Our fearless editrix finds herself this evening pacing about the Sex and the 405 newsroom (naked, of course) bemoaning the lack of white bread to be found in California. But fear not, for while the rest of the staff attempts to distract her with Star Wars porn, I am here to educate and entertain.

Introducing: A ball sack for your ball sack. A sling for your thing. A sock for your cock. A thong for your dong.

According to Scicurious at Neurotopia:

For many years now, scientists have been trying to come up with a reliable form of male contraceptive that…isn’t a condom. There’s a lot of burden on women when it comes to contraception (in terms of the pill, the ring, the patch, etc), and so for a while scientists have been looking for a way to give men more of an equal say. But hormones don’t appear to work very well.

So what did the scientists do? Polyester underpants. And they made the guys wear them for a whole year (the editrix pipes up: “ew, did they wear them during sex?!” we hope so.) Apparently sperm are sensitive to polyester, but not cotton. And not only that, research had shown that men who wore polyester underpants had lower sperm counts than those who prefer their testicles to be enshrined behind other materials. Scicurious continues:

So one of the ways in which polyester might work to reduce sperm count would be by causing it to be too warm, and thus making it difficult for sperm to mature. And having your balls too warm is probably a better contraceptive option compared to sitting on ice to send your balls in the other direction.

The other reason, however, is a bit more odd: electrostatic charge. Apparently polyester rubbing up against the skin produces an electrostatic charge which could somehow prevent sperm maturation.

And not only that! They did this to dogs also. And the dogs wore them for two years. According to blogger Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal:

For the polyester group, there were no real changes in testicular temperature. But there was a significant decrease in sperm count and in motile sperms, which are sperms that are good swimmers. The Michael Phelpses of the sperm-o-sphere. There was also a significant increase in abnormal sperm count. There were small but statistically insignificant changes in hormones during the experiment. The testicular biopsy showed degeneration in the seminiferous tubules. After the underwear was removed, sperm counts reached pre-experimental levels by the eleventh month in ten of the twelve dogs in that group.

For both the cotton group as well as the control group, there were no changes in any of the measured variables throughout the entire three years of the experiment.

… We thought polyester shirts were a pretty effective contraceptive to begin with. Right?


Signing off, polyps. Remember! You don’t know Dick.
…But don’t worry. We’re here to help you.


LEGAL: We here at Sex and the 405 hereby absolve ourselves of all liability from attempts to create an electrostatic potential across your, or your partner’s, testicles.

Image from: Shafik, A. (1992). Contraceptive efficacy of polyester-induced azoospermia in normal men Contraception, 45 (5), 439-451 DOI: 10.1016/0010-7824(92)90157-O via Neurotopia. Information from Scienceblogs.

Dick Feynman (@feynmandick) is a Los Angeles-based scientist, specializing in diluting scientific research findings into tasty, bite-sized bacon-flavored snacks for the unwashed masses.

A contraceptive for men is soon going to start trials at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, just in time for the celebration of 50th anniversary of the female contraceptive pill!

Dr. Swerdloff, the director of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s Male Contraceptive Clinical Trials Center, said the development of a male contraceptive has the power to change men’s view of their health and empower their reproductive decisions.

“Just as women gained greater control over their reproductive choices and their health with the advent of the birth control pill, a male contraceptive would get men more involved in their personal health care and would give them greater reproductive choices,” he said in a statement.

To this end, the institute is seeking 60 men ages 18 to 50 to test out a combination of hormone gels that will be applied to their arms and abdomens to see how they affect sperm count. The idea is that this hormonal gel will cut sperm count to levels where conception is not possible. According to researchers, discontinued use will result in the men returning to their normal sperm production.

Named after Dr. Christina Wang, one of the leading researchers involved, the test period is being called the “Wang male contraceptive trial.” If you giggle about it, we’re going to think less of you. This is very serious stuff, people.

OK, fine. Giggle. Then, if you’re a man, consider signing up for the study.

