Author: Colin Thompson

Throughout college, I’ve spent a good deal of my time working as a health educator for Peer Health Exchange, a national nonprofit that provides health education in high schools across the country. Although I have quite a few years of teaching experience under my belt, I’m never quite prepared for the questions that emerge during our sex and sexuality workshops. As you can imagine, being a college student and speaking to curious ninth graders about what sex, gender identity and sexual orientation are can garner some interesting questions.

However, the most peculiar questions revolve around the topic of sperm. Sperm, or the reproductive cell associated with those who possess testicles, is the component that joins with a human egg in utero to form the beginnings of a human being. As you can imagine, many of my students and peers question the physiology and capabilities of the humble sperm, and what conditions make conception possible.

When I tackle these questions, by far the question I get most frequently is whether someone can conceive on accident or indirectly. I want to take this opportunity to bust a few sperm myths, and hopefully enlighten people about the physiology of the sperm cell.

First thing first — lets talk about the temperature at which sperm can be viable. Semen has to be kept 1 to 2 degrees Celsius less than the typical internal body temperature of 37 degrees Celsius. Sperm cells like warmth, and when they exist outside of this window they will become inactive and unable to fertilize an egg. This is also why the testes are separate from the rest of the body — our internal temperatures will negatively impact the ability for sperm cells to fertilize eggs.

So with that in mind, let’s address a couple myths that I encountered in a recent workshop I taught.

Can I get pregnant from sitting on a toilet seat?

Unless the sperm on the seat is recent, this is highly unlikely. Just like us on a cold winter’s day, sperm will hate being in on a cold toilet seat and will soon die or lose their mobility. The likelihood of sperm being able to swim from the seat to the uterus is also extremely low.

Can I get pregnant from sharing a towel?

This is also very unlikely, as sperm will typically die after a few minutes or when it dries. Temperature, as in the aforementioned scenarios, will also likely impact the vitality and mobility of the sperm cell.

Can I get pregnant if there is sperm in a bath or pool?

Again, the likelihood of sperm being able to reach the uterus is extremely low in both of these instances. While the warmth of a bath may provide an optimal temperature for sperm, soap, shampoo and chemicals will likely kill the sperm before it can do much. 

When sperm interacts with water, special proteins in the sperm are unable to prevent clumping. Sperm will then coagulate together and form jelly-like clumps, rendering most of the cells ineffective and immobile.

Can someone take the semen out of a recently used condom and impregnate themself after sex?

While this may be possible depending on how long it has been since sex and the temperature at which the sperm is kept at, this is definitely a clear violation of respect between two people. If you want to become pregnant, this is an important conversation that has to happen so you can understand the wants and needs of your partner.

And on that note, I want to reiterate something important. Sex and pregnancy are very important topics and require lots of communication between two partners! If you are considering having a child, make sure this is consensual between you and your partner. And the same goes for sex as well — the use of condoms and other contraceptives should be a similar conversation, as both sides should be aware of and respect the wants and needs of the other.

As I stood in a twenty-person line at the campus Starbucks for the fifth time this week, I couldn’t help but to feel as college students we are conditioned to have a slight caffeine dependency. For many of us, hot-bean juice is an elixir that keeps us going throughout the day. For others, coffee is a beloved drink that with the benefit of an energy boost. At the end of the day, those of us who drink coffee rely on it to keep us going, especially when it’s the night before a typography project is due and you’re only a fraction of the way done.

 However — my hands tremoring as I type this — I’ve started to think I may be drinking an excessive amount of coffee. Coffee has become highly commercialized, and , we’ve grown accustomed to gigantic serving sizes sold in chains and campus haunts alike. Many of us don’t think  twice when we get two or maybe three a day.

 As happy as coffee makes me and as much as I love the taste, I’m starting to feel a bit conflicted. The health impacts of coffee are constantly being debated. One second it is associated with preventing ultraviolet radiation; the next, it’s associated with a higher risk of developing bladder cancer. When it comes to caffeine, there is a plethora of  contradictory health information out there, and it’s hard to understand where exactly we should start in order to learn more. Taking into consideration I’m also a wee bit anxious and have started to develop hand tremors out of nowhere, I’m facing health concerns I hadn’t had before

 To tackle this, I figured I would start small. What is my daily consumption of caffeine? And am I drinking coffee in excess?

