The Fertility Sisterhood_Episode 8_Men'sHealth: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

The Fertility Sisterhood_Episode 8_Men'sHealth: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Lara Messerlian:
1 in 6 couples struggle with infertility, and we know that the environment plays a big role in how our bodies reproduce.

Carmen Messerlian:
In the Fertility Sisterhood, join me, Dr. Carmen Messerlian, Harvard epidemiologist and fertility expert, and my sister Lara, as we discuss what everyone needs to know about how the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and our everyday environmental exposures impact our health and therefore our fertility.

Lara Messerlian:
Now let's dive in and learn how we can clean up our lifestyles not only for ourselves, but for our future generations.

Lara Messerlian:
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Fertility Sisterhood podcast. It's me, Lara Messerlian, and my brilliant sister, Dr. Carmen Messerlian. Today we're talking about Carmen's favorite subject, men's health.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yay! My favorite. I love that.

Lara Messerlian:
Which is huge, it's huge. It's such a big, important thing that we need to really consider: men's health. Because I feel like, as a woman, we're so used to juggling and wearing so many different hats, some, you're a spouse, you're a partner, you're a career woman, you're, some of us are moms, like or your housekeepers. You're doing so much stuff then, and men, I think, sometimes don't have that same capacity to multitask like we do, and they sometimes can't juggle as many things as we do. For some reason, we're used to being pressed and having to excel at everything. Like for a woman to succeed, you have to put in 150%. but a man can sometimes put in 70 and do great.

Carmen Messerlian:
That's true. There's a bias. There's a definite gender bias out there.

Lara Messerlian:
But that doesn't mean that their health is not any less important because they need to be able to balance themselves in a better way sometimes, and seeing how we can help support them is really important too. So tell me, what is your thoughts on men's health?

Carmen Messerlian:
Oh, okay. So where do I start? First of all, we talked about this in the mental health episode. Men have been neglected, let's just face it, okay? For better or for worse, yes, they have had many privileges over history, and they have had many advantages over history, but we've also neglected them in many ways, and so their health has been neglected from the beginning of time. Men's health is just now becoming an area of innovation and industry that people are investing in and wanting to care for men. We're way behind the time. One of the things that really gets me is this thought that men, during reproduction, all we really hear about is that they give us 23 chromosomes in their sperm, and as long as they can ejaculate and get you pregnant, the rest is pretty much scot-free for them, this is a big myth, this is not true. It's a huge error in our thinking. And not only is it an error in our thinking, it actually harms us as women. So what's really important, from the audience, for the listeners to hear is this that men's health, before he ejaculates, makes love to you, gives the sperm to the IVF clinic, everything that he does in the months leading up to that, his health, his physical health, his mental health, impacts that sperm beyond the 23 chromosomes. We know that sperm carry rich epigenetic cargo, and that's sort of a hard word, and I'm going to explain. Epigenetic cargo is information that's registered on the genome that tells that genome how to behave, how to express itself. So beyond the gene coding, which is the recipe for how to make that baby is how each one of those genes actually gets expressed, what gets turned on and what gets turned off, and our environment for both men and women impacts the expression of the epigenome and what gets turned on and what gets turned off. And we know that the following things diet, physical activity, chemical exposure, mental health, sexual health, lifestyle, things like exposure to marijuana, smoking, etcetera, and your sleep, impacts your epigenetic cargo, impacts a man's sperm that registers information to the embryo on how to develop, and so we need to be very concerned about our male partners health. We need to not only be concerned about men's health because it impacts the embryo and the fetus, and the child that will be born, but really importantly, the things that I just mentioned impacts men's sperm quality, his sperm parameters, his testosterone levels, his sexual function, all of these things that really matter to his reproduction and his reproductive success for you, because you're the one who's trying to conceive this baby with him. What he does will impact your chances of getting pregnant and your chances of having a miscarriage and your chances of having a preterm birth or a small baby, a baby with developmental disorders, etc. So we want to engage the male partner as much as we engage the woman or the female partner. And so one of the things we're talking about, you can ask me questions.

Lara Messerlian:
So yeah, no, the thing is, I can totally relate to this because I can assure you I wanted to have a child for the longest time, and the minute I took the pressure off of Brian and said, you know what, I'm okay. And the minute he felt like supported and didn't feel the pressure is when he, I believe that he actually conceived our child because I think he finally allowed himself to, on a really emotional spiritual level, was able to let go and allow us to have a child. And before that, I think there was a lot of pressure, and he was resisting in some capacity. He was, at the time, he was very well-fit, he was exercising every day, and he was running marathons. We were doing really well as a couple, like everything was going very well, but he, I don't think emotionally and spiritually, was ready to be a father and was not giving me his everything when we were trying to have a baby. And I really think at the time when we weren't able to conceive, it was because he was not able to put himself in that zone where he could give everything. And then, when he, when the pressure was off, he finally was aligned and was like, okay, he could do it, and he conceived a child at that time. So I can relate to that, I think it's important to support them in being their best selves, but also to understand that the pressure itself affects their ability to help give you sperm that can conceive a child, because we would be trying to conceive and doing everything that we thought was right, but it just wasn't happening until the pressure was off and then he was able to do it.

