| balls, boxes and breifs (March 09, 2009) |
Today’s Featured Question:
Is it better for your balls if you wear boxers or briefs?
—M.S., Portland, Oregon
Answer:
There’s no difference, at least according to a study reported in the Journal of Urology. The scrotum is generally a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body because sperm like it that way. The idea is that wearing briefs raises the temperature and limits production, which can be good or bad, depending on your desire to be a father. One experiment in the 1960s attempted to raise scrotal temperature using an insulated jockstrap and a lightbulb. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s, when two urologists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook took careful measurements of 97 patients, that we had any real insight into the matter. They found the average boxer ball temperature to be 97.9 degrees and the average brief ball temperature to be 97.7, leading to the conclusion that "the hyperthermic effect of briefs has been exaggerated" More recently another State University of New York urologist found that sitting with the knees together to support a laptop caused the scrotal temperature of his 29 volunteers to rise by about one degree, even before the computer was turned on. Long-term, he said, this could cause fertility problems. The only previous research on this topic was a 2002 letter to the Lancet in which a physician described a patient whose laptop burned his penis through his pants and underwear. Those suckers can get hot. |
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Posted By Scott |
