Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Khaled Kteily on Improving Male Fertility

Episode Date: December 1, 2021

This podcast is all about sperm. That’s because I’m talking with Khaled Kteily about male fertility. The reason I thought this would make a good topic is it’s an aspect of health I haven’t really touched on before and male fertility isn’t something many people talk about. And what better person to speak about male fertility than the CEO of Legacy, a Harvard-backed company that offers at-home sperm testing, cryostorage (freezing your little swimmers for future use), and educational resources to help men understand and protect their fertility. In this episode, Khaled and I chat about how fertility is changing (and possible reasons why male fertility is on the decline), why it matters, what you can do to improve your fertility, how family planning is changing, what conception might look like in the future, and more. And even if you’ve already had kids (like me) or don’t plan on having kids, this podcast is worth a listen because you probably know someone who is trying to have kids or wants to have kids in the future. Not only is your fertility an important biomarker for overall health, but considering how common fertility problems are these days, it could be affecting someone you care about. So, if you want to learn all about male fertility and whether you should consider testing and freezing your sperm, definitely check out this podcast! Timestamps: 12:46 - How and why are thoughts about fertility changing? 16:17 - How is fertility measured? 17:49 - What factors are causing a decrease in male fertility? 22:45 - Do cell phones and radiation affect our sperm? 26:05 - How can people reduce exposure to harmful chemicals? 27:50 - What can you do to make your body more resilient to negative effects? 30:14 - What role does meat eating play in fertility? 31:38 - Family planning 38:21 - Does using younger eggs and sperm reduce the chances of things going wrong? 41:35 - What's the ideal age to test and freeze your sperm? 42:26 - Are there risks associated with IVF? 43:53 - Why do you think IVF will be preferred? 52:27 - Where can people find you online? 53:33 - Should you test your sperm even if you're not going to freeze your sperm? Mentioned on the Show: Legacy: https://givelegacy.com/ Legacy’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/givelegacyinc Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/

Hey, I'm Mike Matthews, and this is Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today. Quickly, if you haven't done it yet, please do subscribe to the show in whatever app you are listening to me in so you don't miss any new episodes. And it also helps me because it boosts the ranking of the show in the various charts. So today's episode is all about sperm, which is something that I don't think very much about, but many men do because of fertility, male fertility. That's what we're going to be talking about today. And my guest is Khaled Keteli, and he is the CEO of Legacy, which is a Harvard-backed company that offers at-home sperm testing, cryo storage, freezing your little guys for future use, and educational resources to help men understand

and protect their fertility. And I thought this would be a good episode because it's something I haven't touched on before at all. I don't think I've written about it. I don't think I've spoken about it even tangentially, at least partly because I am done having kids. I am infertile probably for the rest of my life because I am vasectomized. And I did that because after my wife's second pregnancy, that was a rough pregnancy on her. and we decided that we will stop with two if we would have started a bit earlier or not waited four years i believe we waited in between number one and number two maybe we would have went for a third but given the circumstances we thought it made sense to to stop it too and i didn't want to have her take hormones. I didn't want her to take birth control, IUDs, work obviously, but she has had issues with them in the past. And the female surgery

is pretty traumatic. I would never want her to do that. And the vasectomy was straightforward. It was like 15 minutes, maybe 20 minutes. It was a little bit painful, mostly just uncomfortable and a little bit of pain afterward, maybe a six or seven out of 10 day one, and then one point lower every day thereafter. I mean, I was in the gym the next day training lower body, so it wasn't that bad. And anyway, so male fertility is not relevant to me, but of course it is relevant to many other people out there. And so that is why I wanted to get an expert on the show to talk about it, talk about how male fertility is changing and possible reasons why it is declining and why it matters and what

you can do to improve your fertility if you are a dude and how family planning is changing and even what conception might look like in the future. And so that is a little teaser of what we get into in this episode. And even if you've already had kids like me, or you don't plan on having kids, I think you will find this podcast worth a listen because you probably know someone who's trying to have kids or who wants to have kids in the near future. And if they are struggling or if they are going to struggle, you might be able to help. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger and Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, as well as the leading flexible and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores.

And I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And this is a great way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. And so if you want to take Audible up on this offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, just go to www.buyle.com slash audible and sign up for your account. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you want to learn time proven and evidence-based strategies for losing fat, building muscle and getting healthy and strategies that work for anyone and everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling books,

Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, and The Shredded Chef for my favorite fitness-friendly recipes. Hey, Collin, thanks for taking the time to come and talk to me about sperm. One of my favorite subjects. Mine as well, and as it is for most 13-year-old boys as well. Yeah. And you're actually speaking to someone who is vasectomized. So I'm not going to be able to do anything with what we're going to talk about today. Yeah. So I have two kids and the second, that pregnancy was pretty rough on my wife and she delivered both of the babies naturally. And so the delivery itself, this is with Romy, our daughter, was pretty intense.

Our son was intense, but Romy was really intense and everything turned out to be fine, but it could have not been fine. And she was also 37, no, 34, 30. No, she's 38 now. She was 34, 33, 34 when Romy was born. And so she was right on the cusp of what is now officially a high risk pregnancy. So we said, okay, two is good. If we would have started if we would have planned it out maybe a little bit better we would have gone for a third but um going forward it made more sense at least to me to get what is a very minor surgery versus her being on birth control which um there are reasons why of course that, that hormonal fluctuations, exactly, or IUD that also can cause issues. And then there are surgeries that are beyond the question.