Information via the LA Weekly.

Last week the web went up in flames when a woman, by the name of Angie Jackson, began live-tweeting her medical abortion.

Jackson discovered she was pregnant the week prior, following the failure of her method of birth control. A single mom with a little boy, Jackson claims that she was was told that her pregnancy could cause a threat to her life and decided to abort the using the abortifacient mifepristone.

The Frisky did an interview with Jackson about the abortion:

The Frisky: What compelled you to tweet about your abortion? Why even “demystify” it for people? A lot of people consider an abortion something that should be private.

Angie Jackson: I guess I was so terrified going into this that it was going to be horribly painful, that I was going to hemorrhage. And I don’t want to be flippant that those things don’t happen [but] what I was trying to say to people who find themselves in this position is that I was relieved to find out that I had this non-surgical option [the abortion pill] and that I was early enough [in my pregnancy] to get it. I was so relieved to see how simple it’s been. The actual process has been like a menstrual period. It’s not foreign or scary.

The Frisky: You were on birth control — an IUD, correct? What happened to it?

Angie Jackson: It can fall out during heavy flow periods, which going by the dates and everything, my last period was about two-and-a-half weeks before I got pregnant, so in that period of time, I was thinking I was using protection but probably not. By the time I got the ultrasound, the IUD was not in there anymore.

The Frisky: So, you’re very blunt in the YouTube video, saying that you’re not ashamed about having an abortion. You just flat-out say, “I’m not ashamed.” Where does that come from?

Angie Jackson: I think any time that we are silent about things or secret about things, it is unhealthy. I say this as a sexual abuse survivor. When I stopped keeping secrets [about the sexual abuse] and starting telling somebody, life got better. I have kept that throughout my life And I’m an autobiographical blogger. I am very open with the internet about how I am. I am very open about who I am with parenting and mental illness … For me, this wasn’t very different. This was about me talking about who I am openly. For me, talking about things is just how I approach all the taboos of life. I think that secrecy is unhealthy. We don’t get help when we don’t talk about things. For women who do need counseling or support or love or understanding after an abortion, if they have to stay quiet out of shame, then they won’t get that help. I think talking about things really can make a huge difference.

I feel that I was reasonably responsible. This is a possible responsible answer to this problem. In my case, I do feel like this is the best decision. I talked it over with my son and my boyfriend, who are the only people besides me who get a vote. It’s still my choice, but I’m going to talk it over with the people that I love — not that my son understands it much. But I don’t see why I should be ashamed that I’m saving my life. I don’t think that I’m being a killer; I don’t feel like I killed a person. And I’m sure if I did, I would feel guilt. And that’s why [anti-abortion activists] try so hard to convince you that it is.

Here is some of the feedback she has received:

Tracie at Jezebel offered the following comments:

And while I think that what she’s doing is radically progressive and service-y (she describes in her tweets what a medical abortion feels like), I sort of wish that she didn’t feel the need to have to qualify or rationalize her decision by explaining that the pregnancy could have been detrimental to her health—although I appreciate and understand her full disclosure and honesty—because the bottom line is that it doesn’t matter why she made this choice. It only matters that she’s allowed to make this choice.

What do you think? Is this a public service or over the top?

A recent study by scientists from University of California, San Francisco, have identified a mechanism that prompts sperm to start swimming toward an egg. Appropriately targeted, this mechanism could assist in developing new methods of male contraception.

So, basically, sperm are basically balloons of protons. Once they hit the female reproductive tract, these protons are released, which kicks off the sperms’ race to the egg.

“The concentration of protons inside the [sperm] cell is 1,000 times higher than outside,” said lead researcher, Yuriy Kirichok. “If you just open a pore, protons will go outside. We identify the molecule that lets them out.”

This molecule is Hv1 protein. By identifying it, we may be able to modify the activity of sperm in either direction, meaning: make it not go to the egg. Score!

“You can imagine now that we know the molecule responsible we could block it to prevent activation and fertilization as a kind of male contraception,” Kirichok said.

