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00:00Are hot balls killing your testosterone?
00:03Over 24 years ago I was watching this TV show called King of the Hill
00:06and I was completely puzzled by this one scene. Research shows that heat lowers
00:10fertility. One way to increase the number of healthy sperm is to lower the temperature
00:15in your pants.
00:19Why would cooling your balls make them work better? A year later in 1999,
00:24The Simpsons had Appu chilling his balls to make him more fertile.
00:27Chilling my loins, I increase the chances of impregnating my wife.
00:32Except, of course, fertility isn't the only thing the balls are important for.
00:35Four years later, in 2003, another King of the Hill episode aired about the other important
00:39function of balls.
00:40Testosterone could have elevated Hank's mood, improved his whole outlook.
00:44In Japan, the word that they use is the golden balls, which refers to how important they are for
00:48health and fertility. Except all across the world, men's golden balls are in crisis.
00:53Testosterone and male fragility rates have been dropping rapidly.
00:58Since 1973, sperm counts have dropped around 50%.
01:03And some estimates put testosterone dropping as much as one third over the past 30 years.
01:09Sure, alcohol, poor sleep, endocrine disrupting chemicals and plastics, weight gain, a sedentary
01:14lifestyle, stress. Various features of our extra convenient modern lifestyle can wreck your testosterone.
01:20But Noah's talking about how convenient stores have a cheap, all-natural item that could raise
01:24your testosterone. You've probably heard of the physical benefits of testosterone,
01:28like making it easier to put on muscle and lose fat. But several lines of research also show that
01:32testosterone has a significant effect on mentality, improving libido, confidence, anxiety, and mood.
01:38Increased testosterone is intimately linked to the feeling of being a winner and vice versa.
01:42That is, losing at something has been found to decrease men's testosterone,
01:46and lowering testosterone is accompanied by feelings of being a loser, feeling more submissive,
01:51unhappy, and unconfident. Testosterone is very important for the body and mind,
01:56so we need to talk about the balls, because this is where testosterone is made.
02:00Derek, why'd you take your pants off? My balls was hot.
02:03The first question is, why are your balls outside of your body? If you think about it,
02:07it doesn't make any sense. This vital organ that ensures the continuation of our species
02:11isn't protected by bones, cartilage, or muscle. They just dangle their defenseless.
02:16Well, here's the thing. Your testosterone and sperm factories don't work as well when they get too
02:21hot. So why? Well, the reason basically every single land mammal except elephants and rhinos have
02:27their balls outside their body is that they need to keep them cool. As research shows,
02:32heating the balls can dramatically worsen their function, worsening sperm quality and testosterone levels.
02:37Man spreading is when a man takes up as much space as humanly possible.
02:42So why do men spread their legs out so much when they sit down? Well,
02:44the balls don't need that much space, but the balls do need to be cool,
02:48so this is likely an instinct to keep our balls away from our warm thighs.
02:52When you sit down, this pushes the balls close to your hot body and they can heat up.
02:56A study from the year 2000 found that extended periods of sitting in your car seat
03:00can heat up the balls an entire two degrees Celsius. It's been proven multiple times that heat
03:05is terrible for sperm and male fertility, but what about testosterone?
03:08A 2020 study found that heating up the balls of bulls by only three degrees Celsius induced a
03:13profound tenfold reduction in testicular testosterone concentrations. Here, where I live in Japan,
03:20everybody loves a nice hot bath at the end of the day. Getting in a hot bath almost every night
03:25is a very common tradition in Japan. Also, Japan's birth rate has consistently been lower than, say,
03:31America and Canada for the past 50 years. The Japan Times says that of course the usual suspects like
03:36work-life balance or state support for child care are at play here, but they say it's about time to
03:41consider that male infertility might be a factor. This makes me wonder if heating up the balls every
03:46night has anything to do with this. Then we've all heard about how sitting for hours on end is
03:51offered for our health and makes us fat, but we also know that lowering testosterone makes it harder
03:56to put on muscle and easier to put on fat. So what if all this sitting nowadays is heating up men's balls,
04:02reducing their testosterone, and making them weak and fat?
04:06The boy's got no fight in him. I don't get it.
04:09Maybe he's missing something. Like testosterone! Energy, confidence, aggression, agility, muscle.
04:19Around 2018, this rumor that Chinese powerlifters iced their balls as part of their training
04:24regimen to raise testosterone started circulating online. Eventually, various biohackers started
04:29talking about how icing the balls was a good way to increase testosterone.
04:34So is this just bro science or can icing the balls really increase your testosterone?
04:41Hold up, we need to dig into the research a bit further to solve this puzzle because there's not
04:45too much human research on how hot balls lowers your testosterone. Most of the research on ball
04:50temperature is looking at fertility. Here's one example to show you just how bad heat is for sperm.
04:55In a 1967 paper, researchers wanted to see the effect of heat on men's balls. They increased the
05:00ball temperature of 10 men by a mere 0.8 degrees Celsius for 15 hours a day for 2-3 months. This
05:07reduced the men's sperm count by 80%. Another 1985 study increased the ball temperature by 2 degrees
05:13Celsius and this led to a 90% reduction in sperm count. Here's where it comes back to testosterone.
