Tech | November 09, 2010 | 10 comments

'Is Your Laptop Cooking Your Gonads?' asks Fox

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Continuing its mission to ask the difficult questions, Fox News today posed the following query:

Is your laptop cooking your gonads?

Let's face it, probably not, but it's a brave man who doesn't read on just to make sure.

Fox goes on to explain. Gents, apparently all those evenings you've spent browsing the internet on your laptop may have affected your fertility rates. Researchers who hooked (wait, hooked?) thermometers to the scrotum of 29 young men who balanced their laptop on their knees found that, even with a lap pad under the computer, mens' bits overheated quickly.

"Millions and millions of men are using laptops now, especially those in the reproductive age range," said Dr. Yefim Sheynkin, a urologist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, who led the new study.

Within 10 or 15 minutes their scrotal temperature is already above what we consider safe, but they don't feel it," he added.

Even with a pillow or a book underneath the laptop, your crown jewels still stand a chance of getting so hot that sperm production drops. That's because in order to use a laptop you need to keep your legs closed, which raises the temperature down there to a level that can affect reproduction levels.

When test subjects sat with their legs open and used a laptop, the temperature was at a much better, lower level.

No studies have actually tested how laptops impact men's fertility and there isn't no solid evidence that it would.

"I wouldn't say that if someone starts to use laptops they will become infertile," Sheynkin told Reuters Health. But frequent use might contribute to reproductive problems, he said, because "the scrotum doesn't have time to cool down."

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/08/laptop-cooking-gonads/
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