CARL LAMBERT, M.D., has seen it all after telling his male patients they are the reason their partner can't get pregnant: despair, desperation, even flat-out denial. But Dr. Lambert, a primary-care doctor who treats couples having trouble with fertility at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, says he never imagined he'd be the one to have those feelings.
In early 2020, after trying for a baby with his wife for two years, he was told by a fertility doctor that his sperm quality wasn't right for conception. It didn't matter that he was a physician specializing in infertility. At that moment, he was a man-a Black man at that-and the idea that his sperm was the problem was unfathomable, he says.
You've probably read the news about how sperm health has been tanking globally. Back in 1992, a study in the British Medical Journal sounded alarms that we were in a crisis-sperm quality and quantity had been steadily declining for 50 years. Another report 25 years later corroborated the downward trend.
Still, it's been easy for Black men to think this doesn't apply to them. After all, nobody talks about it. Focus groups of Black men in D. C., convened by a researcher named Nathan McCray when he was a graduate student at the George Washington University in 2015, confirmed that infertility was seen as a "threat to masculinity" and a "taboo subject in the African American community." Plus, it's not like there was a lot of research on infertility in Black men.
Actually, McCray noticed that there was basically none. "Most often, these studies that's if they even report on men of color-only have 2 to 10 percent. Men and women of color are pigeonholed into studies on STD or HIV risk. And as a result, you have this kind of [perception] of infertility being a white person's problem."
Denne historien er fra September 2022-utgaven av Men's Health US.
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Denne historien er fra September 2022-utgaven av Men's Health US.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Tren Nation - How an obscure bovine steroid became gym Gen Z's favorite social-media muscle flex.
Not anabolic steroids. Not testosterone. Not creatine or multivitamins or a high-protein diet. No, Frank and Jesse (who both spoke on condition of anonymity because trenbolone is deemed illegal) immediately jump to trenbolone, which has quickly developed a rep for increasing muscularity and decreasing body fat all at once. Among bodybuilders it's known as the god of all steroids for its potency. To teens and young men, it's simply tren, a ticket to the prototypical social-media-friendly physique. Why? Frank, who's now 18, explains tren's growing popularity with all the confidence and expertise of someone who Googled tren once (mostly to see how jacked it made cows), watched hundreds of hours of tren content on Tik Tok, and made a ton of tren jokes. If the only thing you care about is putting on muscle, he says, it really does seem like tren is the thing to take.
Say What? - Hearing loss isn't just a thing that happens to your parents. Nearly one in five people in their 20s show signs of it already. And it puts your brain and well-being in danger, too. Luckily, new tech can help. Listen up.
Hearing loss isn't just a thing that happens to your parents. Nearly one in five people in their 20s show signs of it already. And it puts your brain and well-being in danger, too. Luckily, new tech can help. Listen up. An estimated 15 percent of American adults-that's about 38 million peoplehave some level of hearing loss, according to the CDC. Research increasingly suggests that untreated hearing loss can lead to other significant health issues, including depression and Alzheimer's disease.
Back-Round Check! - Tap into next-level total-body strength and supercharge muscle gains by learning when and how) to round your back in the gym.
Lift with your legs, not with your back. It's a cue many trainers use anytime you bend down to lift something heavy. It makes sense, too, since conventional wisdom holds that rounding your back with heavy weight leads to injury. But if you look closely at a strongman like Tom Stoltman hoisting a 300-kilogram (661-pound) Atlas stone, you'll notice that his spine isn't ramrod straight at all. Instead, he's almost hunching forward, curling his entire spine around the stone. And if you scroll fitness social media long enough, you may come across an exercise called the Jefferson curl, which asks you to stand holding a light barbell, then lower the barbell while simultaneously rounding your back as much as possible.
Christian Mccaffrey is Him - He's entering his eighth season in the NFL, but the league's most electric running back is not slowing down.
Every off-season for the past seven years, Christian McCaffrey, the San Francisco 49ers' All-Pro running back, has met up with Brian Kula, C.S.C.S., a trainer he's worked with since eighth grade. They talk about any injuries and any niggling pain from the previous season, do a battery of strength and movement tests, and then create a program "to turn CMC back on."
A Merciless Sun
Just over a year ago, Kekoa Lansford watched from a hilltop as the Maui wildfires incinerated his hometown.
ARE YOU THERE, GOD? IT'S ME, JAKE
How societal menace and serial disrupter JAKE PAUL is trying to change the sport of boxing, influence influencer culture, and, gulp, maybe change the world, too.
THE REINVENTED QUARTERBACK
A 2023 bookended by injuries pushed the Bengals' JOE BURROW to reconstruct his entire approach to fitness and nutrition.
THE WRECKING BALL WIDEOUT
DK METCALF pursues an old-school path to hardcore strength: PUSH. YOUR. LIMITS.
FATHERHOOD BUT WITH QUESTION MARKS
I've always wondered if I'm a good dad. So I did something drastic: I asked my kids.
CAN MARVEL REGAIN ITS SUPERPOWERS?
Critical savaging. Box-office meh-ness. Cultural irrelevance. How did the MCU lose its dominance over all screens, and what will it take to restore it?
