Can Paleo Stop the Infertility Epidemic? page

[DavidBrennan]

Here is a chilling article from about a year ago talking about a severe drought of male children in Russia - and the article doesn't even mentioned that fertility was low to begin with, so now removing more males is compounding that. (Boy, if there are no more Christian Russian men....then who's going to play the bad guys in cheesy action movies? Guess they'll start plugging in Arabs to demonize them, now.)

Anyway! The reason that I'm writing is just to generally get feedback and start up a discourse on fertility and diet (especially the paleo/Primal diet, obviously). It is strikingly bizarre to me that our parents and grandparents could have more children that they knew what to do with, but nowadays you have people desperately paying fertility doctors tens of thousands of dollars just in the hope that they might be able to at least have one child (which isn't even replacement level reproduction, obviously).

The vision of an already hollowed-out and dwindling country like Russia having the problem get excerbated by a bizarre epidemic of only having girls is very, very sad. This isn't about the rise and fall of some governmental regime or political ideology....this is about the survival of the very race itself.

(I know from past posts on fertility that there are many people who are sterile and barren and enjoy it that way. If so, that's your choice and that's fine, but please don't take over this thread with cries of assaulting people who do choose to have children rather than be a Darwinian dead-end as you choose to be.)

[BestBetter]

Personally, I don't think that reproduction problems are solely due to diet. I can't help but think that our species has gotten weaker and weaker due to all the medical interventions that have been invented - premature babies live, illnesses and disorders that would have wiped out the weak are treated with medicines, and we have no natural predators left to attack the weaklings. On top of all that, a lot of people also eat shit food, are surrounded by constant low level radiation, and breath factory and vehicle exhaust 24 hours a day. I'm actually surprised we can reproduce at all at this point.

[namelesswonder]

But maybe dietary changes could help (maybe slowly), with better genetic expression? It's not optimal, but it would definitely be better.

[DavidBrennan]

But maybe dietary changes could help (maybe slowly), with better genetic expression? It's not optimal, but it would definitely be better.

Oh, I most DEFINITELY think that diet must play a significant role in this infertility epidemic. I say this because (a) having been Primal for roughly one year, I have the subjective and anecdotal personal experience of seeing how dramatically the SAD had negatively effected just about everything in my body, (b) because we see what the S.A.D. has done to the overall physiology of Americans in just a few generations and that displays its incredible power to destroy which we can infer also applies to fertility issues, and (c) because Robb Wolf in this talk jokingly pointed out that there should be a warning on the paleo diet that, "This may cause pregnancy", because everybody who goes to his NorCal gym seems to get pregnant right away!

Two elements I'll personally theorize are important are that the overall corrosive effects that sugar/carbs have on the body just kinda fry sperm and eggs, and also that the lack of saturated fat in the SAD means fewer hormones, which means fewer sex hormones, which could well mean fewer sperm.

[DavidBrennan]

Personally, I don't think that reproduction problems are solely due to diet. I can't help but think that our species has gotten weaker and weaker due to all the medical interventions that have been invented - premature babies live, illnesses and disorders that would have wiped out the weak are treated with medicines, and we have no natural predators left to attack the weaklings. On top of all that, a lot of people also eat shit food, are surrounded by constant low level radiation, and breath factory and vehicle exhaust 24 hours a day. I'm actually surprised we can reproduce at all at this point.

Yeah, I'm sure that, like, a physically frail dude like Bill Gates might have been killed off a generation ago. Or maybe in some American sociopaths' government-controlled Utopia, Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, and smaller dudes like that would be seen as frail and meek as infants and so they'd be killed through infanticide (these benevolent murders would be imposed by an all-knowing and all-powerful government, naturally).

However, this doesn't explain the infertility epidemic because it seems to apply across the board. I'm not aware of any studies which say that stronger dudes are immune from the low sperm count epidemic. If you're aware of a study with such a control, I'd be happy to read it, but I doubt that anything would support that theory.

On the other hand, I definitely agree with you about the lifestyle/environmental hypothesis.

There's also a bizarre cultural factor: people are opting to transfer their parental instincts onto....animals. Here's an interesting article called "Pet Parents", which reveals that pet ownership in the U.S. has increased in perfect inverse correlation to the decrease in children. (Talk about a species going away with a whimper and not a bang!)

[Chaohinon]

Given how huge the human population is compared to what the planet can sustain, I don't really see low fertility being a bad thing.

[DavidBrennan]

Given how huge the human population is compared to what the planet can sustain, I don't really see low fertility being a bad thing.

It's cool that you're a Darwinian dead-end and our species will be rid of your genes as soon as you die....but please don't impose your lifestyle choices on others.

Technically, I totally disagree with the premise of your philosophy (not understanding free market responses to new market needs, Moore's law, or the exponential increase in human problem solving), but that, too, is your business. Just make sure to keep yourself sterilized and leave the rest of us alone. Thank you.

[Daemonized]

It's cool that you're a Darwinian dead-end and our species will be rid of your genes as soon as you die....but please don't impose your lifestyle choices on others.

Technically, I totally disagree with the premise of your philosophy (not understanding free market responses to new market needs, Moore's law, or the exponential increase in human problem solving), but that, too, is your business. Just make sure to keep yourself sterilized and leave the rest of us alone. Thank you.

Someone disagrees with you and think they're imposing their beliefs on you and ask that they get sterilized and leave you alone?

[namelesswonder]

Well, I don't think infertility is going to slow population growth anytime soon. People are too greatly invested in infertility treatments for that to happen. It will probably be more noticeable statistically in a lifetime or two (or maybe it is now? I don't really pay attention to such things, just guessing).

I kind of agree with Chaohinon. Infertility sucks for those who wish to reproduce, no arguing there, and I am sure I would be devastated to find out that I could not bear children if I was inclined to do so in the future, but it is part of natural selection. Except, in this case, it's a natural response to unnatural stimuli (things that BestBetter mentioned).

[kenn]

Is it due to infertility or is that Russian women & men have no desire for families and tend to drink themselves to death?

Btw, this is a side effect caused by communism in tha the belief in family is destroyed for later generations.