started to go up over the years, and today’s video, I think is going to hit the nail on the head as to why that is starting to happen and what you can do about it, so let’s get into it.
Actually, before we jump into this important topic, I do want to let you all know that I’ve got a free training at the end of the month that is going to expand on this topic and go into a lot of other areas as it pertains to your fertility, and again, more importantly, what you can do about it, so I’d love to invite you to join me for that. You do have to register to join me for that free training, and the link to do that is in the description below. A few months ago, I started reading a new book that I think is going to be really important for all of us and shed a lot of light on where we are headed when it comes to fertility and how we need to start to approach things, and that book is called Count Down. It’s not count down to lift off like this is exciting, it’s count down unfortunately to the end of the human race. I know that that sounds crazy and scary, but that’s exactly what Dr. Swan discusses in this book and exactly what I’m going to talk about today in this video.
I have pulled out some key points, some key areas that I want to discuss and address with all of you, to really highlight and bring more insight into this important topic, and also empower all of you to start to make changes and give you the tools and tips to do that. I encourage all of you to check out this book and read it for yourself because I can’t go over all the important points that is addressed in this book in this video, because that would mean this video is just way too long and too detailed, so I do encourage you to pick it up and check it out for yourself, but if you find the information in this video important and useful for all of you and you want me to do maybe one or two more follow-up videos expanding on this topic and going into more detail on what Dr. Swan discusses, then please just comment below and let me know that, and I will see how I can start to incorporate that into future videos for all of you. I’m not bringing up this topic to really scare all of you. Well, maybe I am just a little bit, because I do think fear is going to hopefully push many of you into action and making change, and maybe that’s really the catalyst that you all need to get your butts in high gear to make changes, but yes. Look, this information is scary, but it doesn’t have to be because it can be empowering so that you can start to make changes and not make this really hopefully affect your health and your fertility.
Now, I’ve known a lot about this information in the past, but really, reading this book really woke me up again to this topic and really enlightened me as to the changes that are ahead of us if we don’t start to make some dramatic changes in our life and in the world that we live in. I want to start off by going into a few numbers. I want to give us all some reality so we’re all on the same playing field and understanding what things should be like and where they’re at. If you see me looking down, I’m looking at my notes on my computer, or sometimes I’m actually going to read exactly from the book because I want you to get it from Dr. Swan’s mouth directly in her voice, but in 1973, sperm concentration, that is the equivalent of count for all intents and purposes, was 99 million on average. That’s what a man produced. In 2011, that number has decreased to 47 million, and on a semen analysis, when a man runs a semen analysis, what’s considered normal in concentration is 15 million, so let’s think about that.
From 1973 to now, we’ve gone from, for all intents and purposes, 100 million in concentration to 15 million considered normal and average. That’s an enormous drop in sperm concentration. That’s about 1% a year decline, and that’s huge, but this information, what we’re about to tackle doesn’t just affect sperm concentration, it affects all parameters of a semen analysis, concentration, motility and morphology. This specific statistic is really earth-shattering, in my opinion. For couples as a whole, the total number of children … This was a research study done in Denmark.
The total number of children in Denmark has declined from 4.2 children per family to 1.8 children per family between 1900’s and 2014. That’s an enormous decline, and in the U.S. alone, birth rates have dropped by over 50% between the years of 1960 and 2016. What that means is we’re no longer replacing ourselves as a family unit, right? We’re not producing two children for every two members of the family. That is scary, and that means that our population is declining, not rising, and for women, there has been a threefold increase in the diagnosis of endometriosis since the year 1996. Three times increase in endometriosis.
That’s a pervasive and hormonally-based or endocrine-based disorder that does affect not only the way you feel on a regular basis and how you feel when you’re menstruating, but your fertility as well, and between the years of 2004 and 2011, diminished ovarian reserve has increased as a diagnosis by 37%. These numbers are dramatic and scary. Again, there are many reasons that we are seeing this decline. It’s not on the shoulders of one specific cause, but I can’t go into all of it in this video, like I mentioned before, because this video would be just way too long. Again, if you’re finding this information helpful, maybe a little bit scary, but useful to help you start to make changes, then comment below and let me know, and I can see about adding more videos on this topic.
