Foods and your fertility

 

BY MAORE ITHULE

Towards the end of last year, the controversial tetanus vaccine turned Kenyan clergy pyrotechnic. Shockingly, men and women of the cloth claimed that the jab could render women infertile. The standoff between officials at the ministry of Health and the Catholic Church over the vaccine was finally resolved after experts found the jab safe.

Now an expert says there is yet another danger to your fertility; that delicious meal and drink you crave so much, and which you are likely to over-consume throughout your life, and mainly during festive seasons.

Erick Ngereso, a nutritionist at Kenyatta National Hospital, says foods that could be the enemies to your fertility are those that are most popular; uncontrolled intake of fried foods – chips, meats (red or white) – fatty meals, sugar and sugary drinks, snacks like cakes and chocolate, and alcohol. Others are foods that are derived from genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Thus depending on what you and your family over-indulge in, you will all be more or less fertile at the end, albeit temporarily. 

Food products derived from GMO’s, declares the nutritionist, are responsible for the rising numbers of men who are becoming transgender. 

The soya bean, for example, is one of the many alien leguminous crops produced in Kenya today, with most of its seeds and its production processes being genetically modified. To give credence to his warning, Ngereso quotes various scientific research findings.

The common vegetable oils that are used in many Kenyan homes and fast food outlets contain trans-fats also known as trans-fatty acids, says Ngereso. 

“These are the worst enemies of men’s fertility,” he declares. “We use them for frying all kinds of meats at homes and hotels.

“Studies indicate that men with high concentrations of trans-fatty acids in their semen have 96 percent fewer sperm than men with low concentrations,” he warns, quoting a US based study.

However, he says, science is yet to determine the time span over which the fats accumulate in the testes and/or how long they stay there. “In my view the fats have a potential to last a lifetime because trans-fatty acids cannot be reconverted into energy like other fats in the body,” he says.

 

In Kenya, says the nutritionist, many people are shying away from meats and dairy products, preferring flavoured soya bean-based substitutes (imitations). Astute businesspeople are now making soya-based products like soya-meat and soya-milk. While there are obvious benefits for sticking to a vegetarian diet like this, Ngereso cautions that soya bean has proteins that are similar to oestrogen – the female hormone. Thus men who consume a lot soya based products are likely to develop feminine characteristics because testosterone, the male hormone, is inhibited by the oestrogen-like proteins in soya.

“In simpler terms, men who consume a lot of soya or soya-based products will, over time, lose their masculinity and sexual appetite and potency, have lower production of sperms and start feeling like females trapped in male bodies. They will ultimately become transgender – people who are neither men nor women.”

The nutritionist supports his view with another Harvard-based study that examined the effects of 15 different soy-based foods on men whose partners were trying to become pregnant. “The very reason women in menopause use soy-based foods to improve their sexual appetite —because soya exerts mild estrogenic effects. It is the same reason they can be harmful to male fertility,” the report says. “While including a few soya-based foods in your diet won’t affect most men, if a man’s sperm count is low, or even low-to-normal, soya foods could tip the oestrogen/testosterone balance in the wrong direction and reduce sperm count further.”

Most milk and milk-derived products, beef and mutton consumed by Kenyans who are living in rural areas are (mainly) organically produced. The same cannot be said of the products ingested by populaces living in urban centres.

Now Ngereso is concerned because research has established that men whose mothers ate GMO beef at least seven times a week while pregnant with them are three times as likely to have low sperm count as men whose mothers consumed less of GMO beef while pregnant. 

A research was conducted in the USA to find out what possible long-term risks growth hormones used in beef production had on people. When researchers examined men’s semen quality in relation to their mothers’ self-reported beef consumption during pregnancy, they made the following conclusion: 

“Sperm concentration was inversely related to mothers’ beef meals per week. These findings ‘suggest that maternal beef consumption, and possibly the hormones in GMO beef, may alter a man’s testicular development in the womb and adversely affect his reproductive capacity later in life.”

