Episode 27: Do "Hot Balls" Cause Girls? & All About Gender Selection

Dr. K and Dr. Reed discuss a report of elite athletes being more likely to father girls due to "hot balls" Is it true? And what are things we can do to influence gender?

Transcript

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I am Dr. Beverly Reed. And I'm Dr. Amber Klimczak. And we are Two Peaks in a Pod. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. How was your Valentine's Day? It was good. We had like a family Valentine's Day. We make homemade cheesecake every Valentine's Day. It's our tradition. But the funniest part was that we worked really hard on this cheesecake. And the girls like really put a lot of love into it. He preheats the oven. It Puts it in the oven an hour later. That's how long cheesecake has to cook for. He goes and he's like, I put it in the wrong oven. So it was sitting in the bottom oven, which is cold for an hour. Okay, this is kind of funny because I also feel like it's hashtag rich people problems. Two ovens. We didn't know which oven to put it in. That's actually kind of funny. I was like, have you ever used the oven thing? And he's I just didn't realize. That's so funny. I love that. Um, okay, well one special thing we did yesterday is we got some roses, and each one of our patients that came in, we gave them a rose. Did they, did your patients like it? It was so sweet. It was really sweet. Good, good. Okay, good. I kind of felt bad because, We were doing that for our patients. And then when I got home from yesterday, I made sure to like stop by the store because I knew my kids would be like, did you get me anything? So I was like, quick, put something together for my kids. And then I was just kind of exhausted at the end of the day. And then I realized I didn't get anything for my neglected husband. And I'm like, babe, I'm sorry, I'm tired. And luckily he, I mean, I, he says he doesn't care, but I kind of feel like he might a little bit. So maybe I should like get him something today or something. Yeah. Well, this is supposed to be the man's day. There's like a really nasty term for today. You'll have to look it up. I'm not going to say it on our podcast. I need to Google that. Okay. The day after Valentine's day. Apparently it's, Okay, I'll have to look that one up. Okay, so you bringing us a clip today to look at? Yes, so I have, I have a, I guess it's sort of circulating right now on social media, a little clip that my husband sent to me. You're gonna laugh when you realize that my husband sent this to me, but I'm gonna play it for everyone. You guys might be, like, intrigued. Yeah, you may have heard about this, so. Okay, let me just, uh, turn this up and get it ready. Okay. So athletes, people who train a lot, that they're statistically have a greater chance of having daughters, uh, because I think they, we call it hot balls, basically, if he kills off the male sperm. That's hilarious. And if you look around, I think so, they did a thing on a bunch of guys, either in the NFL or whatever, and statistically they just have a lot more daughters. Huh. And I think it's like nature's way of going, Oh, you're going to be all like, moving and active and raw and all this stuff. Guess what? You're just going to put a bunch of girls around you. Okay, so Dr. Reid, what do you think? Hot balls? Is this a real phenomenon? So many thoughts are flying through my head right now. The first of which is you have all girls. And so why am I thinking of your husband's balls? But, and, and also I've been thinking about the fact that I really had wanted a girl so much when I had kids, but I kept having boys initially, which I love my boys. I'm so glad it turned out that way, but I didn't get my girl until the third one. So I'm having all these thoughts kind of flying into my head. So, Does Stephen have hot balls? I think Stephen is dreaming and he thinks that he is an elite athlete performing some sort of physical exercise that makes hot balls. And so I guess if you guys want to have a boy, he's just going to have to stop working out and I'm definitely going to come home to him like icing his testicles later, I'm sure. You're going to say, you asked for this Stephen, you asked for this. For it Um, okay. It does bring to mind though, um, you know how I'm a Taylor Swift fan and then, so then I like Travis Kelsey. Mm-Hmm. and then his brother's Jason Kelsey. And it is true. So he's an elite athlete and he has all girls. I just saw hi like a little media clip with them and all their girls and I remember thinking like, oh my gosh, this big tough football player has all girls. But I didn't realize that some people think that this is a thing. Hot balls. Okay, but so why, I don't understand the why, like, okay, so you're an athlete, you sweat a lot, okay, the testicles warm up, I mean, I will say too, I've had a lot of athletes, especially, um, a lot of bike riders and everything, I don't know, I haven't really seen this in my patients, is this something you've seen? I have never observed this phenomenon with, with any, occupation that I think is exposed to heat. Uh, the other, the other occupation that has told me a lot that they're exposed to heat is sort of law enforcement, SWAT. They wear all this gear, I guess, and they said it's really, really hot. They're sweating in their gear all the time. I don't know. Maybe your husband. Well, yeah. So my husband is in law enforcement. And no, it didn't really pan out. You know, I thought I would have loved to have all girls. That sounds like a lot of fun, but no, it didn't pan out. But yeah, also, and, but I would say my husband's not an elite athlete anymore. He was when we first met, actually. We both were very athletic and fit and in shape. And now we're older. Okay, well, I think it does bring up a really good topic because I do get asked this all the time by my patients and even family members and friends and all the rest of it is, is Is there a way, actually, to sort of hack