In today’s video, I want to highlight one specific area that is really affecting our fertility and our environment and world, and that’s environmental toxins, and specifically, I’m going to go into four environmental toxins and how they’re affecting our fertility, and then we’ll wrap things up by talking about what we can do about it. There is an important distinction when we start talking about environmental toxins that we need to make, and there are persistent pollutants and non-persistent pollutants. This is what they mean, and I’m going to also tell you which ones fall into which categories, okay? Persistent pollutants are ones that are maintained and live longer, both in the environment, on this earth, and in our bodies. For all intents and purposes, Dr. Swan mentions that the half-life of those chemical toxins is 15 years, so that doesn’t mean that in 15 years, those chemicals are out of our body and out of the environment.
It means that their total number is cut in half, so if we put in 100% today, in 15 years, that number will be at 50%, so it really takes 30 plus years to get rid of these chemicals, and these chemicals are not just one-time exposures, we’re being exposed in our environment is being exposed to them ongoingly, so we’re playing catch-up in a big way. Persistent pollutants, these specific chemicals, some of which are called dioxins, DDT and PCBs. These are the ones that last longer, again, in the environment and in our bodies. Then, we also have the non-persistent ones, and so the non-persistent ones are more transient, meaning that they leave our body and our environment in somewhere between four to 24-hour time frame. Now, that sounds much better, right, than 15 to 30 years …
Oh, sorry. That half-life, I should say. Not that they leave, but the half-life is four to 24 hours, so let’s just say within two days, we should be able to get rid of those chemical exposures in our body, but here’s the kicker for all of those. Those are chemicals that we’re not just exposed to once, we’re exposed to ongoingly, every day, potentially all the time in our environment because they’re always there in all the different products that we use or come in contact with, so as quickly as we’re trying to get rid of them, they’re being dumped in, and sometimes in much higher numbers, which makes it much harder to get rid of and makes them certainly more pervasive when it comes to our endocrine system and our fertility. These specific chemicals are BPAs. We’re all familiar with BPA now, I think, in many ways, phenols and phthalates.
These are the three big ones when it comes to this category, and what I want you to think of here is furniture and cosmetics. Those are the big ones, although there’s others as well, so the couches and sofas and beds that we’re sleeping on and sitting on, and the cosmetics, the things we’re using on our skin, on our hair, for personal care products as well. Some of you might actually start to say, “Well, maybe we just didn’t know that these things were causing problems and that they’re affecting our fertility, our environment and our health.” Well, I would say that for some period of time in our lives, certainly that was the case. I mean, there was a time where we used to think that plastics was the greatest thing on earth and gave us so many new products and flexibility, but there was a time, and I’m going to read this directly from the book here, that in 2004, there was an agreement adopted at The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and they determined and found many different chemicals to cause all sorts of cancer, health risks, fertility issues certainly to our bodies and our health.
Yet after that, and that was in 2004, many of the countries that were part of creating this document and recognizing this have done absolutely zero to get rid of these chemicals from our daily lives, so we can’t say that we didn’t know. We’ve known, we just haven’t done anything about it and anything greatly enough to really make any significant difference. Hopefully, hopefully, that can start to change with all of us, but that starts with all of us making changes consciously to purchase different things and to use different things in our daily life and our environment, so that those sales go down and the companies that are producing these things realize that it’s time to make changes. First category that I’m going to discuss are phthalates. Some people pronounce them phthalates.
Basically, it’s the same thing, and these can be found in plastics, vinyl, vinyl, different types of vinyl, wherever you’re using it, different types of flooring and wall coverings, medical devices, toys, and of course, personal products like cosmetics, shampoos and so forth. How do these affect female and male fertility? Well, in men, exposure to phthalates decreases testosterone, lower sperm count, morphology and motility, so every parameter for male fertility, concentration or count, motility and morphology, and our main hormone, testosterone, can all be affected dramatically and lowered by exposures and increased exposures to phthalates. For women, these same chemicals can cause anovulation, cause an increase in PCOS and premature ovarian failure. Huge endocrine disorders for both men and women.
Now, what’s the difference about being exposed to these chemicals in the U.S. or in other parts of the world like the EU? Well, in 2004, the European Union banned many of these chemicals in cosmetics, but the United States hasn’t. The European Union is actually ahead of the curve when it comes to banning toxic chemicals and our exposure to them and their use, but the U.S. is very much behind. They are not regulating these toxic chemicals, and they need to start. The next chemical, and probably one that you all know and have heard the most is BPA, bisphenol A. These are found in epoxies, resins, lining of food cans, so if you’ve got canned food, if it doesn’t say BPA-free, it probably has this as a lining or a coating, hard plastics and maybe possibly the one that is the silent, the most silent one of all of them, receipt paper.
