Is your cell phone actually impacting your sperm production? Well, I'm Dr. Rena Malik urologist
and pelvic surgeon, and today we're going to discuss what sort of items that you're using
including your cell phone that might be impacting your fertility. If you're new here make sure you
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all right so let's talk about why these things would actually create a problem
for sperm production so sperm is produced in the testicles which are housed in the scrotum
and they're housed in the scrotum for a very specific reason because sperm production needs
to be in a cooler environment than what's inside our body temperature so typically sperm production
occurs at temperatures two to four degrees below our body temperature and when you're looking at
sperm in order for them to be fertile or be able to fertilize an egg there's a number of different
factors that we look at we look at sperm concentration we look at the shape of the
sperm we make sure we look at how they're moving are they moving in the right direction are they
moving around in circles and a number of other factors play into the ability of sperm to actually
get to an egg when you're trying to conceive firm concentration is one of the most important factors
because if you don't have enough sperm that's very unlikely that you will have one of the sperm
actually reach an egg to cause fertilization and interestingly what they found is that for every
one degree celsius that you increase the temperature of your testicles
your sperm concentration decreases by 40 40 that's a large amount and remember this number
of one degree because i'm going to tell you how long it takes for certain items to reach that
one degree change but things like having a fever or getting a virus even things like coronavirus
can actually cause such decreases in sperm concentration that when you check a semen analysis
you can actually see no sperm in a semen analysis if you've taken it right after someone had an
infection also things like using hot tubs jacuzzis or saunas can temporarily halt sperm production as
well because the temperatures get so high so cell phones which is what we're going to talk about
today have two components that can affect sperm and one is of course the temperature factor that
we've discussed but it also emits low range radio frequency electromagnetic waves and these can also
have a negative impact on sperm production so there's not a lot of data on this because it's
really difficult to design a study looking at cell phone use very specifically and parsing out other
things that might affect sperm production but they did one study where they looked at men who used
a cell phone and carried it in their hip pocket versus those who didn't carry in their hip pocket
and what they found was that those that carried it on their hip pocket had lower sperm motility
but the percentage was not super big it was about 55 compared to 48 of having normal sperm motility
however this was considered statistically significant so what that means is that
when you compare these numbers based on the number of patients they enrolled that this number is very
unlikely due to chance and more likely due to the intervention which is keeping the cell phone away
from the hip pocket also those who use their cell phone for more than four hours per day compared
to those who used it for less than two hours per day also had significantly decreased sperm
morphology meaning that the shape was abnormal of the sperm itself another device that we use
all the time that can increase temperature is a laptop so if you put your laptop on your lap
that can increase your temperature in the scrotum and in the testicles itself and remember i said i
would tell you how many minutes it's going to take to reach that one degree celsius
well in studies they found that anywhere between 11 and 14 minutes so that's not even the whole
length of a netflix show or you you know many youtube videos and so if you're using
it on your lap for more than 11 to 14 minutes it's very likely that you will increase that
temperature by one degree celsius so bottom line what do i tell people who are trying to conceive
keep your cell phone in your breast pocket or in your back pocket and keep your laptop on a desk
not directly on your lap so i hope this helps i'm dr rena malek urologist and pelvic surgeon thanks
again so much for watching as always remember to take care of yourself because you're worth it