It's shocking. It's shocking what women have to go through just that we don't have kids. And I mean, as long as I can remember, we've been talking about a male contraceptive, but ironically, not a lot of men want to be part of the studies. And so we ask women to go on birth control or put in IUDs and there's massive hormonal effects. Women sometimes spend months figuring out the right birth control to take and all that so that we can have sex naturally. So it's a wild world we live in. Yeah. Yeah. I guess a lot of that probably comes down to, I mean, there are social norms, right? But then there are also biological tendencies in terms of personalities, right? So women tend to be more agreeable than men. That's not a controversial social norms right but then there are also biological tendencies in terms of personalities

right so women tend to be more agreeable than men that's that's not a controversial statement that's just go look in the in the psychological literature and then think about your average woman versus your average guy guys tend to be uh more stubborn and obnoxious than than women so um i think i think a lot of women would agree with that statement. Yeah, exactly. And so for me, I would rather, again, because I know I'm done having kids because I don't plan on being married again. What made you decide to zip it, grip it, and snip it, so to speak? Well so so i didn't want to ask sarah my wife to take birth control i didn't want to ask her to she had an iud when she was younger and um it it was okay

but she didn't like it for a couple of reasons so i didn't want to ask her to do that any sort of surgical option for women out of the question um because that's a very intense surgery and then okay so if i'm gonna i guess condoms are an option but not uh not not very fun and um so uh and then and then i i guess you could do the pull out which is also not very fun and there's a risk of getting involved yeah exactly so so in looking at options for me um the i think i i've talked to guys about this and when when they hear about the procedure they immediately are like no f that i would never do that but then i'm like you know it really wasn't that bad like it sounds worse it's a pretty minor procedure you can even i mean you have good

odds of being able to reverse a vasectomy in the future if anything ever were to happen. I think you probably limp for a couple of days just while you're in recovery. I mean, dude, I was in the gym the next day. Wow. Yeah. I think a lot of men also assume that you stop ejaculating semen afterwards. They think that you're going to stop producing any volume. And the reality is it has almost a negligible effect on your ejaculation. But, but I think guys get it, get it. Not something I really pay attention to, you know, not measuring in grams, you know, I don't know what I can do. We, we, we measure by the milliliter, which is why,

which is why it's top of mind for me. But what was, what was the reaction from your friends when you told them that you were getting a vasectomy? So let's see. So one, one friend of mine, he was giving me shit that I was like cucking myself basically. Right. And as a joke, as a joke. So that's funny. But mostly the reaction, they were surprised because they assumed that it's a more intense procedure than it is. Like they didn't know they had never really looked into it because they had never thought of it even as an option for themselves. Right. Um, and so, so they were surprised to learn that I was awake for it. I didn't have to get put under, um, and

that there was a little bit of pain, but then I just asked for more, uh, pain juice. And, and that, that, that was, uh, I mean, you know, that I didn't, I didn't feel much of anything. There were, there were a couple of moments where I was like, eh, I think you need to do a little bit more down there. Um, and it wasn't long that they, they didn't know that it's just like a 15 minute, maybe it was 20 minutes. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. So, so they were just surprised at like, and that I was back in the gym the next day and i had a i would say also you're not working out with your penis right so yeah yeah i mean what if you're bald you're like trying to you know it was a little bit it didn't feel good i'll say yeah i think i think i probably experienced

maybe let's call it a six out of ten in terms of pain so discomfort the next day yeah the next day and then and then each following day i would say it went down by one point and then within a week i couldn't feel anything and then once or twice i felt a little bit of discomfort i read up on it's like it's common uh several months later you can feel a little bit but um that's been it so i i would absolutely do it again. Um, because again, it really wasn't a traumatic experience at all. It was mildly uncomfortable, all things considered. And it means that my wife doesn't have to do anything that would just have continual forever effects, you know, as long as she keeps on taking the drugs or whatever. So very cool. Hey, we, we, we jumped, we jumped right to the vasectomy stuff, but if there's any stuff

you want to intro or, or we can kind of tee up this conversation before getting right to the juicy stuff. Yeah. So, so before you get vasectomized, you may want to have kids. And so that's what you're here to talk about is male fertility, something that I haven't, I haven't touched on at all, which is why this interview appealed to me, because I have written and spoken a little bit about female fertility and weight loss in the context of fertility, some dietary stuff, particularly with highly refined carbs,

like some PCOS related stuff. But I haven't touched on male fertility. And you had mentioned before we started recording that it's a hot topic right now. And I've been seeing that. So here we are. And I'm interested to learn again, even though my seating days are over for the foreseeable future, but that's not going to be the case for people listening, especially with a lot of people, professional people in particular, starting families later or thinking that they're going to start a family later without educating themselves as to the complications that can come with that. That isn't necessarily as straightforward as, well, I'll just put it off until I'm 40 and it'll be totally fine. I'll speak for a minute just about some of the demographic trends and

the way that people think about fertility and why that's changed so much recently. You touched on something, which is actually male fertility is having its moment in the sun, which is a weird thing to say. But actually, I mean, this year there's been increasing evidence about how chemicals affect our fertility. There's these forever chemicals, forever plastics that stay in the body and may even be transmitted to newborns. We know that chemical exposure has a negative effect on things that could include reductions in the size of the penis, you know, effects on our ability to conceive. And we know that male fertility has declined by about 50 to 60 percent over the past 40 years. has declined by about 50 to 60% over the past 40 years.