Every time you go to the store and you get those shiny, glossy receipt paper called thermal paper, receipt paper, that has a chemical, a BPA chemical sprayed on in a powder, so as soon as you touch it, it’s on your fingers, then you put it away, maybe you grab some food, lick your fingers, and in it goes, so it’s not only exposed to you through your skin, but also, you’re ingesting it. How about all of those people who work in retail sales and are constantly touching these receipt papers? This is one that nobody thinks about. Quite frankly, I had rarely thought about it, but it’s probably much more of an issue now because of how often we’re touching these thermal papers. How do they affect fertility?
Well, in men, they lower sperm quality. That’s right, sperm quality, and in women, high levels of BPA, and I tend to find this more in women than in men, show higher levels of fertility challenges or issues, increased rates of miscarriage and poor egg quality, and I want to read you these numbers specifically, okay? Among women who do get pregnant, those who have the highest level of BPA in their blood have an 83% increased risk of miscarriage. 83%, and in addition, exposure to BPA during early life and adulthood has been correlated with poor egg quality and named as a possible culprit in premature ovarian insufficiency. Those are huge issues just from this little chemical that is everywhere, and we’re exposed to it every day.
I know many of you have thought you’re doing a good job because you’re getting those BPA-free plastic bottles. The reality is, is it just has a different type of BP in it, bisphenol, and you’re still exposed to it in other areas, so we have to be more aware and more aggressive at how we’re going to eliminate this from our daily routine. Flame retardants. That’s right, flame retardants. You might be saying, “But I’m never around flame retardants.”
You would be surprised at where you’re going to find it, mattresses, your sofas that you sit on, especially in California or fire conscious areas absolutely have fire retardant, our clothing. It’s in so many things because we’re trying to prevent flames from happening if we’re concerned about a fire, so it’s in so many things that we don’t even think about. Possibly, more often our cars, so that new car, new furniture smell is probably one that can be linked to flame retardant or other chemicals. We have to be aware of that, and so one thing we want to do if we get those things, although I would encourage you to find furniture that doesn’t have it, is open up the windows and increase our ventilation so we can get rid of those chemicals a little bit more freely. Well, what do these flame retardants actually cause?
Well, we see an increased association with flame retardants and thyroid disease or thyroid issues and higher likelihood of pregnancy loss. Those two things alone are reason enough to make changes and swap out the things that you might be exposed to and have higher amounts of flame retardant. The last chemical we’re going to talk about, it’s really a category of chemicals, is pesticides. These are huge. We use them all the time, whether you know it or not, and even if you’re making an effort on your property not to use it, odds are, that someone around you in a different house absolutely is, and what happens at that point is it seeps down into the soil, into the water and runs right on over to your land.
Now, there are a lot of natural, more environmentally-friendly and endocrine system-friendly ways to deal with pesticides. You can research those at home, but one of my favorite ones is vinegar, orange oil and dish soap. That’s right, good, healthy dish soap, by the way, and you mix that together in a concentration to use in your yard. Now, what do these chemicals do? What do pesticides do?
They disrupt our hormones. They disrupt our endocrine system, so they affect estrogen, testosterone, progesterone. All of our primary hormones are and can be effected by pesticide exposure, so we need to be aware of the pesticides that we’re using in our property around us, but also, in the food that you’re consuming. If you’re not eating organic food, you can rest assured that you’re being exposed to pesticides and additional toxins. This is why I harped so much on organic food, because I know that when we make that switch, it has such a huge impact on our overall health and our fertility.
How does this affect our fertility and reproductive function? Well, in men, what it shows is a decrease in sperm concentration, and in women once again, we’re seeing an increased rate of pregnancy loss or miscarriage. We’re seeing a trend here with many of these. We’re seeing a trend that these can absolutely be equated to almost all parameters, but especially sperm concentration or count, and in many other ways, affecting female fertility, but primarily, we’re seeing it also in miscarriage rates, so we want to influence this. We want to change these numbers.