The study appears in the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.

Information from the Times of India.

The mortality rate of California women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has nearly tripled in the past decade and the state Department of Public Health has for the past seven months declined to release a report outlining the trend.

The investigative journalist group California Watch, spoke with investigators who wrote the report and they confirmed the spike in deaths related to pregnancy since the 1930s.

While the number of deaths is relatively small, it is now more dangerous to give birth in California than it is to do so in Kuwait or Bosnia.

Per the article on CaliforniaWatch:

“The issue is how rapidly this rate has worsened,” said Debra Bingham, executive director of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, the public-private task force investigating the problem for the state. “That’s what’s shocking.”

The problem may be occurring nationwide. The Joint Commission, the leading health care accreditation and standards group in the United States, issued a “Sentinel Event Alert” to hospitals on Jan. 26, stating: “Unfortunately, current trends and evidence suggest that maternal mortality rates may be increasing in the U.S.”

The alert asked doctors to consider morbid obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, along with hemorrhaging from C-sections, as contributing factors.

In 2007, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that the national maternal mortality rate had risen, but experts such as Dr. Jeffrey C. King, who leads a special inquiry into maternal mortality for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, chalked up the change to better counting of deaths. His opinion hasn’t changed.

“I would be surprised if there was a significant increase of maternal deaths,” said King, who has not seen the California report.

But Shabbir Ahmad, a scientist in California’s Department of Public Health, decided to look closer. He organized academics, state researchers and hospitals to conduct a systematic review of every maternal death in California. It’s the largest state review ever conducted. The group’s initial findings provide the first strong evidence that there is a true increase in deaths – not just the number of reported deaths.

Changes in the population – obese mothers, older mothers and fertility treatments – cannot completely account for the rise in deaths in California, said Dr. Elliott Main, the principal investigator for the task force.

Image by Beverly. Information from CaliforniaWatch, via Alternet.

Urologists at the University of Florida are using robots to reverse vasectomies, effectively shaving off 20 minutes of surgery time from the procedure. Not only does this spare surgeons’ backs, as they have to be bent over a patient operating with high-power microscopes, but it appears that the decreased time spent in surgery enables sperm count in patients to return faster.

“For a couple that’s trying to get pregnant, this is a big deal,” said Dr. Sijo Parekattil, director of male infertility and microsurgery at the University of Florida, who led the study, soon to be published in the Journal of Endourology.

Many types of surgery are now being aided by robots, and surgeons continue to explore new areas in which they can be used.

“This is state-of-the-art stuff, it’s cutting-edge, and a stepping stone to understanding whether or not we can use this technology on a more widespread basis,” said Dr. Wayne Kuang, director of Male Reproductive Health at University of New Mexico, who was not involved in the study. “It’s a natural progression from back in the days when we just had magnified eyeglasses.”

But vasectomy reversal via bot is not without controversy: many specialists believe that developing an expensive robot to do something that’s already done with a microscope is a waste of resources and that the costs associated for patients (a bot-assisted reversal is $3,000 more than a conventional vasectomy reversal).

“The big question is did it improve outcomes — either pregnancy rates or the time spent in surgery?” said professor Dr. Jay Sandlow, vice chair of the department of urology at Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who initially had reservations about the robotic procedure but after seeing the preliminary results now says he sees value in the method.

“It certainly looks as if he has done that,” said Sandlow, who was not involved in the study. “He has shown a meaningful decrease in the amount of time it takes to do these robotically compared to the open procedure.”

It’s also worth noting that since many hospital fees are based on time, cutting down on operating time could offset some of the cost of using the robot.

It is too soon to tell whether pregnancy rates have improved since the conclusion of the 2009 study that compares the results of 20 men who had the robotic procedure and the seven who had the microscopic one.

But two months after surgery, average sperm count in the robotic surgery group was 54 million, compared with 11 million in the microscopic surgery group. Early results show that the difference in sperm count between the two procedures decreases over time, however.