Carmen Messerlian:
So that's so cool to hear because that's part of the hypothesis that I've had for a long time, and the mind, like we said in the previous episode, controls the body, and if a man's not aligned with the goal of getting you pregnant, it doesn't matter how many times you have sex, unless you're very fertile, there's a very good chance that you won't conceive a pregnancy, and so men's alignment on the goal is very important to the outcome that we're looking at. So again, as I mentioned before, the couple alignment, having couples work together to align themselves on the goal and the wish to have a baby and to work towards reproductive success, and for the man to take leadership on his diet, on his physical activity, and weight loss, on if they are overweight, on his chemical exposures, on his mental health and his stress levels, on his sexual health, and things like alcohol, tobacco smoking, marijuana use, and his sleep are really important. Him wanting to be his optimal, safest, healthiest self and then wanting to give you the baby, wanting to make a baby with you, the intention has to be there. The deep, really deep intention of, I am doing this, and I'm fully embracing this, and I want this. If there's any holding back in the mind, the body will respond. If there's any holding back in the mind saying, I'm not sure if we're ready for a baby or I'm not sure if we should have a second baby, then the body will react, and this is something that is really important to the success of reproduction. It needs to be a joint process between two couples, a holistic lovemaking process between two couples.

Lara Messerlian:
Yeah, I think it's definitely like a couple thing. It's something where both will need to be aligned because if the woman really wants a baby and the man doesn't really want a baby, yet internally, he says that he does, but he doesn't really, it doesn't happen. It needs to be both couples perfectly aligned in some capacity where they want it together, and they make it happen together. At least, that's been my experience.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, no, I agree with that. Let's talk about some of the facts that we know about men's health. I talked a lot about the epigenetic cargo that men's sperm carry and how that impacts the success of pregnancy. But I want to talk about some key things that I think, and these are things that we need to educate men about. I think it's harder for the woman to be the conveyor or the messenger or the female partner to be the messenger to the male partner over what he should or shouldn't be doing, because it just becomes so pedantic and schooling, which I don't think men appreciate ...

Lara Messerlian:
That's true, ends up being a little bit like you're nagging, but.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, exactly.

Lara Messerlian:
At least if you tell them, try to exercise, it's, it comes across like you're nagging, but you're doing it because you love them and you want them to do well for themselves, but it comes across.

Carmen Messerlian:
Oh no, yeah, it should never come. Yeah, it should never come from the female because I think it takes a different form, and then it becomes a resistance towards what they're saying. They feel criticized. You need to tippy-toe carefully. So we're going to be airing a male podcast that's going to be for men, where I will be the host with a co-host who's a man, and we'll be talking about all these things directly to men so female partners can send their male partners to our male podcast when it's, when we have it launched.

Lara Messerlian:
And female partners should listen because you might get some insight from the male perspective you wouldn't maybe always know.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, absolutely. So let's just go over a couple little key things I think are really important. So I've talked about this several times. When I was on Tucker Carlson, I got a lot of feedback about my point that I raised about diets that are high in fat are not good for men's health. It's true, and I had to be more specific. Saturated fat has been shown to lower sperm concentration. A Western diet can impair sperm quality. Things like.

Lara Messerlian:
Talk about a Western diet because people don't always understand Eastern versus Western, like the Mediterranean diet versus Western diet. I know we did a whole thing on nutrition, but just give a quick summary on that.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, so I'm not going to go into the major dietary groups or anything like that in this podcast, but you could look up Western diet versus Mediterranean diet. The point is that fruits and vegetables and omega fatty acids through fish have been shown to be very good for your sperm. We have studies that show they increased sperm count, sperm motility, sperm morphology; folic acid supplementation may also have a positive effect on sperm count and sperm concentration. But foods that are high in saturated fats, trans fatty acids, poor quality, processed foods, and meats have been shown to harm your sperm. And focusing more on what traditionally has been called the Mediterranean diet, which is more whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and fish, and poultry is prudent in terms of the diet that you'd want to adopt if you're interested in improving your sperm quality. And again, reducing saturated fats, reducing any trans fats, we know these things cause damage to sperm or impact sperm parameters. Moving on to physical activity, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle has been associated with low sperm concentration and just diminished sperm quality. On the other side, men who exercise regularly have improved sperm parameters, and so exercise is one of the number one things we recommend, as well as weight loss. If you're overweight or obese, just losing a few pounds can really make an impact on your sperm quality, your testosterone levels, and this is actually true for men and women. Weight loss, if you're overweight or obese, losing 5 to 10 pounds can really improve your fertility chances significantly. In fact, I think it's the number one thing that IVF clinics recommend when they first intake a couple, is looking at weight loss and weight management as the number one strategy to improve your chances of having healthy eggs and sperm. A subject that I study extensively at Harvard is chemical exposures, we know that these chemicals, phthalates, triclosan, BPA, PFAS, they are reproductive toxicants. They harm male and female fertility, they increase the risk of miscarriage, they increase the risk of preterm birth, they decrease sperm parameters and sperm quality. I've got dozens of studies on this. If anybody wants to look them up, they can look them up on my SEED Program website. Again, my company, V Science, is going to be diving deep into this area as well on ways to reduce and clean up your lifestyle. There are things that you can do every day, things you could swap out in your every day that can decrease your total burden of chemical exposures. And these should be things that, if you are trying to get pregnant or having struggles getting pregnant, you should implement immediately because they can have direct impact. And we could talk about Lara's...

