Joe Rogan Experience #1638 - Dr. Shanna Swan

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

      (drum music plays) Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.

   2. NANarrator0:04

      The Joe Rogan Experience.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:06

      Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays) Hello.

   4. SSDr. Shanna Swan0:15

      Hello.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:15

      Welcome to the show. Thanks for doing this.

   6. SSDr. Shanna Swan0:17

      Thanks for having me.

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:19

      Y- y- I'm very concerned with what you're saying. Um, your book, Countdown, says that the modern world is threatening sperm counts, altering male and female reproductive development, and imperiling the future of the human race.

   8. SSDr. Shanna Swan0:35

      That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:37

      I believe you.

   10. SSDr. Shanna Swan0:38

       (laughs)

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       But I'm scared.

   12. SSDr. Shanna Swan0:39

       I think we should all be kinda scared.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:41

       Now, what is it specifically about the modern world that scares you?

   14. SSDr. Shanna Swan0:48

       Oh, gosh, a whole bunch. But (laughs) what I write about in this book is the problem with the decline of our reproductive health and the chemicals in the environment that we're surrounded with every day, all the time, that are playing a big part in it. Not the only part, but a big part in it.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:07

       And so they're playing a part in affecting our hormonal production? Is that what's going on?

   16. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:14

       Yes. That's actually what, a good part of what they do. They affect ... They interfere with our hormonal systems in various ways. So they could increase production of a hormone like, uh, pro-estrogen. They could decrease, say, an anti-androgen, decrease testosterone. They could mess with our thyroid hormone and so on and so forth. So they change levels, but they also change how they're transported, and they interfere with making them available to other parts of the body basically. Um, and you got it right. I mean, that doesn't sound so scary to people, but the consequences sound really scary, which is that we're, you know ... By every measure, our sperm count, our miscarriage rates, our fertility rates, our testosterone levels, they're all going south, if you will, at the rate of about 1% per year.

   17. JRJoe Rogan2:11

       And specifically which chemicals are responsible for this alteration?

   18. SSDr. Shanna Swan2:18

       A whole bunch of them. Um, and as a group they're called endocrine disruptors 'cause they disrupt the endocrine system, right?

   19. JRJoe Rogan2:27

       Mm-hmm.

   20. SSDr. Shanna Swan2:28

       And, um, so I spent a lot of time studying one particular class of those which have the ability to lower testosterone. And the reason I did that is because I'm interested in reproductive health, and testosterone is so critical, as you know, for men and women's reproductive health. So that class is called phthalates. It's a terrible mouthful (laughs) to say.

   21. JRJoe Rogan2:55

       Phthalates.

   22. SSDr. Shanna Swan2:55

       Phthalates, right. Um, and they sound weird, but they're very, very common. And if you gave a urine sample today and send it off to the Centers for Disease Control, you would see that you have a lo- you know, no- not only phthalates, but other chemicals and plastics and other chemicals in your body right now. You could do that. It would ... It costs a little bit. Quite a bit. Quite a bit.

   23. JRJoe Rogan3:19

       And are we getting these from food? Are we getting these from water? Wh- wh- what are we getting these-

   24. SSDr. Shanna Swan3:23

       All of the above.

   25. JRJoe Rogan3:24

       Oh.

   26. SSDr. Shanna Swan3:24

       All of the above. But the phthalates, um, are probably mostly coming from our food, and that's kind of surprising. Um, do you want me to tell you how?

   27. JRJoe Rogan3:37

       Yes, please.

   28. SSDr. Shanna Swan3:38

       Yeah. Okay. So, um, let's think of a little experiment. So go into a hospital into the neonatal intensive care nursery. I'll come back to the food.

   29. JRJoe Rogan3:52

       Okay.

   30. SSDr. Shanna Swan3:52

       Um, and there's a baby lying there, and that baby has a lot of lines coming into her body. Okay? And that's, that's delivering food, nutrients, oxygen, whatever the baby needs. Okay? And th- the tubes are soft, squishy plastic. Okay. So as the food nutrients comes through the tubes, goes into the baby, the baby metabolizes them, goes into the urine 'cause they're water soluble, and then we get the urine. We measure, and we can see what's in it. And the nu- amount of phthalate that's in that urine is exactly proportional to the number of lines coming into the baby.
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Hmm. …

   1. SSDr. Shanna Swan15:00

      got their kids, measured their kids. So then I had the problem of what to measure in the kids because nobody had made this translation from an animal genital (laughs) you know, e- developmental system to a human. And so that was kind of a challenge, you know, figuring out how to do that, but we did that, and we developed this system for... this exam for measuring all these things that you measure in a rat, we measured it in our children. And then we showed, and this was big news when it came out, that the mothers' phthalates did alter the genitals of the boys.

