The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [111]
Total calories = 966
Calories from fat = 627
Fat grams = 73 g (113%)
Saturated fat grams = 15 g (76%)
Cholesterol = 456 g (152%)
Protein = 34 g (69%)
Carbohydrate grams = 55 g (18%)
Dietary fiber = 20 g (81%)
Sugars = 19 g
Calcium = 93%
Glycemic load = 15 (out of maximum 250)
Know your food sources, and the statistics on salmonella poisoning, etc., before consuming this. If raw milk scares you, and I wouldn’t blame you, use organic whole milk instead.
End of Chapter Notes
11. Check out the original at www.fourhourbody.com/enter-dragon. My massage therapist later asked me: “Have you been crawling through barbed wire?”
12. Called “exogenous” testosterone (created outside the body), as opposed to “endogenous” (created inside the body). Think of “external” to remember the difference.
13. hCG can also inhibit GnRH at the hypothalamus. It’s a serious drug and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
14. Though other hormones like FSH also correlate to the increased sex drive, LH shows the most pronounced jump.
15. This is personal, and I don’t suggest the same unless you’re deficient in selenium. See SpectraCell in the resources, as well as the explanation in “Sex Machine II.”
16. Albumin also does this to a lesser extent.
HAPPY ENDINGS AND DOUBLING SPERM COUNT
The two canals, fashioned by the gods, in which man’s power rests, in thy testicles … I break them with a club.
—Atharva Veda, sacred text of Hinduism
“Each man in this room is half the man his grandfather was.”
Louis Guillette PhD, a researcher from the University of Florida, opened his discussion in front of a congressional committee without preamble. Named one of just 20 Howard Hughes Medical Institute professors nationwide, Guillette was not speaking in metaphor. He had the data to prove it.
The sperm counts of men in the United States and 20 other industrialized countries have been falling since 1942 at a rate of roughly 1% per year in healthy males.
The average northern European sperm count in the 1940s was more than 100 million sperm per milliliter (million/ml) of ejaculate. In 2008? “The sperm counts of the majority of 20 year old European men are now so low that we may be close to the crucial tipping point of 40 million per milliliter spermatozoa … we must face the possibility of more infertile couples and lower fertility rates in the future.” In Denmark, more than 40% of men have already dropped below the 40 million/ml threshold and entered “sub-fertility.”
The research is, as always, controversial.
Some studies confirm the trend, while other studies contradict the findings, and we all end up more confused than before.
To sidestep the bickering, I tracked my sperm count and quality over 18 months and looked at the trends firsthand. From a selfish Darwinian standpoint, I didn’t care about Heinrich’s balls in Copenhagen. I cared about my own.
It all started with a trip to a sperm bank in 2008 (see sidebar in this chapter), when I had no intention of trending anything.
I’d had a few too many brushes with mortality, witnessed a 30-something friend get testicular cancer, and decided it was a good idea to begin freezing my swimmies while at their healthiest. Unlike fine wine, sperm count does not improve with age. After all, what if I got married and then had an accident or needed chemotherapy? I wanted a worst-case scenario insurance policy.
Getting an accurate sperm count never occurred to me as important. My blood work was immaculate. I was a strapping 31 years young. My diet was as clean as a Mormon’s breakfast, and I was hitting new personal records in the gym. Why would I bother to think about it? It was obvious that I didn’t need to.
Unpleasant Surprises
Then the shocker: the lab results, which were available the afternoon after my session, put my sperm count on the low range of normal, borderline problematic. I couldn’t believe it. Assuming it was a lab mistake, I repeated the drill three weeks later and came back with an even lower count. The more tests I did over