Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/08/laptop_reproductive_health/
Laptops heat up your balls
Expensive spermicide
Posted in Laptops, 8th November 2010 09:32 GMT
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Men who put laptops on top of their laps heat up their testicles - even when wearing clothes. This is bad for sperm quality, which in turn could affect fertility.
These are the findings of a State University of New York study of 29 men who agreed to have the temperature of their scrotum measured while using a laptop on their laps. To balance laptops, participants typically kept their legs closed.
Within 10-15 minutes, scrotal temperature had increased by up to 2.5 C, even for people who used a lap-pad. Participants in the study did not feel their balls getting hotter.
But such a temperature rise is "unsafe", according to urologist Yelim Sheynkin, who led the study. Other studies suggest that a 1 C rise in scrotal temperature could harm sperm production
Heavy laptop on lap users don't give their scrotums enough time to cool down, according to Sheynkin.
This is all very well - actually it isn't. We would like to know if the temperature rise causes irreversible harm to male fertility.
SUNY possibly has had time to try and figure this out: the researchers ran a very similar laptop / scrotal temperature study which came to the same conclusions in 2004. We wrote about it then: Laptops go on sperm killing rampage [1]. The 2004 SUNY findings were published in journal Human Reproduction.
Findings of SUNY's more recent study are published in the November 2010 issue of "Fertility and Sterility [2]".