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Are Boys An Endangered Species?
Mon, 2007-11-05 19:43 - Niels
By Francesca Lyman for MSN Health & Fitness
Freelance
Half as many boys as girls are being born in some places around the world—and pollution is the prime suspect.
Among the Chippewas of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community living on the shores of the St. Clair River outside Sarnia, Ontario, tribal leaders were puzzling over a variety of health problems—from asthma to cancer to miscarriages—plaguing their families. The Aamjiwnaang—the name means “at the spawning stream”—were shaken when they realized that there was a dramatic disproportion of girls to boys among them.
Jim Brophy, director of the Occupational Health Clinic for Ontario Workers’ Sarnia branch, remembers the look of shock on their faces when they suddenly made the connection. “It was like a deep family secret getting out,” Brophy recalls. “They had enough girls for three baseball teams, but not enough boys for even one boy team.”
Since then, the Chippewas of Aamjiwnaang’s 850 band members—who live near a cluster of chemical plants known as Chemical Valley—have worried that the air and water around them contribute to the drop in the number of their male children, as well as a host of grim diseases associated with toxic chemicals.
And now, in a number of villages at the northernmost reaches of the Arctic Circle—seemingly remote from any hazardous chemicals—scientists have found a similar syndrome: populations spawning twice as many girls as boys. Based on preliminary data released in September 2007, researchers are blaming high levels of man-made chemicals that have made their way up the food chain, through fish and other marine species, and into indigenous seafood diets.
Indigenous Arctic peoples show high levels of chemical contamination, researchers say, because they depend on local fish, marine animals, seabirds and reindeer meat, which are significantly more contaminated than imported food by persistent organic pollutants like PCBs, dioxin and DDT.
So far, researchers from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme have linked the dramatically skewed declines in male baby births with chemical contamination. But they haven’t determined the exact biological mechanisms by which these changes are taking place.
However, according to Lars-Otto Reiersen, executive secretary of AMAP in Oslo, Norway, “PCBs, DDTs and other persistent organic pollutants are known from research to possibly trigger male and female hormone signals incorrectly.”
These strange and disturbing cases are by no means the only ones providing clues that there can be changes to the sex ratio—the normal, and usually fairly even, proportion of male to female live births. One of the first examples of this phenomenon came when thousands of people were contaminated by dioxin in a 1976 industrial accident at a chemical factory in Seveso, Italy. After the accident, researchers followed the children of the people affected to discover that half the number of boys as girls were born in the next generation.
Lars-Otto Reiersen and other Arctic researchers fear the same thing could be happening in the Russian Arctic. “Arctic indigenous populations, whose lifestyle is based on the consumption of traditional country foods, are subject to some of the highest exposure levels to PTS (persistent toxic substances) of any population groups on Earth,” according to the AMAP report.
Also alarming is the decline in male births around the world, a trend some scientists find troubling. In the United States, more boys are being born than girls, but the gap between the two has declined in the last 30 years.
One of those worried is Devra Davis, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute’s Center for Environmental Oncology and professor of epidemiology at the university’s Graduate School of Public Health. Davis is the lead author of a June 2007 article in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives that found statistically significant reductions in male births and increased fetal deaths in Japan and among Caucasians in the United States since 1970. She and her co-authors note that this decline represents 135,000 fewer white males in the U.S. and 127,000 fewer males in Japan stretching over the past three decades than the normative rate would expect.
“There are environmental and other factors—probably not genetics, because such changes couldn’t happen in a decade or two—working to threaten the ability of the human species to make healthy babies,” Davis told MSN.
Most parents think their chance of having a baby girl or a baby boy is 50-50. However, normally, it’s more like 51-49, since on average there are 105 or 106 males born for every 100 females.
Throughout history, males have usually outnumbered females slightly, according to Christopher Wills, a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Nature, or evolution, compensates for the fact that males are more fragile by producing more of them, Wills says, “so that the ratio of males to females is about 1.2 to 1 at conception.”
Given this natural tilt toward male births, the declining probability of having a male baby is ever more troubling to Davis; it’s what she considers a “sentinel” indicator of ill health in the population—indicating, as she and her co-authors wrote, that “males are being culled in some systematic fashion.”
Davis and the University of Pittsburgh team also found that an increasing proportion of fetuses that die are male. They say a range of environmental factors may explain these trends: whether they originate in paternal exposures or maternal exposures before conception—possibly, as they write, “prenatal exposures to endocrine disrupting environmental pollutants at a critical stage of sexual differentiation.”
However, the reasons behind these trends aren’t clear. “Normally, many more boys than girls should be born,” Davis told MSN, “and they aren't being born. Something is obviously wrong, but we don't know how to explain this."