I want to talk about another thing here, is because we often see, and I talked about it with BPA, is that, “Oh, well, they swapped out. They’re no longer using BPA. They swapped that out for something else.” Often, the swap is just as bad or worse than what we were originally trying to avoid, so this is true with bisphenol, between A and B and the other ones that we don’t know about, as it is with other chemicals, so really, what we’re trying to do most importantly, is reduce our exposure to all of these things, get back to some of the basics in terms of what we’re exposing ourselves to, what we’re using and how we’re living our life, and I think this will make a big impact, so that means, what can we do about all of these things? Well, the first thing is knowledge is power, right?
Yes, it can be scary to understand that we are being exposed to all these chemicals on a regular basis, so sometimes we could just toss up our hands and say, “Well, forget it. There’s nothing we can do about it,” but I believe knowledge is power to make change. Are you going to be 100% perfect in the changes you make? Absolutely not, and there’s always going to be new things that we have to deal with, but we’re talking about progress, not perfection. We want to do as much as we can and have as much in our control as we can control, and leave the rest to chance or fate, okay?
We can only control what we control, so it starts with you in your everyday life. How are you eating? Are you eating organic? Are you minimizing the exposure to chemicals in the food that you eat? Then, what can you do in the world that you live in?
Well, you can make better choices. Clean out the cosmetics. Get rid of the junk in the cosmetics. Start having cleaner, healthier, tested products that are safe for you, your environment and your body and endocrine system, and also with cleaning products, the things you use in the household, and now you’re more aware that when you start to buy, shop for a new sofa or mattress, you can start to look for the right things, ask the right questions so that you can make better choices. Again, we can’t be perfect.
We can only control what we can control, but we can control a lot, and that means it’s time to start making changes and being more proactive in your overall health so that you can start to feel better. This is not just a change for one moment in time, this needs to be ongoing, because we are exposed to both those persistent and non-persistent pollutants, and those things are going to change and become different as time goes on, so this needs to start to become a more of a lifestyle change versus a one specific moment in time shift. I want to encourage you all, start with one thing at a time. As you run out of things, swap it out with something different. Start to make changes.
Start to be aware. Start to ask the right questions. Slowly but surely, you will get to where you need to go, and the other thing that needs to be made aware of, things you can do at home is have proper ventilation and filtration. Get a good water filtration system in your house to clean out all the junk in the water, and make sure that we don’t bring any unnecessary things into our house, so take off your shoes before you enter the house to leave all that dirt and chemicals outside, and additionally, make sure you’re cleaning your house regularly because all those chemicals and toxins and pollutants that come in end up settling in our dust and on the floor, and if we’re vacuuming regularly, changing our sheets regularly, washing, dusting regularly, then we’re getting rid of those things on a regular basis and we’re minimizing our exposure. Those are the things that you can do.
Those are the ways you can empower yourself, your fertility to live a better life in the future, and more importantly, these are generational things. You’re going to not only impact your health and your fertility and reproductive function, but you’re going to impact the health of the child you’re creating and want to create, and their children, so your grandchildren. If that’s not motivation enough, I do not know what is. That was only the tip of the iceberg, and this video was long as it was, right? I’m glad you stuck around till the end because you’ve got all the key information, but there’s so much more that I can cover on this topic of environmental toxins and all the other things that are potentially affecting your fertility, and more importantly, so much more I can tell you, about things you can do to improve your fertility, and that’s why I’m having a free live training at the end of the month.
I’d love to invite you to that. Again, you do have to register to join me to that live training, where I’m going to go over all the key areas that you need to start to look at for your health and your fertility, and what you can do about that as well. Again, to register for that, and I want you all to consider registering, I invite you all to register by using the link in the description below, and I hope to see you there to share more information with you. I also want to hear from all of you as always, so comment below. Let me know how you found this video, what was useful, what you found valuable, and more importantly, do you want me to create more informational videos like this in the future, going more in depth on this topic?
If so, comment below. Again, your comment does more than just let me know what you think, it also allows this video to be reached and seen by more couples who need this exact information and need this support, so by commenting below, you’re helping couples from all over the world on their fertility journey as well. If you liked this video, give me a thumbs up. If you’re not already a subscriber to my YouTube channel, how dare you? You need to be. Just hit that bell, subscribe and get notified when I put out the next video for all of you, and until the next video, I want you all to, that’s right, stay fertile.