reproduction so that you can be more likely to have a boy over a girl? Do you get asked this quite a bit, too? All the time. Number one family friend question. Really? Okay. Yeah. Number one. For, for, related to fertility. Yes. Otherwise, I just bought pregnancies. Yes, but I have to say when people ask me, they're so sad when I give them the answer. Because my answer is no, there's not anything you can do to have a boy over a girl. And instantly you see their face like, oh, their whole face falls. And they'll say, but I read online about this method, this method, that method. And I'm like, no. Well, it'll work 50 percent of the time. Isn't that kind of a thing? Anything you try is going to work half the time. That's not very satisfying. But I do think it would be sort of fun to go over some of these methods. Yeah. So I have a list of different methods here that we can talk about. Okay. We were talking a little bit about this, and one of the more common ones that's out there, and I'm going to butcher his name, but I think it's Shuttles. Yeah, I think it's the Shuttles method. I believe this is some sort of physician or researcher that looked a lot into sperm, and he was really looking at X versus Y chromosome containing cells. So, the first thing you should really know about gender is that it comes from the male. So, a lot of times patients tell me, well, you know, all boys, so I'm definitely going to have all boys. Yeah. And I'm like, nope. It has nothing to do with that, right? So, gender is determined by the male partner. It's whatever sperm he contributes and the chromosome inside that sperm. So, um, So, women, we only have an X chromosome to give, so we always give an X chromosome. If the male gives an X chromosome in the sperm, we get a female. If he gives a Y chromosome, then we have a male. So, there was this doctor, I guess he researched what certain sperm looked like that were containing an X versus Y chromosome, observed what they did, and what he found was that the male sperm seemed to be smaller overall. They swim faster. Um, and so he kind of came up with these theories based on that he found that the, the female sperm are slow, but they live a lot longer. Um, and so all of his theories for getting pregnant with a boy or a girl are kind of based off of these different, um, ideas with the sperm. And so if you're looking to have a boy, for example, he says that you should try and time intercourse right around ovulation because the male sperm don't hang around that long, but they swim faster and can get up to the egg. If you're going to try and have a girl, then you want to time intercourse maybe a few days before ovulation. They're just sitting there waiting. They're the ones that live the longest, but they're slow. Okay. But they're waiting around. What do you think about that? I did use this method myself and it did work, but remember it always works. So, okay. The first two kids, I didn't know about the shuttles method. And when I was trying to get pregnant, I just used an ovulation test. And so, you know, when your ovulation test turns positive, you have intercourse that day, the next day. So that's all I did. For those, for the third one, I'd read about the shuttle's method. So I'm like, this time I'm going to start trying way before my test even turns positive. And that's when I have a girl, but who knows, like if that could have just been coincidence too. And I do have plenty of patients that I have seen who have tried it and did not work. Right. Well, and one thing that I think we would see more often is when we do fertility treatments for our patients, we time ovulation with our inseminations. Perfectly. Okay. Sort of things like that. Or timed intercourse perfectly with ovulation. And I certainly don't see more boys than girls. You bet. This is such a good idea. We should do a study on our donor sperm patients, right? Because I think it's harder if you have somebody who could have been having intercourse too, because then you're like, okay, maybe they also had intercourse before, so you can't really, um, but in donor sperm, they would have only had that one exposure to sperm, which is on the day of ovulation, right? So if the shuttle's method was true, then you would expect probably more boys, right? Um, but I, I think we didn't study it. We'll probably show 50 50, but we should do that study. That'd be easy for us to do. Just go back and look at our data. It would be very easy. Yeah, what do you think about sexual positions? Like in general? Related to fertility? Don't overshare! Um, okay, yeah, I don't put any credence into it at all. Um, no, yeah, that was not anything that I tried to do different or special or anything. And I just can't even understand the logic of why that would help. But would, do they say that a certain position is better than the other? This is one that actually is like pretty common. Okay. I guess it's based off of the same phenomenon. Okay. But they say if you want to have a boy. That you should have. Um, really deep penetration. Okay. In your position so this is too, doggy style. That's what they call it, right? Um, and if you want to have a female, you can do something more traditional like missionary. Okay. And this is because you have to go deeper because the um. The sperm that have the Ys are not as strong. Well, they said that you, if you go deeper, the male sperm and female sperm are both deposited right at the cervix, right? But it's basically a race at that point. The male sperm swim faster and so they can, like, out beat the female sperm. That sounds crazy. Okay, gotcha. But that's the reason why. Yes, okay, okay, interesting. Nope, nope, haven't heard that one. Alright, have you had any patients testing the pH of their vagina? No. Not that I know of. I feel like this has got to be a younger generation phenomenon. But I can guess what the results would be. Acidic. So it, it makes me laugh because I do feel like, you know, there's a lot of alternative birth