So we know that there is something that is happening and there's been a new set of data coming out this year focused mostly on chemical exposure that has led to shows with Joe Rogan talking about it. The Wall Street Journal just did a feature on us. CNN's talking about it, male factor infertility. I mean, every mainstream media publication is talking about male fertility in a way that they weren't a year or two years ago. And it's been particularly fascinating for me, having been an entrepreneur in the male fertility space since early 2018. And I've watched the shift and I've always described it as a shift

of you're going to go from men having no idea that anything's wrong to having some inkling that maybe possibly something's wrong to knowing that there is an issue and then ultimately to choosing to act on it. And I've watched the world go from phases one to three, where now the average man has seen something, read something, heard something where they know that there's an issue with male fertility. And we're seeing a spike in the number of men who are choosing to act about it. And when you link it back to demographic trends, I mean, you take a look at the U S the median age in the U S has gone up by about a decade over the past 40 years. So what that means is the average person is now, you know, the median is now more like 30, the median age of the average person in the United States. And what that translates to

is people are older, people are meeting later, people are getting into relationships later, settling down later, choosing to have kids later. And so now it's no longer, I mean, take a heterosexual couple where it might have been a man who was 28 and a woman who was 24 you're now talking about a man who's 34 and a woman who's 31 and actually we know that there are more women in the 31 to 35 age range having their first child relative to women in the 26 to 30 age range which actually says a lot right and so so when you take that into account we know the stats on male fertility are changing so quickly we We know they're going down. And what that translates to is more and more couples are facing infertility. So now about one in six or one in seven couples face infertility. We now know that when heterosexual couples face infertility, it's about

as equally likely to be from male factor infertility as it is from female factor infertility. This is new, right? We always thought about it as a women's issue. And then we also know that the older the man is, the more likely there is to be a miscarriage, the longer it's going to take to conceive, the more likely you're going to have a child born with a congenital condition like autism. So we've learned all of this and you watch like assisted reproduction rates are going up by 10% year on year. That's massive. You look at countries like Denmark where IVF is subsidized or paid for, and it's something like one in 10 kids in Denmark right now is born through IVF or some form of assisted reproduction.

This is the world in which we as the US are moving towards as well. And so it's kind of this fascinating new world where couples are more likely to face infertility. We know that men are more and more of the equation than we ever even thought. There's easy, accessible options for men to test or to freeze their sperm with companies like us with legacy. And we also know that it's shifting the way that we are going to be having babies in the future. And that's what's so fascinating to me to watch it happening and watch it unfold right now. When you say fertility is down in the last, I think you said 50 to 60% in the last 40 years, how is that measured? Yeah.

So there's five typical metrics you would use for fertility. So volume, count, concentration, which is broadly how much you're producing. And there's motility, which is how well your sperm is swimming. And there's morphology, which is how normal or abnormal your sperm is. So as a fun fact, actually, the vast majority of your sperm is abnormal. So misshapen head, misshapen tail, double headed, no headed. I mean, some of the stuff we see is really interesting. And so sperm count is like a virus replicating. Most of the replications are crap. And then you get ones that make it all. Hey, all it takes is

one. That's what we say in the industry. And so sperm counts and concentrations have both gone down in the 50 to 60% range. And what's interesting is the gold standard, the World Health Organization's Semen Analysis Manual, the WHO guide, is now in its sixth edition. And as we've watched the editions come out, and this happens approximately every decade, the reference ranges, which is the reference for what's normal or not, have gone down significantly over time to be more reflective of the average male. And so what that broadly translates into is that the average male is just less fertile than they were a few decades ago.

And that can be misleading if you don't understand that context, because if you only were to look at it in relative terms, according to whatever the average is, you may not catch that, wait, the average, the bar has been lowering here, you know, year after year, decade after decade. And what are some of the factors that have been isolated that have contributed to this issue? Ooh, this is one of my favorite topics. We're going to get into mild conspiracy land, which I will preface accordingly. I mean, I was going to ask you, you know, because I hear, let's just say that I am reluctantly, begrudgingly, conspiratorially minded simply because conspiracy is the dominant theme of history. Rich and powerful people have been conspiring since the beginning of time to get richer and more powerful and to do away with their opponents and to control the rabble. And that's just been the

game since the beginning. And you can find way too much evidence that such things still happen today. Unfortunately, we haven't transcended the darker parts of our human nature yet, and we probably never will. And so it's that i i will blindly swallow any conspiracy theory i can't take people seriously who actually use that term unironically but but when i hear stuff like huh so so fertility is down that much and i would like to hear some of the reasons why and then why is that like was it were these things that just happened to happen or uh and especially with demographic shifts that are happening in the country and how it's celebrated that for example that uh i saw was it one of the one of the late night script the teleprompter readers um might

have been kimmel saying yeah for the first time first time ever, we did our census and the percentage of whites in the country went down and everyone claps. I'm like, who are these people, right? But anyway, go ahead. What are some of the factors that are contributing to? I want to make a couple of quick points on what you just said. The first is victory is written by the winners, right? And so we never see what's really happening beneath the surface because the only history that we've been told up until quite recently with the rise of social media has been the history that is written by the victors.