Not everyone agrees that the small decline these researchers point to is so consequential.
The American Chemistry Council, which represents U.S. chemical manufacturers, won’t discuss these statistics, but refers reporters to Dr. Harry Fisch, a longtime researcher on male reproductive health who dismisses the idea that these global trends are being triggered by endocrine-disrupting chemicals. [Fisch says he is not affiliated with the ACC or a paid consultant to the organization, although he has accepted several reimbursements for travel expenses from ACC to international meetings to discuss his own independently-funded research].
“Over the years, there have been major fluctuations,” says Fisch, a professor of urology at Columbia University, College of Physicians and Surgeons, "True, there are less boys being born compared to girls, during the last few decades, but only fractionally."
Fisch, author of The Male Biological Clock, blames older parental age as a more likely explanation than pollution for some of these unexplained trends like skewed sex ratio, noting that a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that older mothers and older fathers tended to produce fewer boys. "Before you start saying that chemicals in our global environment are the culprit, you have to look at your own personal environment," he adds. "The bottom line is that we're seeing a trend toward older parents."
Fisch also dismisses worries over a drop in sperm counts and increases in hypospadias, and argues that the neurodevelopmental problems affecting boys—the sixfold increase in autism, for example—can be attributed to more people having children at older ages, not environmental chemicals.
However, many public health professionals argue the opposite: That drops in male births and general declines in reproductive health ought to be examined even more closely in connection with endocrine disruption.
“This is a very serious issue that speaks to our future reproductive health,” argues OHCOW’s Jim Brophy. “We tend to look at chronic diseases, like cancer and autism, in isolation, while these reproductive issues—higher rates of miscarriage, for example—tend to go below the radar and may offer clues for the huge rates of diseases we’re seeing.”
Population biologist Christopher Wills offers another concern connected with the greater fragility of males: It isn’t just that males are being born in lesser numbers, but that their lives are being foreshortened, especially in places hit hard by pollution.
“Just look at the life expectancy for men in Russia—it’s age 73 for women, but age 59 for men,’ says Wills. “This may turn out to be the real elephant in the bedroom.”
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Comments
economic laws
With some people's desire to control their family planning, has the drop in number of males born already lead to a price difference on the adoption market?
Forget adoption, think "Fertility"
Some sides of the planet want to raise large families... others want to keep their population to a minimum, so it's all a matter of perspective , donchya think?
Perspective
There certainly is a big difference in perspective between a country where "wise old men" decide what the baby quotum is going to be and a country where governments are afraid to even allow the education of the population.
"Save the Males" campaign
You think maybe after all these decades of women-bossing men around, with the rhetoric of "you're replaceable" that message is now being read as one that requires a rescue mission for the male species?
I know with my adoptive father, I always felt sad for him, knowing he got "bossed into buying another baby". In his case, he already had fathered a child, so he had nothing to prove, in terms of male virility. He had a wife who wanted a daughter. They bought one.
The rest could have ended much better, had she showed more interest in someone other than herself.
My adoptive dad was simply caught in the middle. As a man, a husband, and a father to his own son, I have to respect his choice to stick with his own family. God knows I wish it were different, but it is what it is. That's how it works in adoption: the child has no say in who pays for the privilege to parent the bastard left guessing, "Is it me?"
Fact or Falacy: is "testosterone under attack"?
Funny, a few days later, the following article should appear, noting the medical miracles in terms of boosting a man's hormone's balance in things, eh?
http://health.msn.com/menshealth/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100169436>1=10613
How much with this cost you fellas?
Will it be equal to the woman's monthly Pill?
What astounds me in articles such as these is one simple principle: once you mess with nature, you mess with an entire system, causing problems that knows no limits.
What ever happened to letting nature take it's course in reproduction, in the first-place?
Why did science have to intervene with sex? To make it easier? Was sex ever that difficult to figure-out? Or is it the intimacy and communication between two people that gets in the way of sex?
Seems to me, after all these years, we have no more choices or solutions than we did back in the Closed Era Days... and those were dark days, my strange friends!
Perhaps it's safer to say, not all folks are born to be parents. Not all sperm is meant to be caught by an egg, and not all uterus's are meant to be used for fertilization purposes.
Is that such a bad thing?
Can't people have more of a purpose than just procreation?
just a little rub?
OMG. I'm reading this article and laughing my panties off.
Who wrote this crap?