controls out there and all of these things. So I feel like there's probably some women out there, young, gotta be young. I don't think they're like our age that are testing their, their pH and their pH. Um, but apparently you can eat certain foods to change the pH of your vagina. I actually disagree with this because I don't think that, that eating foods should substantially change the pH of your vagina, but they're saying maybe that you can. And making it more acidic actually is the best way. More harmful for sperm, but female sperm are apparently are really hardy and so they can survive this acidic environment that male sperm can't. I mean, I do kind of love that about women already though, from the very beginning, we are survivors, you know, do you remember the wimpy white boy phenomenon from medical school boys? Apparently are just once. When babies are born, girls tend to do a lot better as neonates than, than males. Yes, from the very beginning, we are strong, strong, strong. I actually, there was an embryologist that I used to work with and she used to always say, Oh no, they should choose the girl. Girl embryos much better. Like, Really? Really was encouraging of people using girl embryos too. It made me laugh. My goodness. Very interesting. Well, I would definitely, tell people don't do anything intentionally to alter the pH of your vagina because we have a very acidic vagina for a reason that actually kills off all of the bad bacteria and it keeps the vagina really healthy. So in instances where women have altered the pH of the vagina, they can actually be more prone to getting vaginal infections, which I think would really lower your chances of getting pregnant anyways and just create a whole world of hurt for yourself. Um, so I definitely would not alter. Right, you know, it used to be common for women to, like, try and clean the inside of the vagina and all of that, which is the same thing. Now we really don't recommend douching or anything like that because it really gets rid of your good flora, your good bacterial flora, and then gives rise to those harmful ones. Exactly. Exactly. Um, okay, so this one makes me laugh. Okay, so one of the other things that you can apparently control is whether or not the female has an orgasm. Wow, okay. And that supposedly can help you to conceive a male or a female, okay? And so when I was reading this article I was just laughing to myself because it said, if you can try to, you should try to not have an orgasm. Because if you want to have a, um, let's, let me think about this. So it makes a more alkaline environment if you orgasm. Okay. And apparently that's better for boy sperm. Okay. So if you want to have a girl, it says, if you can try, don't have an orgasm to have a female. Clearly these people I don't think are like medical. Orgasms, boy. No orgasms, girls. Right. Okay, so this goes back to Steven. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Do better. Yeah. We're coming a little harder here. I was, I was pleased to know that because I'm like, at least we get to have some fun along the way. Interesting. Well, and I do think too, just even besides gender, I know orgasm has gotten brought up a lot, even just for like fertility treatments and everything. And it does bring me to actually, yes. story in my past, um, at my prior practice where I had done an insemination and I had left the room and then I came back because I had to tell them something and I came back on some things that I was not expecting to see. And apparently it was based on, um, maybe on a recent TV show people were watching that the thought was that if you have an orgasm around the time of your insemination, you might have better chances of getting pregnant. And of course, there's no data to support that, but I think again, it's one of those like, old wives tales or something. And then I thought, okay, I did not realize what sometimes is going on behind closed doors in the clinic. I think that they really need to do more research on this because I believe that the female orgasm should be necessary. Should that be another study we do? Someone needs to do the legwork to figure this out. I mean, I feel like we already have very nice spa IUIs, but that would get us a whole nother reputation. Um, okay, well I wanted to kind of talk about some of the things that, um, I used to just see in my prior practice. So, Where I used to be, we actually saw a lot of patients that wanted to see us for family balancing. And I think the reason for that is some clinics actually do not allow you to do fertility treatments for family balancing. And so that being one of the few, um, that would allow you to do it. We ended up seeing a lot of patients, um, with that. And I have to say too, sometimes I do wonder, is it more than, what we're saying. I know I'm just like, it's chance, it's 50 50. But I used to see some patients where, oh my gosh, they'd have like five boys or five girls or something. And I'm like, really? Is it chance? But you know, also they say, look, when you think about statistics, think about flipping a coin. Could you flip a coin and get heads five times around? You could, right? Like, it can happen. Yes. Otherwise there would be no one in the casinos. Exactly. Right. Exactly. And then they too, every time you flip a coin, what are your chances of getting heads? It's 50%. Even if you've had. heads four times in a row. It's still 50%, you know, but, um, but it would be interesting to see everybody's, um, stories that they, uh, came to us with and everything. Um, but where I was, they had, um, something that they used to offer. They recently stopped offering it there. And this was a way of trying to select out. Um, the sperm with either the X or the Y and to do an insemination or IVF. And the concept they would use is they would, um, take the sperm and they would wash it just like you would normally do for an insemination. And they would put it in the centrifuge. And the logic was that an X chromosome is way bigger than a Y chromosome. And therefore, the sperm carrying an X must be heavier, and the sperm carrying a Y must be lighter. And when you centrifuge something, heavier objects sink down to the bottom of the tube, lighter objects go to the top. And so they would go ahead and centrifuge a semen, and if somebody was trying for a girl, they would use the bottom part of the sperm pellet. If they were trying for a boy, they would use the top. And, um, So a lot of patients wanted to have this done, but the thing that we would always tell patients is, guys, it doesn't really work that well. Um, you know, so for example, um, the practice owner there, he had said that over the years, he felt that if you're trying for a boy, it only increased it from maybe 50 percent to 60%. 