Ngereso raises concern that there is an increased use of growth hormones in livestock production. No research has been conducted to establish how GMO flesh and dairy products may affect you and your family in terms of fertility. 

In yet another study conducted by scholars at Harvard University, it was established that women who eat lots of low-fat dairy products face an 85 percent higher risk of ovulatory infertility than women who consume little or non-low-fat dairy products.

Says Ngereso: “The study established that this condition is high in women who consumed two or more daily servings of low-fat dairy products.

“Because past fertility studies on milk were inconclusive, we compared low- and full-fat dairy products as an exercise in thoroughness,” says Jorge Chavarro, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-author of the study.

“These findings were extremely surprising,” Chavarro says, “given that the government’s Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that adults consume three or more servings of low-fat dairy products daily.”

Ngereso has no good news either for bachelors who imagine that spaghetti and canned foods make their lives easy. He says bisphenol-A (BPA), a chemical that is used in the processing of these foods could lower their fertility potency by up to 23 percent. Furthermore the chemical increases sperm DNA damage in those men by up to 10 percent, meaning that even if one’s sperms were fertile, they have lost your genetical traceability in their children.

Alcohol abuse defiles the human body on many fronts. In terms of fertility, Ngereso says, women are most assailable. 

He says: “Consumption of at least a pint of beer every day increases a woman’s ovulatory infertility by 50 percent.”  This warning is based on a research conducted by the Harvard University on 18,555 women over a period of eight years.

Part of the report says: “Alcohol hinders the liver’s ability to metabolise hormones. Most ovulatory infertility includes hormonal imbalances that are worsened by hepatic congestion. Hormonal excesses in the blood require a clean and healthy liver to metabolise and excrete. The body cannot rid itself of excess hormones when it is busy metabolising alcoholic beverages.”  

“For this reason, women who consume alcohol should share the blame when they cannot procreate with their spouses who also abuse alcohol.”

For women who are eager to conceive, Ngereso has this to say: “Replacing chicken and red meat with vegetable sources of protein might reduce the risk of ovulatory infertility. My advice is based on hard facts borne of scientific research. In my profession, we now know that women who consume at least five percent of their daily calories in the form of vegetable protein rather than meat protein have a 50 percent lower risk of ovulatory infertility than women who consume only meat protein.”

This is again based on Harvard-based study which has long established that red and chicken meat contains an acid that can cause or worsen internal inflammatory reactions.  When the body is in a state of internal reactivity, it is in a state of ‘dis-ease,’ (sic) and has less energy available for housekeeping functions like procreation.

But Ngereso has some advice on how to safely pamper your family and friends with delicacies this season and thereafter without interfering with their fertility.

Besides having daily exercises, he says, people should halve or zero their daily sugar intake while in every meal there should be only one fried food item while the rest of the courses should be taken boiled, steamed or raw. 

He says: “In your daily meal, you may have say, fried rice, boiled chicken and vegetable salad, or you can boil your matoke, fry your beef and steam your vegetables. Your meals should be accompanied by light beverages with no or little sugar or milk.”

 

Chemicals in soaps, detergents, shampoos 

Annual festivities like Christmas and the coming Easter holidays are often accompanied by pompous self aggrandisement and pretentious glamour in many families, which include donning new flashy apparels, cosmetics and long visits to the salon and the barber shops. For an expectant mother, research has established, this is a snare to your unborn child’s fertility. You will pick all manner of chemicals in the process.

Research conducted at Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark has found that chemicals found in soaps, cosmetics and cleaning products pose a potent threat to male fertility. In a report published in May this year, researchers found that these hormone-disrupting chemicals “feminise” boys in the womb, leading to rising rates of birth defects, testicular cancer, and low sperm counts.