"Testosterone is literally what makes us men. Delivery of the right amount at the critical moment shifts development of a fetus away from the basic human blueprint, which is female, and onto the path to masculinity. A surge in testosterone (from the testes—hence the name) in adolescence boosts us into manhood. And for the rest of our lives, testosterone, or the lack of it, seems to play a key role in muscle strength, lean body mass, bone density, mental sharpness, and sex drive—the things that often make us feel best about who we are.
Despite testosterone's explosive reputation, there's no solid evidence that it causes aggression or violence. On the contrary, heightened testosterone is often associated with self-confidence and social success. Testosterone levels typically increase to ready us for a challenge, whether it's a football game or a chess match. Testosterone also rises after a victory, causing an increase in confidence that often leads to even more victories, the so-called winner effect. Who would want less of a hormone like that?...
The debate over testosterone levels was kind of a parlor game for me when I started researching this article. I'm married, a father of three, and neither overweight nor a smoker. I lift weights, and I row crew 6 miles a day in season. My appetites and my outlook on life have always seemed healthy. It never occurred to me that my testosterone levels might be low. Using testosterone therapy to prolong the illusion of youth made about as much sense to me as hair plugs.
Then I had a blood test, and my total-testosterone level came back way low. It looked like the batting average of an okay hitter in a bad month near the end of his career. Suddenly, I listened a little more sympathetically when Abraham Morgentaler, M.D., an associate clinical professor of urology at Harvard, started making the case for test-osterone-replacement therapy. "What's amazing to me is the passion this testosterone issue generates in people," he was saying. "There are a couple of issues that come up. 'Why can't we just age normally? Why do we have to have 70-year-old men chasing their wives like they did when they were 25? Why can't they just be 70?' And I think it's the most ridiculous argument. Bad vision is age related, as are bad hearing, bad joints, bad hearts, bad blood vessels. Even cancer is age related. We treat all these things so we can live longer or happier. And the change in hormonal levels? If it's treatable and the therapy is safe, reasonably speaking, why would we want to withhold treatment from somebody?"
Yea, I'd say there's a parlor game going on.
Some rubbing of palms, too.
Greasy, greedy ones, too.
Where's my bottle, damn-it! These people are NUTS!
Food for thought
One has to question "new-age medicine", especially when it affects the sexuality and the sexes. Face it folks, sex sells, as we bastards from the Closed Era of Adoption know and can tell ya!
What surprises me is how gullible the gonad-minded can be. What prolongs healthy living and happy relationships? Hormones, alone? Hardly.
Homeostasis: it's the balance that each body seeks to keep itself healthy. Good healthy living needs to center itself around many factors, some of which include: an active life-style, friends that offer fun companionship, and smart food choices that focus more on nutritional value than calories or size of its container.
Only man says medication makes sense in health-care.
Even vitamins can become toxic to the body, when used improperly. Imagine what solid-testosterone applied in single doses does to a body...
Antioxidant Paradox
The antioxidant study, in particular, surprised a lot of people and has prompted a heated debate. Antioxidants such as vitamins A, beta carotene (another form of vitamin A), E and C have long enjoyed a reputation as disease fighters because they’re thought to protect against free radicals that can damage cells and speed up aging. But in 47 randomized trials involving almost 181,000 adults, researchers found that taking vitamins A, beta carotene and E, alone or in combination, actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.
These latest findings made headlines, but they haven’t convinced everyone. A number of leading health experts criticized the JAMA review, including Jeffrey Blumberg, PhD, head of the Antioxidants Research Laboratory at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. He argued that the results were skewed because the studies it reviewed were too diverse and could not be easily compared. It also included deaths from all causes, not just health-related ones.
Based on these flaws, Bernadine Healy, MD, former head of the NIH and the American Red Cross, deemed the study alarmist and silly. Still, others wonder, why take the risk if you can get what you need from the produce aisle or the farmers’ market?
“Unless your doctor says you need supplements for a specific diagnosis, there is no reason to take them and no need to spend the money,” says the review’s senior author, Christian Gluud, MD, of Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark.
Multi-Problems
The prostate cancer findings from the National Cancer Institute were even more startling because the culprit was the innocuous multivitamin. Researchers found that men taking multivitamins more than once a day increased their risk of advanced prostate cancer by 32 percent and nearly doubled their risk of fatal cancer, compared with men who didn’t take multivitamins. The risk was highest in those who had a family history and also took selenium, beta carotene or zinc supplements.
Don’t throw away those bottles yet, though. Many experts agree that taking a daily multivitamin is a smart move, especially for those of us who don’t regularly eat whole grains, fresh veggies and fruit. Still, you may want to think twice about swallowing handfuls of certain supplements.