60%. And if you're trying for a girl, he, um, had seen that it worked a little bit better, maybe increasing it from 50 to 70%. Um, nowhere near a hundred percent. So it just seems kind of risky that if you're going to do treatment like that, and you're really, you know, wanting a boy or girl that probably the best bet is to actually do IVF because with IVF, you can do embryo testing on each embryo and know before you put it in, is it a boy or a girl? Um, but, but I had had a lot of experience with that over the years and, and I kind of always wondered too, because I, you know, my experience was what, what that doctor, um, that I worked for had kind of told me his experiences were over the years, but then I saw a recent study too that said it may seem to help. Again, it's not a hundred percent. So, um, definitely something I want to learn more about and know more about, but I just think that we don't really want to offer it until we, um, have probably larger studies making sure, um, that yes, indeed it works. And number two, that, um, it doesn't increase risk for any other problems. Like, you know, sometimes I have to think too, what else can sink to the bottom of a tube that would be heavier, maybe sperm that has. an extra chromosome or something like that too. So you want to make sure you're not increasing your risk of having a child with any problems from doing something. So I've always been curious about this. I've never done this at any of the practices that I've been at, but have you ever seen them actually perform the procedure? Because we do sperm preps a lot, you know, you and I, and I just can't even grasp how they would really Separate the bottom from the top of your pellet, so when you spin, how do they do that? I didn't ever watch them do it. I know they just had a certain protocol that they followed, but I didn't watch them. But, but I will say, interestingly, there is a method that is more reliable and much more defined. It is called, called micro sort and they used to have it in the U. S. Um, but it was a machine that was capable of actually sorting out the sperm that are X versus Y. However, it's not available in the U. S. Anymore. And from what I heard, because I asked her around a lot about it, What I heard is they had trouble getting FDA approval because the initial cases that we're seeing did actually have a higher risk of birth defects, um, like gastroschisis or things like that. Um, and because they couldn't get FDA approval, they actually moved it out of the U S to another country. So I believe it's in Mexico. Um, I have had patients before who've been interested in actually sending the sperm to Mexico and bring, bringing it back after it's been sorted and everything. It's, It's very expensive to do that and all the rest of it, but, um, but yeah, I'm not allowed in the U. S. concern for maybe possible problems that could come. Yeah. It's definitely not worth the risk, right? Most of the time you're just doing this for family balancing and most importantly, I think everyone agrees that they just want to have a healthy child first. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's interesting though. You know, one of, um, uh, my, one of my patients recently had a condition where, um, choosing gender could be more medically important in her case. Um, so, um, it was a condition I really had not heard about before. I've kind of been delving more recently into reproductive immunology. Um, but there are some studies that show if a patient had a loss of a male, um, then if she tries to get pregnant again, and it's with another male. In some women, they can struggle with recurrent miscarriages or recurrent losses if she had developed antibodies against the Y chromosome. And, um, it's not in all women, um, but in women who have both these antibodies and recurrent miscarriage, it seems to be some kind of rare, um, immune issue. And so cases like that, they say, you know what, um, doing an embryo transfer of a known female, um, should actually increase. um, chances of having a life baby. And so I, I do think, um, sometimes it's elective for family balancing and other times sometimes there's, um, a legitimate reason to. Yeah. I mean, I would say that was the very first reason why we really started doing genetic testing of embryos was really to do what they used to call pre implantation genetic diagnosis. And that was really when There are certain diseases that are carried only on the X chromosome. So we just talked about how males have one X and one Y and if you have that disease causing X chromosome and you don't have another X to cover it up, then you can get an X linked condition. So that was a reason why a lot of times you would Transfer a female embryo and we test it for the presence of two X's or an XY because then the female embryo has a diseased X but another normal X to cover that condition and Therefore won't be affected. So just by selecting a female over a male can correct those diseases, too. Mm hmm Okay, good. Well, should we wrap it up for the week? Yes. Okay, great. All right. Thank you, guys. Um, have a good rest of your day, and if you don't mind, leave us a good review. We'd appreciate it. All right. Thanks.