The second thought that I've always had is someone once said, just at a pure statistical probabilistic level, the odds that there is actually kind of a secret cabal running the world are so small and so low because just by virtue of the number of people that would have to be in the cabal running the world are so small and so low because just by virtue of the number of people that would have to be in the cabal, the odds that we have never heard of this cabal is so low. Whereas I think what is more realistic is you have a lot of organizations that we have heard of that are helping to shape policies around the world. And that's a whole other conversation we can save. Yeah, I would say that could be a fun podcast. I would disagree with that

more deductive line of reasoning. And I would say, well, why don't we start the other way around? Why don't we start with induction and start looking into a lot of verified instances. The skull and bone societies of the world. And all of and that's, and, and, and all of the, the various machinations that we can go read about a lot of this stuff you could just read about on Wikipedia and then, and then start forming theories based on the evidence that we have. But, but yeah, so what are some of the, what are some of the factors? So to answer your, so to answer your question more concretely, I'll start with the stuff that is fairly well validated in particular, it is exposure to chemicals

that are endocrine disrupting like phthalates, which you'll find in a lot of plastics, and there's a very interesting study. The end of the study is relatively small, but the concept is interesting. If you take a look at dogs that live in human households and you compare them to dogs that don't live in human households, what they found is the dogs of the sperm of dogs that live outside of our households, their sperm quality has remained fairly consistent. The sperm quality of dogs that have been living with us in our homes has gone down by a similar percentage, which suggests that actually it is something that is in the food that we eat

and the water we drink and the chemicals we're exposed to. It makes sense, right? You look around your apartment, you've got paint around you, right? Like that's chemicals. You think about the foods that you eat and the pesticides that are required to grow the food that you eat and so on and so forth. And so these kind of- Probably the soaps that you use. Oh, definitely.

And by the way- Lotions or any stuff you put on your body. I used to make fun of people who are super organic. I would kind of be like, oh, this is super hippie, dippy, whatever. And now I actually take back everything I've ever said. I have gone entirely the other way. Fragrance-free, chemical-free, pesticide-free, all this stuff whenever possible, because the evidence is just becoming increasingly clear that it is coming from chemicals. So this is the most scientifically validated. And actually, I think that the US is way behind when it comes to regulating the amount of chemicals that go into the foods and products that we are exposed to. I think Europe does a much better job here. And I think that there will be a

campaign down the line, hopefully run by us, which we're going to call SOS, save our sperm, that is going to be about how we minimize exposure to chemicals. And so this is the most robust. The second, which I just have always believed, and the evidence for this has been mixed, I'll be clear on this. I think the odds that these tiny little devices that are emitting to the world on a nonstop basis, the odds that these which are in our pockets and by our bedsides and on our desks

are not affecting us in any way. I think I personally think the odds of that are low. I am personally convinced that there's going to be studies showing that phones and cell phones are kind of the smoking of our generation, where we didn't know for decades that smoking was so bad for us in part, because the studies assessing the effect of smoking on our health were funded by big cigarette companies. There was a time when doctors would recommend, oh, just smoke this brand over this brand. It's totally fine. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. The science said it was totally fine. Oh, wow. And so that's the thing. Our definition of science changes so much and so often, right?

How many studies have you seen showing that caffeine is good for you? Oh, but it's bad for you. Wine is good for you. Oh, but it's bad for you. Chocolate's good for you. The food pyramid. Whatever. Let's talk about the food pyramid. The food pyramid, which actually is one of the conspiracies. That was big milk and big breakfast trying to take us down and get us to eat their foods. And so, I actually think that what we say, hey, this is scientifically valid. Yes, based on the best knowledge that we have today. And so I personally am convinced that exposure to radiation is going to be part of it.

But isn't there actually some preliminary research? I feel like I've seen that again. This isn't an area I know much. There's a great study point and counterpoint in the guardian where there was a study suggesting there was an impact and then someone basically tried to debunk that study. So it's gone back and forth a couple of times. But my sense is that if you're a major cell phone manufacturer, or if you're anyone who relies on people having cell phones, then you're not going to be super thrilled about a study coming out showing that these are actually bad for us.

It's also difficult to show the effect over a long enough period of time, right? Cell phones have only become super prevalent over the last decade. When I was growing up, I was lucky to get a cell phone in ninth grade right this would have been what 2003 right and so you know that you know we didn't have cell phones everywhere we went like the way we do today i think my first phone was i think it was the the razor flip phone remember that thing oh that was the motorola i had a no yeah i think it was a10, the one that I had, but I still have it. That thing is fricking indestructible. I still have it somewhere. It's still alive. It's a weapon.

It's a brick. Yeah. Okay. So, and this is actually for people listening, I did an interview with, Ooh, his name was Jay. I don't remember his last name. He had a book, if I remember correctly, called Estrogeneration, maybe. And for anybody listening who wants to hear more about these chemicals, and if I remember correctly, this was a couple of years ago, so it's a little bit hazy, but Jay also shared some simple practical tips for just reducing exposure. And I think he explained it well and that you have to look at the exposure on the whole you have to look at the research on these chemicals on the whole because if you were just to pick one type of exposure you'd be like oh it's not a big deal another individual little slice not a big

deal but the cumulative effects yes exactly can can be significant and if you want to quickly share any simple tips along the lines of how to reduce exposure to these chemicals, go ahead. If not, we can also move on and people can go listen to that other. I'll share just a couple of quick thoughts on this. The first is there's a great book by Dr. Shana Swan, who is one of the most prolific authors in the space. It's called Countdown. She talks about this concept of sperm. I've seen that. I didn't read it, but I saw that. Yeah. But she talks a fair amount about exposure to chemicals and she says it. So on the one hand, it's difficult to reduce your exposure in part because it's things like your shower curtains and ATM receipts and things that you just can't avoid being around. But I think what you can do more concretely is just

make sure that you are shopping if you can afford it right and this is one of the one of the challenges it's more expensive but if you can afford to shop at a whole foods or the kind of companies where they are more organic fragrance free chemical free and so on i mean simple things like buying a laundry detergent that is as chemical free as possible i mean these are just these are the clothes that are on your body all day that feels like a very simple way washing the bed sheets that you sleep on i I mean, these feel like no brainers to do. And same when it comes to your food, right? Try to buy them pesticide free, herbicide free. I think these will all add up in meaningful ways. Wash your produce before you eat it as well, which you think you wouldn't have to say it, but especially with some of my male friends, I don't know if they've ever washed a piece of food ever. Oh, that's terrible. That's terrible. They're going to get more

than just chemical exposure. COVID, herpes, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. AIDS, who knows? But yeah, that makes sense. And then curious, are there also things you can do so you can try to remove your exposure, but you can't eliminate it altogether and that's okay. Are there also things that you can do to make your body more resilient or more resistant to the negative effects? So like, for example, and this isn't necessarily even a leading question. I'm assuming the answer is yes, but I haven't looked into it, which is why I wanted to talk to you.