Lara Messerlian:
... Detox, but it's not just the female exposure; it's male exposure.

Carmen Messerlian:
That's what this is all about male, right now, we're talking about men specifically.

Lara Messerlian:
I know we're talking about male, but it's, I think it's even less associated somehow where the male needs to also detox and be ...

Carmen Messerlian:
Of course, yeah, ... in a place that we're thinking right now about detoxing men as much as detoxing women. The chemical exposures that they have are harming their sperm. Just example, fragrance, cologne, personal care products, these things have all been associated with lower testosterone levels and lower sperm quality levels. So important things for men to do is learn ways that they can decrease their body burden of these chemicals every day. And I talk a lot about this and some of my other work and happy to share more. And then, of course, smoking a big no-no. Smoking harms your fertility, both for men and for women. It can really have a negative impact on your ability to conceive a pregnancy. And as well as cannabis use, we know influences sperm morphology, and sperm count, and concentration. So limited use, I'm not saying people don't want to do it forever, but limited use, decreasing your use, decreasing the frequency of use. It may be going on a detox for the month or two before you get, try to get pregnant. As you start to plan your pregnancy, decrease the frequency and use of these products, and then maybe in the month before really just going off detoxing completely.

Lara Messerlian:
Yeah, that's really interesting, a lot of really important information there. I think, in general, men's health is, we can only do, we can only scratch the surface because there's such a big, huge amount of information that is required to really dive deep into each of these categories. And I think what's nice about that is when you do the podcast that you're launching for the male audience, for men, I think that's going to really be key in helping people understand the other side of the equation. It's not a female thing, it's a male thing too. Infertility and fertility and success and all of that is not just a female issue, it's a male issue, and bringing that to light is really important.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah, no, I agree. I love this because, A, we talked about the female partner, we talked about the male partner, and we talked about the holistic couple. So it's individuals have to work for themselves to get themselves healthy, and then the couple has to work together to get themselves aligned, set intentions and goals, and to build holistic, healthy couplehood so that they can maximize their chances of success no matter where they are on the fertility continuum. If they're fertile, subfertile, infertile, these things can really improve your chances of success and allow for optimal health before you conceive, allows for improved health during pregnancy and improved health during your when your child is born, and supporting the couple through their journey on these areas are really important to the work that I do at Harvard, to the work that I'm doing in my company and to the work that we're doing in this podcast. So it's all part of the same strategy, population strategy that we hope to see improvements across the population on how couples conceive and how we can support their journey, and how we can make for a healthier future generation for everyone.

Lara Messerlian:
Okay, I think this wraps it up. As we looked at today, men's health is just as important as women's health when it comes to fertility. I think a lot of the burden lies on women a lot of the time where, you know, if there's a fertility issue or there's a responsibility that comes, when it comes to fertility, a lot of that responsibility is laid on the woman's hands just the same as it is when you're doing birth control. A lot of that responsibility ends up being on the woman, but really, the men have a huge part to play. They're equal partners in this, their health and well-being, and them being clean and healthy, and eating and de-stressed and all of that does really affect sperm and does affect the outcome. So anyway, I hope you really enjoy this episode. Carmen, you can wrap it up for me.

Carmen Messerlian:
Yeah.

Lara Messerlian:
Okay. Bye! Bye.

Carmen Messerlian:
Bye, Lara! I'll finish up. Okay, so here's an example of trying to multitask as a mom. Lara has a little child and doesn't have any childcare support, and is trying to help out with this podcast and with other things that she's helping me with, and at Harvard, and in my company. So thank you very much for listening. We really appreciate being here for you all. The goal of this podcast is to support couples across the States, to have healthy reproduction. And we want to educate and inform all of you on what I know, and what Lara can share through her experiences, to really humanize the fertility, the fertility care that you receive, either at your doctor's office or through an IVF clinic, as we want to personalize it and humanize it and make it real. These struggles are real, the issues are real. The environment does impact our reproductive health, and it impacts the male's reproductive health. And this is what this podcast is about today, and we're so happy to share. There's more always to know and to learn. And I'm happy to take emails at Harvard or reach out to me through my Instagram, which is, my handle is @DrMesserlian. You can reach me through there, follow me. And Rescripted is doing an amazing job supporting this journey and helping people across the United States that are trying to get pregnant, so I'm very grateful to be part of this process with them. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Carmen Messerlian:
Thank you for listening to the Fertility Sisterhood brought to you by Rescripted. We hope it has left you feeling more educated and empowered about the role environmental factors play in our reproductive health.

Lara Messerlian:
If you've enjoyed this week's episode, be sure to visit SEED-Program.org to learn more about Dr. Messerlian's research. To stay up to date on the podcast, follow Rescripted on Instagram and TikTok at @Fertility.Rescripted or head to Rescripted.com.

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