Extracts below and a comment from me. Full text: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8921982pgzo
EXTRACTS
On TikTok and Instagram, hashtags such as #malefertility, #semenanalysis and #sperm attract hundreds of millions of views, while online communities dedicated to improving sperm health have grown rapidly...
UK-based fertility expert Prof Suks Minhas says that there are pros and cons to the increased discussion around declining sperm and male fertility.
"It is important to raise the profile of male infertility. But are we fuelling that worry unnecessarily?"...
Overall, there is consensus that sperm count and quality is in decline, but some data suggests the decline may not be as drastic as feared...
Despite the unclear picture when it comes to the causes of male infertility, unproven solutions are being sold across social media.
Naturopath Lucas is one of the health influencers whose content includes warnings about fertility rates...
But Lucas's concern comes with some misleading claims - for example, he told his YouTube audience that men would be infertile in 33 years, which is unsupported by scientific evidence...
"I recommend to guys to apply an ice pack up against his underwear, two to three times a day for about 10 to 15 minutes," he says, claiming clients have told him their partners have fallen pregnant after trying this...
When questioned about the unproven nature of his advice, Lucas said he believed icing the testes was a "promising intervention" but added that he would like to see more research...
Prof Jayasena recommends lifestyle changes to improve fertility.
"If there are any reversible things such as [quitting] smoking, such as [losing] weight and increasing physical activity," he says, "that's by far the best thing you can do."
COMMENT (NPW): The three things that CAN make a difference to male fertility, and for which there is scientifica evidence, are quitting smoking, losing weight and increasing physical activity. But this message is obscured by the focus of the article, which is overwhelmingly describing misinformation. Part of the reason that we are failing to address misinformation is that we tend to exclusively focus on the latter rather than on the broader challenge of improving the availability and use of reliable healthcare inforamtion by strengthening the global evidence ecosystem. www.hifa.org/ecosystem
Best wishes, Neil
HIFA profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is coordinator of HIFA (Healthcare Information For All), a global health community that brings all stakeholders together around the shared goal of universal access to reliable healthcare information. HIFA has 20,000 members in 180 countries, interacting in four languages and representing all parts of the global evidence ecosystem. HIFA is administered by Global Healthcare Information Network, a UK-based nonprofit in official relations with the World Health Organization. Email: neil@hifa.org