Take exercise, take strength training, for example, or exercise at all. Do you know if that can help, again, help our body? Have you seen any evidence to that or any other just positive lifestyle changes that you can make, again, to just make your body more robust? That is an excellent question. I'm going to try to bring it back to sperm because that's the area

that I know best. Cause I can't speak specifically to working out and chemical exposures, but we do know that your sperm quality is a great biomarker of your overall health. So actually getting a semen analysis done broadly gets, tells you how healthy or unhealthy you are. And being subfertile, infertile is correlated with everything from risk of prostate cancer to how likely you are to die young. So literally, it can predict your longevity. And one of the things that we know about sperm quality is that taking changes like having a more Mediterranean diet, making sure that you are exercising, not smoking, being more thoughtful about um about your your sleeping patterns i mean all of these simple changes that give you alcohol of alcohol of course interestingly marijuana has had mixed studies some suggesting it's negative some suggesting it might actually be positive for sperm counts i'll leave that one out um but all of those have

been shown to improve sperm quality which you can deduce from that, you know, that that is likely to be good for your overall health and likely to protect you against downsides of any, everything like exposure to chemicals. The last one is not something that I'm particularly qualified to speak on, but I think it's a reasonable, um, logical leap to take. Yeah. And exercise is one of those things that it seems to enhance just about everything. It's what our bodies were designed to do, right? I mean, we weren't designed to be sitting at a

desk for eight hours. We weren't designed to be eating every day. Yeah, exactly. We weren't designed to be Zooming. Exactly. We were designed to be out and about and, you know, eating meat maybe once or twice a week if we were lucky and to be, you know, hunting and resting and sleeping and fornicating. Right. That's the best possible life. That is, that is the golden life. And so you mentioned meat eating. What do you have to say about that in the context of fertility?

We do know that if you're eating red meat and other meats too often, that can be detrimental to your sperm quality. So that, that's, that's. And out of curiosity, has that been more highly processed red meats or, I mean, take, because there's a difference between a steak that you buy maybe at Whole Foods or a hamburger that you make and, you know, some cheap bacon or cheap sausage that you microwave or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah. If you buy, I think if you buy it at the gas station, don't eat it. Don't eat gas station sushi, gas station sausages. I mean, that's probably a good

rule of thumb. I don't know. I don't have any concrete studies that I could point to, but I think it's a reasonable assumption to make that the more processed it is, the more chemicals that are going to be in it. In general, the further away you're getting from natural foods, right, the worse it's going to be for you because it's going through chemical processes. Yep. Yep. That makes sense. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. And what are your thoughts on, I don't know if this is like the technical term, but

family planning, I suppose, in terms of how, because you mentioned now that people are starting families later. And I think we can all guess as to some of the reasons for that. Just focus on a career, for example, I'm sure is a major one. But I'm just curious as to your thoughts about that trend. And because it's something that, again, I had mentioned earlier. So let's see, my son is, he just turned nine. And so I was 28, 29 when he was born. And then we waited four years and then had Romy. And if I could do it over, I would have pushed to probably have Romy a little bit sooner. Yeah, exactly. But I didn't look into it very much because I was very

focused on my work. And then it occurred to me at some point, oh, wait a minute, it's been four years. If we're going to have another kid, we should probably do it now kind of time yeah um but but and if i would have been more thoughtful about it i probably because because my wife and i we got married when i was 23 24 she's one year older than i am so you know if i would have been more thoughtful yeah i i may not have jumped into it right away because both of us were pretty busy and uh i do think that that time was was spent well and has set us up well and we can provide well and you know a pretty good pretty good setup um but i think i think if i would have been more thoughtful i probably would have maybe pushed to start two years sooner yeah i i totally get get that. And I think there's two things that couples underestimate when it comes to family planning.

So the first is couples underestimate how long it takes to have kids. And we have this narrative, I mean, that we're all taught in high school, right? Be very careful having unprotected sex or if a condom breaks because one mistake and boom, like baby pops out. One drop.

Yeah, basically like one drop and it's over. And the rest of your life, you know, as you know, it is, is, is over. And this mentality that we have going into our teens and early twenties is actually not true at all. By the time you get to your late twenties or to your thirties. And actually what we found is about half of couples, it'll take them closer to six months to be able to conceive. And this is with them actively trying.

