Women's fascination with men's scent and the current state of sperm deterioration

37. Women are attracted to the scent of men.

Of the five human senses-sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell-touch and smell are perhaps the most degenerated.

In modern society, stimulating the senses of sight, hearing, and taste through devices such as DVDs, iPods, and food information is no longer a problem. However, the necessity of verifying objects by touching them has decreased sharply, and the sense of touch has begun to gradually degenerate.

This is why educational methods like the Steiner method from Germany, which actively stimulate the sense of touch and awaken humanity's innate sensory abilities, are favored. Walking barefoot on different objects such as stones, sand, powder, and mud allows one to experience various skin sensations, which are transmitted from the soles of the feet to the brain, stimulating the brain, promoting memory, and thus training the sense of touch.

Another area of ​​significant decline is the sense of smell. Due to the development of hygiene education, humans have gradually lost a fundamental ability necessary for survival. In other words, they have lost the ability to use their sense of smell to distinguish whether "this food is edible or not."

Since humans began walking upright, their sense of smell has gradually degenerated. Smell itself is a substance, affected by gravity. Therefore, the closer to the ground, the easier it is for odors to settle compared to higher altitudes. After adopting upright walking, humans were in an environment with low odor density, leading to a gradual decline in their sense of smell over time.

Furthermore, the sense of smell is controlled by ancient brain functions. In short, it is more closely related to animal instincts such as intuition and emotion than to reason or knowledge.

People with similar immune systems will dislike each other's taste!

In 1995, Dr. Wiedekhan of the University of Bern, Switzerland, published a paper titled "Women Choose Romantic Partners by Distinguishing Their Immune Systems Through Smell." The paper involved having women smell men's worn T-shirts and choose their preferred scent. The results showed that women generally preferred the scent of T-shirts worn by men with different immune types, while considering the scents of men with similar immune types as "unpleasant." (Here, immune type refers to HLA (Human Leukocyte Antigens), which differs from the red blood cell types A/B/O/AB, and can have tens of thousands of combinations). This paper subsequently sparked both support and opposition.

However, based on my own experience (I cannot judge whether our immune types are similar), it is fair to say that women choose men based on their scent. At least one thing is clear: they consider a man's scent to be an important selection criterion, just like his appearance, income, and personality!

One explanation for the perception of "dislike" based on similar immune types is to prevent incestuous attraction. This could explain why daughters might find their father's scent "particularly unpleasant" after puberty. However, once a woman becomes pregnant (the possibility of incestuous attraction disappears), she can accept her father's scent and no longer find it unpleasant.

These questions are gradually being answered in recent scientific research, and the flavor is imbued with a mysterious meaning of prosperity for future generations.

[Special Topic V] Sex and Energy

38. Sperm deterioration, male hormone levels are decreasing.

Nowadays, the overall quality of human sperm is poor.

Even in healthy men, many sperm cells are either immobile and lack vitality, or they are completely still and have strange shapes.

The WHO (World Health Organization) sets the minimum sperm count required for pregnancy at 40 million sperm per milliliter, with 50% motility and 15% normal morphology. Reports of declining sperm counts have emerged in Europe. In Denmark, 40% of men fall below the WHO benchmark. A study by Dr. Skakobeck's team at the University of Copenhagen found that comparing data from 1992 and 1938, Danish men's sperm counts halved in approximately 50 years. This data has been criticized by various countries, who have expressed doubts about its reliability. The United States and France conducted further investigations, and both sides found results that corroborated Dr. Skakobeck's data.

Furthermore, a survey of sperm banks in Paris found a 40% decrease in sperm count over 20 years, along with an increase in abnormal sperm and testicular cancer. Reports in the UK also indicate decreased sperm motility, increased abnormal sperm count, and a general decline in sperm count.

Furthermore, data analyzed by the National Institutes of Health in the United States from 1938 to 1988 shows that sperm counts in the US have been declining at a rate of 1.5% per year. Domestically, data from Teikyo University School of Medicine and Keio University School of Medicine also report declining sperm counts.

Will men become extinct in 10 million years?

Furthermore, sperm quality deteriorates with age. Compared to younger men, middle-aged and older men exhibit more severe DNA damage in their sperm, reducing their chances of fathering children. A 2005 study presented at the European Conference on Human Reproduction in Copenhagen, involving 2100 participants, indicated that men over 45 years of age showed significantly higher levels of DNA damage in their sperm compared to those under 45, and were up to twice as likely to have children compared to men under 30. A joint study by the National Institutes of Health and the University of California, Berkeley, also demonstrated that male DNA damage and chromosomal abnormalities increase with age.

In addition, Boston University conducted a study on 1,709 men aged 40 to 70, investigating changes in their blood hormone levels over a 10-year period starting in 1987. The study concluded that, compared to 1987, 10 years prior, the decrease in male hormones was more significant with age in 1997.

In Japan, vegetarian men are generally considered popular, but with declining sperm quality and decreasing male hormones, what will become of them?