By Rosecrans Baldwin

Copyright gq

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 SwimClub, 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. SwimClub launches today, with a monthly subscription starting at $150/month.
GQ: How did SwimClub 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.
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, SwimClub’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.
Ultimately more research, just knowledge of this issue, I think is really crucial, as you’re pointing out. Again, the healthier you are, the better your sperm are going to be—that definitely correlates.
Yeah, I’ve made the argument before that by being more aware of your health, it’s actually a healthy way of demonstrating masculinity, because you’re making an effort to protect your partner and child.
You know, women take prenatal vitamins, and men often do nothing. And that affects the likelihood of getting pregnant, and the health of the pregnancy, too. If the father’s unhealthy, things like stillbirth, miscarriage, complications for the wife like gestational diabetes—all that goes up.
There are other supplements on the market, but this is a one-stop shop, so it makes it a lot easier, rather than having to buy 12 or 13 different components. And in addition to the scientific underpinnings, I think another thing I’ve been impressed by is that SwimClub also has experts in the supplements industry, because quality is important, too, and how you source some of these things makes a big difference. And we’re going to collect data about these men and plan clinical trials; SwimClub just got [Institutional Review Board]-approved, so we’ll be able to actually show benefits in sperm counts, benefits in pregnancy, IVF pregnancies, everything.
To be clear, those trials have not been conducted yet, is that correct?
Specifically SwimClub, yeah. But the individual products we chose and their dosages are all based on randomized trials that have been done in isolation.
What is the future for men’s sperm if we don’t take steps to correct things?
Obviously you don’t want to be alarmist about anything. But these trends seem to be accelerating; the decline in the last 10 years is faster than it was in the previous 10 years. Fertility is a numbers game, right? Ultimately one sperm fertilizes an egg, but you need all of its brothers and sisters to help it get to where it needs to be. So the lower numbers there are, I think you’ll see downstream consequences.
Fertility rates are going down in many countries; there’s obviously social aspects to it as well. And there’s certainly some eminent scientists who think that’s the primary drive. But I do think there is a strong biologic component as well. I think it’s harder for couples to get pregnant. I think if you look at certain groups, time to pregnancy is getting longer. We see couples taking longer, sperm counts getting lower. From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s certainly not good. And from a reproductive standpoint, it’s alarming.
Who is SwimClub geared towards? Is it the man who is looking to get pregnant with his partner a year from now? Or is it the 22-year-old who suspects he’ll want to have kids someday?
It’s for couples that are trying to get pregnant, and they want to do everything they can to optimize for it. More broadly, though, I think it could be something for everybody. I’ve focused a lot of my career on the link between overall health and reproductive health.
Right, the idea that the quality and quantity of a man’s sperm is a so-called biomarker.
If you have lower quality sperm now, you’ve got a higher risk of developing metabolic syndrome later in life. Men with lower sperm counts run a higher risk of diabetes, cancers—the two sort of interact. Again, just as a measure of fertility and health, it’s good to have healthy sperm. So it’s good to take ownership of it, even if your goal isn’t to get pregnant tomorrow.
On that point, then, what are some things guys can do if they want to preserve or improve the quality of their sperm, and therefore their health more broadly?
I always say, anything that’s good for your heart is good for fertility, and vice versa. Good diet, exercise, maintain good body weight. Seven to nine hours of sleep is probably ideal. Obviously you can get really caught up in all the different exposures we have. You know, don’t microwave things in plastic containers. Eat organic produce instead of non-organic. Moderation is generally better for most things.