The sperm aren’t alright. As we’ve covered previously, scientists for the most part agree that the quantity and quality of men’s sperm is on the decline. And some argue that decline is a very rapid one. While it’s true that, of the 100 million-plus sperm cells produced by a typical dude’s testicles each day, only a handful are required to produce a child with a partner, researchers and Reddit posters agree this cliff plunge ain’t great. Especially when no one’s completely sure why it’s taking place.
GQ recently spoke with the urologist Dr. Michael Eisenberg, Director of Men’s Health at Stanford and the Chief Scientist for Swim Club, a new “sperm performance supplement” that blends together, in a single dose, a dozen evidence-backed ingredients—things like Omega-3, Methylfolate, and different vitamins—found by scientists to be beneficial to a man’s fertility. We discussed what’s behind the decline, how it’ll affect society and what can be done about it. Swim Club launches today, with a monthly subscription starting at $150/month.
GQ: How did Swim Club come about?
Dr. Michael Eisenberg: Male fertility is having a moment right now, politically. When I started a couple decades ago, the idea of a sperm decline was somewhat controversial. In the last few years, there’s been a lot more consensus, as more and more data has come out—there’s just been more unification about a crisis for male fertility. And there are things that men can do to have some ownership of it. It’s not like height; you’re not born where you are. There are things that make it worse, there are things that make it better. And there’s very good data that supplements and nutritional aspects can improve things. So the idea was, from a scientific standpoint, to really look at everything, decide which ingredients and supplements were important, and add them together to come up with a one-stop, science-backed shop that would help men. Because otherwise it’s very difficult to come up with the whole thing on your own.
Courtesy of Swim Club
Let’s talk about the decline for a moment. Broadly speaking, what’s the cause?
That’s the trillion-dollar question. If you look at the speed of the decline, it’s too quick for any evolutionary aspects, given it’s been like a generation or two—that’s much too fast. So it must be something we’re doing to ourselves, or there’s some environmental exposure.
Is that that we’ve gotten too fat? We’re eating too many ultra-processed foods? We’re too stressed out? Is it microplastics in our balls?
Obesity certainly impacts fertility and sperm counts. But even if you model what obesity would do to sperm counts, where we’re seeing this 50% decline over the last 50 years—we haven’t gotten that big. Even if we were that big, it would not impact it as much as it is.
I think the most likely explanation is exposures. Microplastics are new and hot, and I think they probably do contribute. But, you know, pesticides, other endocrine-disrupting chemicals, from plastics, from cosmetic products—I mean, there are so many possibilities. Any individual one probably is not the whole story.
How big a role does ignorance play? As someone who’s reported a decent amount on men’s health, I find a lot of men I speak to are pretty ignorant of their bodies. They don’t see a doctor until crisis strikes. They’re taking health advice from TikTok, blasting their kidneys with too much protein. Or they read about older celebrities making babies, and they don’t hear anything about “paternal age effects,” i.e., wherein an old man’s sperm can actually endanger his partner and child. How much of your job, Swim Club’s job, is education?
From a society standpoint, when people think about fertility, they only think about the woman. And anytime couples are struggling, half the time there is a male factor, but they don’t always get seen. In this country, probably 20-30% of the time the man’s never even evaluated when couples are struggling, they just go right to the gynecologist.
You know how for erection dysfunction we have Viagra? For infertility, there’s not this sort of anchor treatment. Obviously, we’re hoping that Sperm Club provides that.