C Is for Colds
Even if a vitamin does no harm, it may do, well, nothing. Take the ever popular myth that popping vitamin C will stave off colds. A review of 30 studies involving more than 11,000 people who took at least 200 mg of vitamin C daily found that it offered little protection in reducing the length or severity of common colds for most people. It did work for some people, such as marathon runners and skiers, who undergo periods of high stress, but the study’s authors say the rest of us shouldn’t bother taking it.
Dosage Dangers
Most people think of vitamins as natural and safe since they’re sold over the counter everywhere, including health food stores. And many consumers figure you can’t get too much of a good thing. But you can, particularly if you’re on prescription drugs.
Megadoses of E, for example, can increase the risk of bleeding if you’re already on heart meds like blood thinners. An earlier 2004 analysis by Johns Hopkins researchers found consuming 400 IU or more of vitamin E a day alone (some products on the market today contain 1,000 IU per capsule) was associated with a higher risk of dying and should be avoided. (One theory says high doses may alter your natural immune function and actually become pro-oxidant.) Taking too much niacin without a doctor’s okay can lead to liver damage and other problems over time. And too much vitamin A increases the risk of liver and lung cancers, and can cause birth defects and reduce bone density.
What consumers tend to forget is that many processed foods and so-called diet foods, from crackers to energy bars, are “fortified” with additional vitamins and minerals. Even some bottled waters, juices and sodas have added them in an effort to appear more healthy. Eat and drink enough of these products, take a few pills, and you could be overdosing. Though rare, bad side effects and even deaths do happen from a vitamin overdose, reports show.
“Taking more than a DRI [dietary reference intake] of vitamins is associated with problems,” says Michael Roizen, MD, Cleveland Clinic’s chief wellness officer and coauthor with Mehmet Oz, MD, of the You series of health books. “These include osteoporosis, which is caused by too much vitamin A, and neurological problems such as headaches, wobbliness and confusion, caused by too much folate without enough B6 or B12, or too much B12 without enough B6 or folate"
Little Oversight
Vitamins and supplements also lack the government oversight that medical drugs get, and this adds to the confusion and potential dangers. Consumers have no real way of knowing whether labels accurately reflect what’s actually in a pill.
ConsumerLab.com, a supplement industry watchdog site, recently tested 21 different brands of multivitamins and found that 11 failed quality standards, including meeting their own label claims. For example, their test showed that one product had only about half the calcium its label boasted, and another had almost 300 percent more. One product was found to be tainted with lead. Three didn’t break apart properly, violating the U.S. Pharmacopeia’s 30-minute limit on how quickly a pill should dissolve (to make sure you get the full dose).
Another study discovered that half of the B-complex supplements analyzed didn’t provide the claimed amounts of folic acid. But that should change over the next few years, thanks to a new FDA ruling that says supplement manufacturers must ensure their products are tested for purity and accurately labeled.
The Real Benefits
Not all the news is disappointing. Studies show that vitamin D plays an important role in the absorption of calcium and in boosting bone health. The National Osteoporosis Foundation recommends that adults under 50 get 1,000 mg of calcium and 400 to 800 IU daily of vitamin D3 (the form of D that best supports bone health), and those 50 and older get 1,200 mg of calcium and 800 to 1,000 IU of D3 from food and supplements. But vitamin D may do even more, as Reader’s Digest reported in September 2006. Several studies suggest a link between vitamin D deficiency and cancer, as well as other diseases. And there seems to be little downside to taking vitamin D supplements.
But some people may need more than the standard recommended amounts of certain vitamins, including pregnant women, who require extra folic acid to help prevent birth defects, and the millions of young women with anemia, who may benefit from iron supplements. Postmenopausal women can take calcium and vitamin D to reduce fracture risk, and those at risk for age-related macular degeneration may benefit from antioxidant and zinc supplements.
Food Versus a Pill
Clearly, the jury’s still out on what vitamin supplements can really do. An NIH panel determined last year that there wasn’t yet enough evidence either for or against the use of multivitamins to make a recommendation. One thing that’s clear, though: Getting vitamins and minerals from pills is not as effective as getting them from food, says Dr. Roizen. No one knows for sure why a food source may be more beneficial, but one theory is that nature provides a perfect balance of compounds that isn’t fully replicable in the lab.
While there’s evidence that vitamins C and E and beta carotene protect the heart when you get them from food, a recent Harvard study found that they don’t provide protection when you get them from a supplement. The Women’s Antioxidant Cardiovascular Study followed 8,100 women with strong risk factors for heart disease for nine years, and the researchers concluded that “widespread use of these individual agents for cardiovascular protection does not appear warranted.”