   2. JRJoe Rogan15:41

      Hmm.

   3. SSDr. Shanna Swan15:43

      So that was the first evidence. That was 2005. And then we published some more in 2008, and then we... fortunately, I got money to do it all again. NIH doesn't like to pay for replication. It's very expensive. These things are five million dollars a study, by the way.

   4. JRJoe Rogan16:01

      Well, it seems like it's very important though.

   5. SSDr. Shanna Swan16:03

      Yeah. So they gave it to me. They l- gave m- money to do it again. So the second time, I did it better because I really knew what I was looking for, and I got urine actually in three points in pregnancy, and I measured the kids exactly when they're born, so everything was much more precise, and I found it again.

   6. JRJoe Rogan16:23

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SSDr. Shanna Swan16:24

      So now there's no question, I don't think anyone questions that at least this class of chemicals, which we know lower testosterone, alter the development of these boys. And then I asked, "Well, what does that have to do with sperm count?" Because actually for a long time... we haven't talked yet about sperm count, but I've been studying tracing, you know, what's happening with sperm count, um... s- I'll tell you the history of that in a minute. But, so then I thought, "Well, is this related to sperm count?" Well, these are babies. They don't have a sperm count. But in rats, it looked like the AGD was permanent. So if you were... had a short... just like if you have a small hand, you know, your stature's certain, it's set at, at birth, right? So the AGD, if you're born small, and my friend, Earl Gray, who is a toxicologist, said AGD is forever. We don't know that for sure about humans, by the way, but, um... because we haven't had the 20 years yet. But, um, if you believe that, then the sensible thing to do was to take a group of adult men who could give you a sperm count and measure their AGD, right? And then you could see whether those with a shorter AGD had a lower sperm count, and then you would have one pretty solid piece of evidence that chemicals in the environment lower sperm count. Are you with me?

   8. JRJoe Rogan17:52

      Yes, ma'am.

   9. SSDr. Shanna Swan17:53

      Okay. So I did that study too. So I got students in Rochester, New York, to volunteer for 75 bucks to participate, and they gave us a semen sample, and they gave us opportunity to measure them, also a questionnaire.

   10. JRJoe Rogan18:10

       How does one measure kids' taints? Do they just bend over and you bust out a ruler?

   11. SSDr. Shanna Swan18:15

       I happened to bring it, br- bring you something to show you.

   12. JRJoe Rogan18:17

       That's... I noticed, yeah, this measuring device. (laughs)

   13. SSDr. Shanna Swan18:21

       (laughs) I thought-

   14. JRJoe Rogan18:22

       Jamie's volunteered to let you measure his taint, by the way.

   15. SSDr. Shanna Swan18:26

       (laughs)

   16. NANarrator18:26

       That's why I have a sweatpants on.

   17. SSDr. Shanna Swan18:29

       So, um, this is not for a baby. This is for, this is for our Rochester Young Men Study. Um, and it's, looks kind of fierce, um, but we had the points taken down in the-

   18. JRJoe Rogan18:45

       Yeah, I used one of those to measure, uh, pool cue tips.

   19. SSDr. Shanna Swan18:48

       There you go. All right, so you know all about it.

   20. JRJoe Rogan18:51

       Yeah.

   21. SSDr. Shanna Swan18:51

       Let's turn it on.

   22. JRJoe Rogan18:52

       You want 13 millimeters, that's what I like, but only for-

   23. SSDr. Shanna Swan18:56

       (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan18:57

       ... only for pool cue tips.

   25. SSDr. Shanna Swan19:00

       So, look, um, I also brought you a little diagram, so you can see where we measure.

   26. JRJoe Rogan19:06

       Okay.

   27. SSDr. Shanna Swan19:07

       But we can't show this to, I don't, I don't know how to show this, but I'll show it to you.

   28. JRJoe Rogan19:09

       So the calipers are in, uh, they're in millimeters or in inches or both?

   29. SSDr. Shanna Swan19:13

       Y- both, you can-

   30. JRJoe Rogan19:14

       Okay.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   I haven't looked at…

   1. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      has to suffer. I mean, it... Have you made a connection with this and depression or with anxiety or any other things that are affecting people at a disproportionate amount?