05:18Even if you're not trying to have a baby, consider that testosterone is necessary for the production
05:23of healthy sperm. And for example, in this study where they corrected an iron deficiency in men,
05:27they found a clear correlation between increases in total sperm count and increases in testosterone.
05:33So we may expect that things that are going to be good for fertility are going to be good for
05:37testosterone. There's actually a study in the Scottish Medical Journal saying that a kilt should
05:41help men's fertility because it will keep their balls cooler. A 1984 study had 64 subfertile men
05:47wear a ball cooling device for 16 weeks. The ball chiller improved the sperm quality of 65% of the
05:53men and 26% of the men had their fertility improved so much that they got their wives pregnant.
05:59A different study looked at 25 of what the researchers specifically called hardcore infertile
06:03couples. This meant that they were not able to get pregnant for more than six years. Just 15 weeks
06:09of ball chilling allowed six of these hardcore infertile couples to finally get pregnant. This is why
06:15Hank Hill's doctor told him to cool his balls so he could have another baby. Here's where the puzzle
06:20of ball temperature and testosterone gets a lot more interesting. Research suggests that anywhere from
06:24four to 30% of men suffer a condition called varicocele. Varicocele is an abnormality in the
06:31spermatic cord. This is basically where the veins in the scrotum are swollen and this can impair sperm
06:36as well as testosterone production. A 2022 paper explains that patients with this simple defect
06:44in the veins of the balls on average have lower testosterone. This can lead to the various
06:48symptoms of testosterone deficiency, decreased libido, erectile dysfunction, fatigue, depressed mood,
06:54increases in weight gain, and insulin resistance. Among infertile men, the incidence of varicocele has
06:59been observed to be as high as 35 to 40%. A 1984 paper tested a ball cooling device on men who had some
07:07form of varicocele. Cooling the balls improved the semen quality of many of the men enough to lead to
07:12successful pregnancies. This study implies that perhaps one of the effects of these varicocele is
07:17that they prevent the testicles from regulating their temperature properly and they get too hot.
07:23This is really interesting because it suggests that the varicocele lowers testosterone because it
07:30makes the balls hotter. So if that were the case, we should guess that removing a varicocele would cool
07:36the balls and lead to higher testosterone. That is, if varicocele leads to hotter testicles and then
07:42leads to lower testosterone, then removing the varicocele should lead to cooler testicles and therefore
07:47higher testosterone. Indeed, the data suggests just that.
07:57Surgery removing the varicocele decreases ball temperature and increases serum testosterone levels.
08:03This paper from 2020 found that 60 to 80% of men with low serum testosterone will exhibit
08:09normalization of testosterone level after varicocele repair. Now, you might assume that it's for a
08:14different reason that fixing the varicocele improves testosterone, but research has specifically
08:19observed that men with varicocele have hotter balls and that surgery to remove the varicocele
08:24restores the balls to a proper cooler temperature. There's a reason why your balls are positioned outside
08:30your body. For the balls to produce healthy sperm, they need to be 2 to 6 degrees Celsius below the core
08:35body temperature. So what you need to do is to keep your balls from overheating for extended periods of
08:40time at all costs. There are tons of studies finding that cooling the scrotum has an improvement on semen
08:45parameters. This is huge for couples because considering in about 50% of cases, couple infertility
08:51is attributable to the male partner, mainly due to a failure in sperm production. As well as sitting,
08:57wearing tight underwear can increase the temperature of the balls because it presses them against your
09:02warm body. It's also well accepted that it's best to have the bedroom cool for better quality sleep,
09:06but it's also a good idea to make sure that your crotch isn't getting too hot overnight. So there
09:11might be something to that rumor that Chinese powerlifters ice their balls. While there isn't
09:16research specifically on how much ball icing improves testosterone in already healthy men that I know
09:21of, many guys, including myself, report feeling a bit more energy and libido from icing their balls
09:26regularly. So if you want to try experimenting with this, you can try placing an ice pack on your balls,
09:31but make sure it's over your underwear or over a cloth and not directly on the skin. You don't want to
09:36make it uncomfortable or numb down there. I found about eight minutes at a time, two to three times
09:41a day to work pretty well for me. Now, while the anecdotal reports are exciting, there is reason to
09:45make sure you don't overdo it. Some research suggests that excessive cold exposure to the
09:49body in general can actually lower testosterone. Of course, if you're taking a lot of hot baths or
09:55going in the sauna a lot, it would be worth cooling the balls down afterwards. Another thing with the
10:00sauna is that you're going to be sweating and losing a lot of electrolytes, which are also important
10:04for energy levels. Testosterone is great for energy, but something I do to keep my energy levels up is
10:09simply taking electrolytes. That's where this video's sponsor, Element, comes in. Since electrolytes
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10:19help to replace electrolytes you lose when you're fasting, doing a low-carb diet, or sweating a lot
10:23at the gym or in the sauna. I often find my energy and focus is generally better throughout the day if
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