It is thought that all these conditions, collectively called Testicular Dysgenesis Syndrome (TDS), are linked to disruption of the male sex hormone testosterone. The report concluded that exposure to a cocktail of hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment is likely to be at least partly to blame for blocking the action of testosterone in the womb. 

In recent years, more and more evidence has emerged, showing that certain chemicals are causing damage to the endocrine systems of both wildlife and humans. Male infertility, in particular, is on the rise, and about 250,000 fewer boys have been born in the last 30 years in the U.S. and Japan.

Scientists are linking this phenomenon to an accumulation of “gender-bending” toxins called endocrine disruptors. 

Here’s a list of twelve common agents with hormonal activity – that is, potential endocrine disrupters: 

 

Phthalates: these causes a condition referred to as undescended testes in male foetuses. Phthalates are found in vinyl flooring, detergents, automotive plastics, soap, shampoo, deodorants, fragrances, hair spray, nail polish, plastic bags, food packaging, garden hoses, inflatable toys, blood-storage bags, and intravenous medical tubing.

 

Bisphenol-A: a common ingredient in many plastics, including those in reusable water bottles and resins lining some food cans and dental sealants, can change the course of fetal development in a way that increases your risk of breast cancer. 

 

Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA): found in grease- and water-resistant coatings and is a likely carcinogen (a cancer causing chemical when it enters the body).

 

Methoxychlor and Vinclozin: an insecticide and a fungicide respectively, these have been found to cause changes to male mice born for as many as four subsequent generations after the initial exposure. 

These chemicals can exert their effects into the endocrine system by mimicking the biological activity of your hormones by binding to a cellular receptor. This can initiate a cell’s normal response to the naturally occurring hormone at the wrong time or to an excessive extent, or the chemicals may affect the body by binding themselves to the receptor but not activating it. Instead, the presence of the chemical on the receptor prevents binding of the natural hormone. Others act by binding themselves to receptors that transport proteins in blood, thus altering the amounts of natural hormones that are present in your blood circulation, or they may simply act by interfering with the metabolic processes in your body, affecting the synthesis or breakdown rates of your natural hormones. These hormones also influence the immune system and general metabolism.

The strongest evidence showing that exposure to environmental chemicals can lead to disruption of endocrine function comes from the bizarre changes seen in a number of wildlife species, such as male fish transforming into females, frogs developing a variety of defects like multiple testes or ovaries, and hermaphrodite bears, just to name a few. 

The clearest example of the disastrous, long-term health effects of an endocrine disrupter is diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic oestrogen prescribed in the 1950s and 1960s to five million pregnant women for the prevention of spontaneous abortion. The children were born, but many of them had physical deformities and developmental abnormalities, and some of the girls developed an unusual form of vaginal cancer when they reached puberty. 

Consequently, DES was banned in the 1970s. But the damage still lingers, and in some cases keeps showing up even in second generation babies. 

 

Staying safe

How to protect your family

Store your food in glass containers, whenever possible. 

Only use natural cleaning products in your home. Most health food stores will have these available or you can search online for them. 

Eat organic produce and free range, organic foods to reduce your exposure to pesticides and fertilisers. This also applies to milk, which is frequently contaminated with bovine growth hormone.

Avoid conventional or farm-raised fish, which are often heavily contaminated with PCBs and mercury. Instead, supplement with a high-quality krill oil, or eat fish that is wild-caught and lab tested for purity. 

Avoid processed foods and artificial food additives of all kinds, including artificial sweeteners.

Throw out your Teflon pots and pans.

Have your tap water tested and, if contaminants are found, install an appropriate water filter on all your faucets (even those in your shower or bath). 

Avoid using artificial air fresheners, dryer sheets, fabric softeners or other synthetic fragrances. 

Switch to natural brands of toiletries, including shampoo, toothpaste, antiperspirants and cosmetics. 

When redoing your home, look for “green,” toxin-free alternatives in lieu of regular paint and vinyl floor coverings. 

 

Replace your vinyl shower curtain with ones made of fabric.