Information from the University of Florida.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is holding a webinar and conference call on how the flu affects pregnancy this Wednesday, January 13, from 5:00 to 6:30PM PST.

Speakers include Dr. Sonja Rasmussen, a board-certified pediatrician and senior scientist in the CDC Division of Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities and Dr. Betsy Mitchell, a health communication specialist.

Along side the doctors will be a… wait for it, wait for it… social media expert! This individual will turn you on to flu-related social media tools from CDC. Got flu? There may be an app for that. Stay tuned. Or just prepare to see your Twitter streams saturated with the #Preg&Flu hashtag.

Anyway, if you’re interested in attending, go ahead and e-mail NCHMInteractiveMedia@cdc.gov to RSVP and submit any questions you may have on the topic.

To call in during the conference, dial: 877-972-5886, the code to enter is: 7276457

To access the call via web, go to MyMeeting.

Information via Rita Arens.

LOL. Sorry about the title. We know this isn’t funny. But come on–it was too easy.

OK, so here’s the deal: there’s a sperm drought in Tasmania. They’re down to four viable sperm donors and for the first time in its 35-year history, women looking for donors are having to be placed on a waiting list.

The state’s IVF director Bill Watkins said the cause is a combination of fewer men donating sperm, and more interstate women draining the state’s supply.

Health Minister Lara Giddings has called on the state’s men to help end the drought.

“I would encourage males who are prepared to look at donating sperm to do exactly that because there are many couples in the community struggling to have a child,” she said in a statement.

Will Tasmania’s men rise to the occasion? Cum all ye viable!

All right, all right. We’ll stop.

Information via The Courier Mail.

Retrograde ejaculation happens when sperm, instead of being released from the body, go back down the urethra and into the bladder. The condition is a result of nerves in the area becoming damaged, and though it doesn’t affect a man’s ability to experience orgasm, retrograde ejaculation can leave a man permanently infertile.

“In terms of public health problems related to diabetes, it is way down the list–cardiovascular and eye disease are much more significant problems,” Dr. David Price, a diabetes expert at the Morriston Hospital in Swansea told the UK’s Daily Mail. “However, if you’re a young person with and want to have children, or are the consultant treating it, it’s a real problem and the fact that it’s not the most serious side-effect of diabetes is no comfort.”

According to Price, some five percent of men with erectile dysfunction problems, caused by diabetes of either type, have retrograde ejaculation.

“Diabetes is a common cause of sexual problems because the disease affects the blood supply and nerves,” he told the Mail. “Around 35 per cent of diabetic men–around 440,000–suffer from erectile dysfunction and this increases to more 50 percent in diabetic men of 60 or older. Retrograde ejaculation is less common, but still affects a few per cent of diabetic men with sexual dysfunction problems, probably a few tens of thousands of men.”

How does it happen?

“Initially a man can get an erection, but it doesn’t last because of blood supply problems and then, as nerve damage develops, it can lead to ejaculation problems,” Price explained.

Information from The Daily Mail.

Caffeine does more than wake you up–it wakes up your sperm.

That’s right. A group of Brazilian scientists has found that men who drink coffee have sperm that moves better than the sperm of those who turn down the cuppa joe.

Lead researcher, Fabio Pasqualotto, said: “Sperm motility was higher in patients who drink coffee compared to patients who do not drink coffee.”

The researchers also found that smoking cigarettes had neither a beneficial nor an adverse effect on sperm motility compared with the caffeine effect. Smoking pot, on the other hand, does seem to impair sperm.

Scientists from New York University who examined the sperm of 22 men who admitted smoking pot at least four times a week for the past five years found that these produced less sperm in and that their sperm was less capable of the hyperactivity needed to fertilize the egg.

Sweet! Smokers = 1, Stoners = 0! Not that we at Sex and the 405 suggest you should do that to your lungs or anything.

Got a light?

Image by Omar MK. Information from Medical News Today.