Rather than just turning to pills as a remedy, eating a healthy, balanced diet may help you avoid those conditions in the first place, says Robert Eckel, MD, who specializes in preventive cardiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and is the immediate past president of the American Heart Association.
“I believe in getting the DRI from food as a way of preventing deficiency diseases,” says Dr. Roizen. “But I take a vitamin and mineral supplement as an insurance policy against a less than perfect diet.”
“There have been many studies looking at supplements,” says Blumberg, “but the most consistent evidence we’ve had over the past 30 years is that eating a healthy diet, low in salt and saturated fat, losing extra weight, exercising moderately, reducing stress, and quitting smoking are our best guarantees against disease and premature death.”
5 Not to Take
Everyone needs vitamins and minerals, which are crucial for good health and long life. What we don’t need are megadoses of these essential nutrients in pill form. The greatest health benefits come when we get our vitamins from a balanced diet—but only 3 percent of us eat well enough for that. So unless your doctor has advised you to take a supplement for a specific medical reason, a daily multivitamin is all most healthy individuals need. Read labels to see how much you’re getting of each nutrient, and ask your doctor before starting any vitamin regimen, especially if you already take prescription drugs. Based on the latest studies, here are ten you can skip:
Vitamin A: Excess amounts accumulate and can be toxic. Too much A can blur vision, cause headaches and vomiting, and also lead to liver, bone and central nervous system problems, among others.
RDA*: Men - 900 mcg. Women - 700 mcg. One 7-inch carrot has 600 mcg. Other food sources: fortified cereals, dark leafy greens, fruits, sweet potatoes.
Beta Carotene: The body converts this into vitamin A. Supplementation is not recommended for the general public and should be avoided especially by smokers, who have a greater risk of lung cancer with regular use. Another recent study found that high levels of beta carotene in the blood were linked to three times the risk of aggressive prostate cancer.
RDA: None established. You can get what you need from dark green and orange fruits and veggies.
Vitamin C: There’s no conclusive evidence that it prevents colds, heart disease, cataracts or cancer.
RDA: Men - 90 mg. Women - 75 mg. Smokers need an extra 35 mg. A glass of OJ will give you almost all you need.
Vitamin E: Large doses can thin the blood and may increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke in those with uncontrolled blood pressure. Has not been proven to protect the heart or prevent cancer.
RDA: 15 mg. An ounce of dry-roasted almonds will provide almost half your daily needs.
Selenium: Most Americans get enough of this trace mineral in their diet. One new study suggests that adding more via a pill may increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
RDA: 55 mcg. Grab a tuna sandwich or a handful of Brazil nuts instead.
*RDA is for general adult population. Some groups, such as pregnant or breast-feeding women, need more.
5 More Not to Take
Folic acid: It’s a must during pregnancy to help prevent birth defects, but recent studies show no real effect for the rest of us against heart disease, cancer or depression. The connection between folate and reduced risk of Alzheimer’s is not yet conclusive either.
RDA: 400 mcg. Find it in dark green leafy vegetables, fortified cereals and whole-grain breads.
Niacin: This B vitamin can be used to treat high cholesterol, but only under a doctor’s supervision due to the risk of potentially serious side effects, including liver damage.
RDA: Men - 16 mg. Women - 14 mg. A multivitamin gives you 20 mg. Some products will give you 500 mg. Stick to meat, fish, poultry, nuts and eggs instead.
Lycopene: Two studies, one by the FDA, recently concluded that consuming lycopene as a supplement or in rich food sources, such as tomatoes, does not offer strong cancer-fighting protection, as was previously promoted.
RDA: None established. You should still eat tomatoes (tomato sauce is even better) because they’re full of other important nutrients.
Iron: Only women who are pregnant or have heavy periods, as well as people with diagnosed deficiency disorders such as anemia, need extra amounts of this mineral. Iron supplements can interact with meds, other dietary supplements and food, and can worsen conditions like ulcers.
RDA: Women over 50 and all men - 8 mg. Women ages 19 to 50 - 18 mg. Red meat, poultry, fortified cereals, dried beans and lentils, and dark leafy greens are good sources.
Zinc: High doses can interfere with how the body metabolizes copper and iron, may weaken the immune system and may also reduce levels of HDL (good) cholesterol. Studies are mixed about its effect on the common cold. Zinc supplements can also interact with certain drugs, including some antibiotics, blood pressure medications and NSAIDs.
RDA: Men - 11 mg. Women - 8 mg. Meat and poultry are high in zinc; vegetarians should eat plenty of grains, beans, nuts, lentils and dairy products.
*RDA is for general adult population. Some groups, such as pregnant or breast-feeding women, need more.