Right. And this is with them actively trying, right? And this is with them trying to time the fertile window and figuring out when the female partner is ovulating and so on and so forth. Which is easier now. You don't have to say, hey, come home. They probably already are home. And the Zoom call. I got something to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you mysteriously disappear during this call. Yeah. Then you're going to question everything I've told you because uh what's a vasectomy yeah that's true that's true um although as a fun side note getting a vasectomy doesn't mean that there's a hundred percent you're not going to have kids it just means the odds are extremely extremely low yeah anyway yeah i did the follow-up tests and it actually it took uh if i remember correctly i think it took two weeks until i was like

clean given the green yeah we actually have a lot of folks who'll test for several months after vasectomy uh also after vasectomy reversal to make sure things bring back to normal anyhow so so couples underestimate how long it takes to have a child um and there's you know and there's about one in six one in seven couples that are not able to conceive within 12 months. And that is 12 months of actively trying, 12 months of planning your life around this, right? I mean, think about where we all were a year ago, probably washing our vegetables in the sink and trying not to get COVID, right? But a year is a very long time.

And I remember something that one of our clients said to us. every time I get my period, it is a visual representation each month off my failure to do what I was put on this planet to do. That's heavy. That's heavy. I mean, she knows that's one fewer egg and I only get so many. Yeah. Yes. And so this is occurring to one in six or one in seven couples. And because fertility is such a stigmatized topic, people don't really talk about it except in hushed tones. It's very, you know, something that you might talk one-on-one, but it's not something you're going to be tweeting about. And so first is that people just underestimate it as a whole, because we have this mindset of, well, you know, from our teens, like one mistake and it's all over. So this is the first. The second is when we're thinking about

family planning. To your point, I mean, it probably, you know, probably might've been nice to have Romy, you know, a year or two years earlier. What a lot of couples underestimate is the concept of secondary infertility, which means that you've had your first child, you were successful there, but now maybe you're a few years older and now it's that much more difficult to have a second child. And so you have couples that have a kid the first time normally, but then have trouble having their second. And so this is one of those things to consider, which is actually, but then have trouble having their second. And so this is one of those things to consider, which is actually, let's say you're in a world where your partner's 32, you're 32,

you're having your first kid. Great. But then by the time you're having your second, you might both be 35. And by the time you're both 35, both of your fertility has gone down. That's being, I think it's reasonable. That's being aggressive for the woman because of the recovery. And that's basically like have your kid recovered and then she's not sleeping. And then do it all over again. Yeah. Start to feel a little bit better, but still feel pretty terrible because of sleep and all the change. And then third point I have, which I find more interesting from a futuristic perspective, which is what we do as a company, as legacy, is we make it easy for men to freeze or test their sperm, right? So you order a kit on the website, you get it the next day, you produce a sperm sample from home through masturbation, you push a button on our app,

we pick it up, we test it, we freeze it. It's actually that simple. And so we've made it affordable. It costs less than 200 it's 195 for our base package right and so in a world where this becomes more and more a no-brainer for men to do right freeze your sperm where you're young and healthy this actually creates a very interesting dynamic whereby women are also freezing their eggs more and more so and even though it's more expensive for women it's more convoluted i, egg freezing is not a simple or trivial process. It is, you know, 10 to 14 days of hormone injections. It is a surgical extraction of your eggs under anesthesia.

It's a serious thing, but more and more women are opting to go down that path. What's interesting to me is in a world where more and more men are freezing their sperm when they're young and healthy, more and more women are freezing their eggs when they're young and healthy. What that means is actually you could meet the perfect person when you're 34 and then choose to take that frozen sperm and the frozen eggs, make an embryo and implant that embryo into the female partner. And so you can choose to have kids later and later in life while still using the healthier, younger sperm and eggs. And would that reduce the chances of things going wrong, even though now the mother's older?

So, it's really bad actually. When women are 35 or older, it's called a geriatric pregnancy. Really? I always heard that. Yeah, I know. I think they're trying to move away from that term. But basically, what it means is it's a higher risk pregnancy, both to the mother and to the child. But we work with a lot of couples who use surrogates, right? So they can take a healthy embryo that has been made from frozen eggs and frozen sperm, implant that embryo in another person who is younger, who can then have the healthy child on their behalf. It's kind of wild that we live in a world where this is possible. Yeah. If everything doesn't just implode catastrophically in our lifetime, which is entirely possible, we may be living in the's a world not that far away where you can take that frozen sperm that's young and healthy, take that frozen egg that's young and

healthy and implant them into an artificial womb. And then boom, nine months later, you have a kid. And for many of the women that I've talked about this concept now, some of them would want and would prefer to have the pregnancy naturally. And others say, no, like I want to be like the dad, right? The dad is just walking around for nine months while his female partner is pregnant and dealing with a pregnancy. And I've talked to a lot of women who've said, no, I would much prefer to be like the dad. Dads feel just as close to their children. They're just as much of a parent as the mother is.

And so if I can avoid nine months of my whole life kind of being affected, then I would love to do that. And so it's not that wild that in a few decades time, we will really be in the world of, you know, hyper assisted reproduction, not just assisted reproduction. That is, it's interesting to think about, I will be genuinely surprised if it is working well in the next 10 years, maybe 20. I could uh underground rogue chinese scientists uh doing doing what doing what yeah doing what they will but i i would be a little bit surprised if if we have it basically taped where yeah yeah no no i think whereas the doctor would say they're really the the chances of things going wrong here are the really the same yeah or I'm saying where the doctor would be like,

no, it's really the same, whether you grow them in this cow udder over here or you grow them in your belly. Same thing. That may be in our lifetime. I think in our lifetime, it took decades for IVF to become normalized the way that it is. And IVF continues to get better and better. Then I think about egg freezing, which was considered experimental by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, ASRM, until I think it was 2011. And now it's become an extremely normal thing to do. And so these timelines are accelerating in part because there is so much demand. People want families. And what I say that what we do at Legacy is we are ultimately giving people the freedom to choose what kind of family they want, how they want it, and when they want it. And really is this concept of

