Laptops and infertility: It matters how you sit
Keeping legs together generates more unwanted scrotum heat than machine itself
By Nathan Seppa
If guys can find a way to operate laptop computers with their legs apart, they might limit their risk of infertility, a new study finds. Keeping the legs splayed while using a laptop generated substantially less damaging heat in the scrotum than keeping legs together, scientists report online November 8 in Fertility and Sterility. Putting a shield under the laptop didn’t seem to help beat the heat.
A hot scrotum is no laughing matter. The testes generally are 2 to 4 degrees Celsius cooler than standard body temperature, a unique environment conducive to the rapidly dividing nature of sperm cells. Heating the area can trigger oxidative stress, slow the motion of sperm and lessen their ability to fertilize an egg for weeks or months, says Edmund Sabanegh, a urologist at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
In the new study, urologist Yefim Sheynkin of Stony Brook University in New York and his colleagues enlisted 29 men ages 21 to 35 to participate in three tests in which each man operated a laptop computer on his thighs for one hour. One test entailed keeping the thighs together while using the machine. A second required the same position, but with a padded shield placed under the laptop. The third test allowed the men to keep their legs apart at a 70-degree angle as they used a laptop with a shield supporting it that was wide enough to reach across both legs and stabilize the computer.
Each of the men completed all three tests, but did only one test per day. Before each experiment, sensors recorded the scrotum temperature of each volunteer and recorded any changes during the session.