   2. SSDr. Shanna Swan30:11

      I haven't looked at that, but I, I can tell you it affects libido.

   3. JRJoe Rogan30:15

      Yes.

   4. SSDr. Shanna Swan30:16

      ... right?

   5. JRJoe Rogan30:16

      But that is why, why I asked because there's a gentleman that's a friend of mine named Dr. Mark Gordon and he's worked with a lot of people with traumatic brain injuries, and one of the things that happens with damage to the pituitary gland is, uh, a decrease in the amount of testosterone that's produced by the brain and the testes. And then what happens after that is severe depression. And this connection between-

   6. SSDr. Shanna Swan30:36

      Hmm. Hmm.

   7. JRJoe Rogan30:36

      ... severe depression and lower testosterone-

   8. SSDr. Shanna Swan30:39

      Hmm.

   9. JRJoe Rogan30:39

      ... is pretty significant. Uh, he's done a lot of work with, uh, this g- group called the Warrior Angel Foundation with, uh, another friend of mine, Andrew Marr, and they have worked with these soldiers and now he's also done some work with football players and fighters and a lot of other people with head injuries. And he's shown this direct correlation between severe depression and lower testosterone. Anxiety, a lot of, like, mental health issues. I would imagine that these kids that are born, uh, w- with this disruption in their developmental cycle and they have lowered sperm count, like, I bet everything is-

   10. SSDr. Shanna Swan31:15

       Yeah.

   11. JRJoe Rogan31:15

       ... everything's decreased. Everything's a mess.

   12. SSDr. Shanna Swan31:17

       Yeah. I, I would- I'm definitely going to follow up on that and look at that. I can- what we've- just, you know, we followed our kids. Our kids are now, in our latest study, um, nine years, eight, nine years old, so they're not, they're not there yet.

   13. JRJoe Rogan31:31

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SSDr. Shanna Swan31:32

       So I, I don't have those endpoints, but we do know, um, that when we asked, um, for example, by the way, women need testosterone too.

   15. JRJoe Rogan31:41

       Yeah.

   16. SSDr. Shanna Swan31:42

       Um, and it's f- related to a woman's libido. So in our study, we did ask the woman about her sexual satisfaction, frequency, and so on, and higher levels of phthalates were associated with lower sexual satisfaction.

   17. JRJoe Rogan31:57

       Hmm.

   18. SSDr. Shanna Swan31:58

       And, um, you know, and it's- of course it's related to erectile dysfunction, which by the way is now th- you know, f- rapidly rising and, and testosterone re- replacement is being used by younger and younger men. Um, so it's, it's a big thing. (laughs) It's affecting-

   19. JRJoe Rogan32:16

       It's a huge thing.

   20. SSDr. Shanna Swan32:16

       ... it's affecting all of our, you know, um, reproductive health. (laughs) You know?

   21. JRJoe Rogan32:23

       Is this in other countries as well?

   22. SSDr. Shanna Swan32:25

       Yes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan32:26

       Have they measured this in, uh, different countries, like countries in the developmental world and the countries where they use less plastic versus countries where they use more plastics?

   24. SSDr. Shanna Swan32:37

       Um, no. I don't know of a study like ours in a developing country, but we have studies in other countries for sure, in Europe. Um, but if you- one measure of where it's a problem, I would say, is where is sperm count declining?

   25. JRJoe Rogan32:55

       Hmm.

   26. SSDr. Shanna Swan32:56

       And, I mean, the kickoff for this book, Countdown, was a paper that we wrote in 2017 in which we showed that sperm count in Western countries had declined kind of catastrophically. So let me just tell you the numbers.

   27. JRJoe Rogan33:14

       Okay.

   28. SSDr. Shanna Swan33:16

       Think back to 1973. That was the first- that's the start of our trend, and at that point, the median, that's the middle of the distribution, was 99 million sperm per milliliter. That's a good, healthy sperm count. '73. At the end of our study period was 2011. In those 39 years, it had dropped from 99 to 47.

   29. JRJoe Rogan33:46

       Yikes.

   30. SSDr. Shanna Swan33:48

       Over all Western countries.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Yes. …

   1. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:00

      the bisphenols, um, which by the way, um, you probably... Did you ever try to buy a BPA-free bottle? I don't know if you ever tried that.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:09

      Yes.

