Wednesday, October 22, 2014

The Medicinal Properties of Food

There is some suggestion, as I have reported, that men who eat too many fruits and vegetables, and who do not eat enough animal protein have lower sperm counts.

Other studies suggest that the pesticides and other chemical contaminants used in agriculture cause lower sperm count.

Today, we learn that a man who wants to counteract the effect of too many fruits and vegetables should drink beer. Beer increases sperm count. 

To optimize the effects of beer the man should stop drinking coffee. Too much coffee lowers a man’s ability to conceive.

The New York Post reports the shocking discovery:

Beer-guzzling guys can increase their chances of becoming a father if they drink a few beers each day, a new study shows.

But while the booze helped men get their gals pregnant, downing a few cups coffee each day cut the guys’ chances of making a baby, according to the study done by Massachusetts General Hospital.

The study examined more than 100 men at the hospital whose partners were undergoing in-vitro fertilization between 2007 and 2013, according to London’s Telegraph.

Dudes who downed at least a pint and a half each day were more than twice as likely to have children through IVF than those who stayed stone-cold sober.
Java drinkers, however, showed the opposite effect. Men who drank more than two cups of joe each morning had their chances of becoming fathers cut drastically to just 1 in 5.

It’s not quite the same thing as the female biological clock, but still….

Anyway, there’s some consolation for men who eat lots of fruits and vegetables. No matter what it does to their sperm count and no matter what the reason, consuming these foodstuffs enhances a man’s mental health.

The Daily Mail reports the study:

As the saying goes, 'an apple a day keeps the doctor away,' - now research suggests that eating large amounts of fruit and vegetables every day can keep the therapist away, too.

study by The University of Queensland has found that eight or more portions every 24 hours drastically improves mental wellbeing.

Dr Redzo Mujcic, a researcher from the University of Queensland, collected data from 12,000 Australian adults to examine how their consumption of fruit and vegetables correlates with their mental health.

As it happens, fruits do more for mental health than vegetables and both help women more than men.

And yet, if you put all of this evidence together, it looks like science has discovered a new male contraceptive: a diet of fruits, vegetables and coffee. Dig in!

Since this diet will also improve your mood and keep you out of the therapists’ office—a good in itself—who’s to complain?

4 comments:

  1. Pardon my yawn. "Studies" on food, sex, & psychology, & health, etc. have jumped the shark for me. They're usually based on a small sample over a brief time. IOW, publish or perish, devil take the hindmost. W/a healthy helping of Social Engineering.

    Funny. I quit eggs for 10 years. Now they're good for me. M.Allen's "Sleeper" is apropos.

    Just read that gladiators ate legumes & grains, little meat.

    Genetics are surely more important than we're told. My Ma & Pa started smoking at 11, lived to 85. I started at 19 in VN (combat soldiers Smoke!!). We live on a Razor's Edge, but I might have 20 years left. -- Rich Lara

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  2. I hope I'm not the only one who finds all of these studies amusing. Surely, there is some truth there, but we now know that many of them are skewed.

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  3. As long as there are research grants, someone will take the money and run with it.

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  4. I think we need Richard Feynman's expert opinion of the scientific method in these correlation studies.

    Maybe the decline in the trust of science arises in part from the insane way research is reported and then the opposite is proven the next year.

    In other news Tyler Vigen has shown a correlation of divorce in Maine to per capita Margarine consumption. It looks like good science to me!
    http://www.tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1703
    You can hear his expert research methods here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-g0ovHjQxs

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