My first exploration was to deduce how much caffeine I might be consuming on a per-cup basis. Considering caffeine content varies* a lot, I decided to standardize using the monolith itself: Starbucks. . What better source than the coffee monolith itself, Starbucks?
My go-to’s at Starbucks are a cup of brewed coffee, a doppio (double shot of espresso), or a green tea. I typically will buy a cup of green tea in the morning on the way to work and two cups of coffee during the afternoon, both in the 16oz size. With this in mind, I decided to trawl the Starbucks website for some nutritional facts.

Yeesh. There are 310 milligrams of caffeine in a single 16 ounce cup of brewed coffee, but I am also drinking two of these on an almost daily basis. According to the Mayo Clinic, it is considered safe to drink up to 400 milligrams of coffee per day. Those of us who “only drink two cups” on a daily basis may also fall prey to these tendencies as well, especially when they are bought from chains that provide oversized servings.  Even though I am “only” drinking two cups of coffee and a cup of green tea a day, that’s still around 660 milligrams of caffeine consumption on a daily basis.

 Considering the verdict is still out on coffee’s health impacts, there’s nothing I can conclude with this information. And while I can’t say for certain whether I’m preventing cancer with my coffee consumption, I can definitely assume the unexpectedly excessive caffeine content that’s is leaving more of an impact on my health than I expected.  

* As you can see, some of these numbers vary wildly. This has to do with the fact that certain coffee beans and strains of tea vary in caffeine depending on where it has been cultivated and for how long the coffee was roasted for. As roasts get darker, the larger the coffee beans will grow as the bean fibers expand. If you were to ground a couple standard tablespoons of coffee for your daily cup, you’ll be grinding more light roast beans than dark roast beans — therefore giving you a more concentrated cup. These number will also differentiate across stores and café, as each likely uses different beans and has their own way of preparing coffee.

Just like human behavior, the actions and mannerisms of animals are multifaceted. And just like research related to human health and behavior, research done on animals is continuously being molded by the context in which they live. As global climate change impacts the oceans, land, and sky, organisms struggle to adapt to these erratically changing environments.

To make matters worse, this means that a lot of research done with older datasets have questionable applicability to the same ecosystems today. In a recently published research study in the Royal Society Open Science, the connection between two African whale populations were found through analyzing their vocalizations and songs.

While these findings help to provide valuable insight in the lives of these complex organisms, the data collected for analysis in this study is from more than a decade ago, with data points being collected from 2001 to 2005. Just like how we’ve all likely changed as individuals in the past decade, these whale populations have also changed how they interact with each other.

Lest we forget the fact that the ever-frustrating mosh pit between climate change and diligent research on the natural environment continues to impede further progress on attaining accurate research results. While reading over this study, I came across an article published by the New York Times that discussed the alarmingly fast rate at which the ocean is warming. Not only are rising ocean temperatures destroying ecosystems and causing more destructive hurricanes, but the rate at which this warming is occurring differs across the world. The impacts on the whale populations may have manifested themselves in subtle or extreme ways, but it’s impossible that these populations have not been touched by climate change in some shape or form. Maybe they’ve grown closer, or maybe some whales in the two populations have stopped communicating with each other. Based on the findings from the study, we know there’s a link. But that doesn’t give us much insight on what’s happening now.

While the Times article pertains more to the aforementioned study, this proves the point made that data collected in years prior will likely not represent the actual conditions in the present day. Beyond looking at the dates that the data had been collected in, looking at the source of funding and locations where data had been collected can sometimes show you the implicit bias on the part of the researchers. When massive research studies such as this are completed, it’s easy for journalists and the public to jump on the results with complete confidence, much like when you find that perfect source for your research paper that’s due in half an hour. However, there must be more investigation on our part to understand the information being used to make these statements.