being empowered to decide, you know, how and when you want to have your family. And that's a very novel concept. What's the ideal age for a guy to go to a service like yours and save? Honestly, I mean, practically the younger the better uh somewhere around the age of 20 is where you're going to have your youngest best best healthiest sperm and there's there's a study that showed that because men continuously produce sperm on an ongoing basis while women are born with all the eggs they're ever going to have men produce genetic mutations in their sperm's dna at a rate four times faster than women. And so you accumulate a mutation about every eight months, the majority of which are benign, don't have a negative impact, but over time you'll

accumulate enough damage that this is what can lead to genetic conditions for your kids. Aging, that's just the process of aging. I mean, that's any cell is it replicates, replicates, replicates, and eventually it just gets shittier and shittier. Exactly. replicates and eventually it just gets shittier and shittier exactly and and as far as uh ivf goes what are i'm assuming there are there are some risks associated with it uh with ivf or with exercising sorry i missed that sorry with ivf going that route because the reason i the reason i asked that is and this is something i actually don't know, but I have heard maybe more from women than men, but I've heard people assume, I've heard people say,

oh yeah, we're just going to do the IVF route and it's simple, it's straightforward, there are no risks. And I've asked them, are you sure? Have you looked into it? Oh yeah, that's what I read in an article online or something. I'm like, oh, okay. I don't know. I think from, from what I've seen, the reproductive outcomes from IVF are extremely similar to natural conception. I think there may be, and I don't, don't quote me on this, but I think that there may be a slight negative impacts that said, maybe slight negative impacts. That said, those would be counteracted if you are using, for example, younger, healthier frozen sperm, or if, for example, you're doing pre-implantation genetic screening or diagnosis on the embryos.

So if you actually add those into the mix, then you're likely to have more positive outcomes when it comes to using IVF because it gives you more control over which embryos are implanted. And so I think it probably balanced out. And over time, as we get better and better at IVF, it's actually going to become the preferred option for people who can afford it, people who want to go through that process. And why? Why do you think that's going to become preferred? As we get better at IVF, as we get better at screening out unhealthy embryos, right? I mean, if you tell an expecting couple that, hey, we can help make sure that you're going to have a kid who's healthy over time, and this is where you're gonna have i mean there have

been rogue chinese scientists working on this but over time there's kind of this idea of well we are not only going to be able to screen out the negative traits which i think everyone universally agrees is a good thing but then you get into the much slippery slope of we are going to start screening for positive traits and it it's not as trivial as people think. Or inserting positive traits, I mean. Or inserting positive traits, yeah, like hyper-CRISPR. But when you look at something like intelligence, which is very polygenic, I think there's about 70 different genes that are associated with intelligence. It's not a trivial thing, but some things that are more trivial are, well, how do you determine the eye color of your child or their hair color or some

things that are simpler are simpler uh simpler to implement those changes and you know over time i mean you ask parents hey we have two embryos one your male your your son is going to be taller the other your son's going to be shorter right and we know that men's height is correlated with their income it's correlated with all kinds of positive things and as someone who used to be very short when he was a kid and is now is a comfortable 511 i can tell you that it sucks to be a short dude. And so, right, you tell parents that, and they're going to say, of course, I want to have the taller kid, right? And then you get into these very, very ethical dilemmas of, well, at what point do you draw the line, right? I think

we can all agree, it's good to make sure that you're not having kids who are born with, you know, genetic defects are going to stay with them for the rest of their lives um but is it really okay to choose embryos that are smarter or taller or blue-eyed or what have you and why would it not be okay yeah but why might it not be okay because because you think about some of the social implications especially if it's expensive uh and and i'm no communist but i'm a i'm a realist and we have i wouldn't say it's outright class warfare but uh we're probably kind of the trajectory is kind of in that kind of is like this is aldous huxley's brave new world where you basically have like the world is segmented based on where you're from and what it's going to happen is just going to, we talk about inequality enough as a society right now, imagine a world where the rich and the wealthy and developed countries are

beautiful and they are all beautiful, tall disease, whatever. Yeah, exactly. Right. And, and so it just, it's going to reinforce and perpetuate the existing inequality. It's just going to make it worse. And so that's where things get, you know, pretty screwy. And, and I guess And I guess somebody like maybe Thomas Malthus would say, or maybe Francis Galton would say, well, that's why we need to reduce population to maybe 500 million. We literally need the brave new world. Well, this is actually such an interesting question. I want to come back

to something you were saying about the late night talk show hosts. And one of the things that is talked about at the US government as a matter of national security is the fact that if you look at the average birth rates in the US, it is below the replacement rate for a population, which is 2.1 babies per woman, because some babies will die at a young age and so on. So you need about 2.1 babies per woman for a population to stay constant. The US is on a negative decline. And if I remember correctly, it's something like 1.8 or 1.9 babies for women. But actually, if you look at white Americans, it's more like 1.5 or 1.6. And if you look at Latinx Americans, then you're talking more, I think it's more like 2.5 plus. And so what's happening is the demographics of the U.S. are

changing very quickly, which for a lot of people is a good thing or a neutral thing. But for a lot of white Americans, they feel like it is a threat to the identity of the U.S. are changing very quickly, which for a lot of people is a good thing or a neutral thing. But for a lot of white Americans, they feel like it is a threat to the identity of the United States. And you look at other countries, the birth rate in Korea is something like 1.3 or 1.4 babies per woman in Germany, something like 1.8. I mean, you are talking about Japan's extremely low. And so across the board, you are taught you have all these developed countries that now have declining birth rates. And when you look at countries like China, which I always think of as that massive billion plus country, take a look at Nigeria, at existing birth rates and birth trends, by the end of the century, Nigeria will have a bigger population than China, which is wild.

And so there's actually these very interesting, when you zoom out and you think about what's going to happen over the next 50 years, developed countries, the richer countries are getting smaller and smaller, and less developed countries are going to get bigger and bigger. And so you pair that with this idea of, okay, well, more people are going to be using IVF, more people are going to want to screen their embryos. It's a very interesting question about where the world is going to go in terms of kind of the developed and the developing uh countries i guess we'll have to see which cabal wins out right because this is who are going to be creating the conspiracy theories of the future i mean i to to speak so to it i mean some uh this is this has been a problem that the elites you could you could say the intellectual elites uh have been wrestling with for some time. And there certainly are people right now who they say they have solutions.

And there are people with a lot of money and a lot of power who say they have solutions. There are people thinking about this. It's not something that's talked about much, especially not what are we going to do about it? uh maybe bill gates i think he mentioned in a ted talk about bringing down fertility so we could um prevent prevent in a doubling of the world's population over the next x years or whatever but it's it's not a discussion that it's had probably more um behind behind private doors it's not it's not really a public yeah yeah people are not going to be talking about that like yeah like what do we what do we actually do about this because you know you look at living conditions if you were to look at Nigeria and you go yeah there's a lot of

human suffering that is going to happen if we just take the current situation and blow the population up multiply it yeah yeah well this is what's interesting to me which is when I talk to men current situation and blow the population up. Multiply it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and this is what's interesting to me, which is when I talk to men who are thinking about freezing their sperm or think about having kids, the one word they keep coming back to is actually there's two words that they use all the time when it comes to having a family. The first is inevitability. They describe having a family, something that they are going to do at some point. The second thing they say is not

quite yet and for a lot of the men who say not quite yet um it's because of financial instability because they're sitting there thinking well kids cost hundreds of thousands of dollars you got to send them to school you got to get child care you got to get health care you got to send them to university which by the way now costs 150 plus thousand dollars what is it i mean there's some of these degrees now that are just worthless. True, true, true. But let's, if we're talking about the intellectual elite, right. Who want to send their kids to Ivy league schools and they want to send them to the best prep schools and get the best childcare. I mean, you're talking about like hundreds of thousands of dollars of investments.

And this is what's interesting to me is actually the reason that we are all having less children is because people feel less financially comfortable. And so the kind of the middle class are saying, hey, let's just delay having kids for a while. And so the only way you can really rectify that, from my perspective, is you need to actually have more of a safety net for families that are starting, sorry, for couples that are starting families. Like Canada has, I think it was called like the milk benefit or something like when you have kids you kind of get a stipend for the government to help defray the cost of having a kid you take a look at countries in scandinavia i think it's norway that has the baby box which is like a sear like a big box of supplies that they give to all new parents to

help defray some of the costs of of child care in the early years i mean this is the only way which is helping to compensate for some of the some of the costs of having a kid that you know birth rates are ever going to go back up do we have any such economic incentives here in the states um i don't know i mean outside of our i guess our welfare system that people can people can use use that but i don't think there's anything meaningful. So if you're not on Medicaid and you're not getting any childcare benefits related to Medicaid, let's say you're in kind of middle or lower middle income, then you're not going to have any support at all. And that's why

I think in countries, like if you take a look at the continent in Africa, part of the reason that folks can afford to have more kids is because there's much more of a community. This concept of it takes a village to raise a child. you have your aunts and you have the grandparents and you have people around you who are going to help you take care of the kids. It's much more communal than in the US where I don't even know my neighbors, right? Let alone ask them to take care of my baby child for the day.

Things like that. Totally, yeah. Well, hey, this was a great discussion. It was fun. We went all over the place. So you mentioned your company a few times, but where can people find your company online? And, um, if they're interested, what should they do? They go to, they go to your website and what's a good starting point. Yeah. Go to the website,

give legacy.com, uh, or just Google legacy, sperm, legacy, sperm, testing, legacy, vasectomy, whatever you want. Uh, and you will, you will find us just don't go to legacy.com or just Google legacy sperm, legacy sperm testing, legacy vasectomy, whatever you want. And you will, you will find us just don't go to legacy.com because that's an obituary website. So give legacy.com is where you'll find us. If you are in New York or California, the product is likely covered by your insurance provider. So take a look. You may be able to even be able to get the product at no cost. If you are in the military, if you're in the Navy SEALs, if you're in the green berets, give us a shout. You are likely to be eligible for some of the programs that we have with those organizations. And find us online as well. Our Instagram handle, which is not the coolest handle

in the world, is GiveLegacyInc. But you'll find a lot of great content on there. And if you're thinking about testing your sperm, freezing your sperm, just let us know and you can order a kit online. You'll get it the next day. And we make the process as easy as possible. And it will take as long as it takes you to produce a sample. So anywhere from a minute to an hour. Quick question for people wondering on the testing side of things. So let's say I'm a 20 X year old guy. And is there a reason to start with a test? Even if I'm not thinking with freezing, am I going to learn something? You always need to start with a test. Well, sure. A lot about your body. Yeah, exactly. It's a great biomarker. If your overall health is something you should want to know, you can even do a DNA fragmentation test, which is an

advanced form of analysis, figure out how much DNA damage you may or may not have in your sperm, but definitely start with a test before you go into freeze. Cool. Cool. Well, thanks, man. Thanks for doing this. This was great. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me, Mike. Yeah. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which, of course, then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share,

shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode,

and I hope to hear from you soon.