   3. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:09

      Yeah.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:09

      Yeah.

   5. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:09

      Right? So the label BPA-free.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:11

      Mm-hmm.

   7. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:11

      So what happened was people got really upset about BPA, it had a lot of reproductive effects, and, um, it, um... So they took it out, and that's good. But what happened was, and this is, happens over and over and over again in chemical cycles, they put something else in. They put in BPF, like Frank, and BPS, like Sam. And BPF and BPS are ox- eh, particularly BPF, is, um, equally, if not more, um, risky, uh, than BPA. And the bottle says BPA-free-

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:49

      Oh.

   9. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:49

      ... that's true, but it doesn't say-

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:52

       BPF-free.

   11. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:52

       ... bisphenol-free.

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:54

       Right.

   13. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:54

       Right? So I think that's a dirty trick.

   14. JRJoe Rogan45:57

       Hmm.

   15. SSDr. Shanna Swan45:57

       And, and we call it, um, whack-a-mole.

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:00

       Yeah. What can the general public do to eliminate as much of these harmful chemicals as possible?

   17. SSDr. Shanna Swan46:12

       Huh, it's a big job. Um, for one thing, I'd say buy Countdown and look at the several chapters where we go into detail on things to avoid. Um, but, um, uh, I could say, you could think about (laughs) ... Thank you (laughs) ... thi- uh, think about, um, um, walking through your kitchen and looking for plastics and trying to swap out ceramic and glass or metal, not from the microwave, of course, but, um, and, um, in your bathroom to look at your personal care products. They won't say phthalates by and large, um-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:51

       Because you're not consuming them?

   19. SSDr. Shanna Swan46:54

       I don't know why they're not required. No, I don't... It doesn't say phthalates on our spaghetti sauce that has phthalates in them either. Um, we can come back to that. Um, but, uh, I don't actually know what the regulation is. I know for sure they don't have to be labeled in fragrance products, because those are, um, trade secrets.

   20. JRJoe Rogan47:16

       S- if you bu- buy a jar of spaghetti sauce that's in a glass jar, you're still getting phthalates?

   21. SSDr. Shanna Swan47:21

       Probably, yes. You'd have to-

   22. JRJoe Rogan47:22

       From the tomatoes, the packaging of the tomatoes?

   23. SSDr. Shanna Swan47:24

       Probably from the processing.

   24. JRJoe Rogan47:27

       Oh.

   25. SSDr. Shanna Swan47:27

       So when you go from a tomato to a sauce, you have to process it. And so that processing introduces phthalates. If you go, think about a cow, this is different, but it's the same principle. So the cow is being milked. Maybe this cow is on a wonderful farm with, you know, the picture of the farmer and the grass and it's an organic farm and, and, and everybody's happy. And then he milks the cow, or she milks the cow, through a milking machine that has tubes.

   26. JRJoe Rogan47:58

       Mm.

   27. SSDr. Shanna Swan47:58

       What are those tubes made of?

   28. JRJoe Rogan48:00

       Plastic.

   29. SSDr. Shanna Swan48:00

       Plastic.

   30. JRJoe Rogan48:01

       Mm-hmm.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:15:00

   Yeah. …

   1. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:00:00

      about it, just thinking about it, you know? "Uh, wow, this seems to be a problem. Maybe I should worry about bringing this and this and this into my house. Maybe I should read these labels. Maybe I should..." (laughs) You know? Because it hasn't been in our consciousness.

   2. JRJoe Rogan1:00:13

      Yeah.

   3. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:00:13

      It's another way of thinking.

   4. JRJoe Rogan1:00:16

      There's a decrease in lifespan that's associated with large population centers, whether it's, uh, you know, you know, Los Angeles or New York or living... But living in urban areas, there's a decrease in lifespan. Uh, they think it's, uh, somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 years and they don't know if it's because of brake dust or pollutants or particulates in the atmosphere. They don't know what it is. Um, but-... has there been a study on, well, I'm sure there probably hasn't, on sperm counts in rural areas as opposed to sperm counts in, in high population areas?

   5. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:00:49

      I actually did that study.

   6. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

      Oh, okay.

   7. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:00:51

      Okay.

   8. JRJoe Rogan1:00:51

      Well, I shouldn't have been sure. (laughs)

   9. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:00:53

      But, but (laughs) but the answer is not what you'd expect.

   10. JRJoe Rogan1:00:55

       Oh, really?

   11. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:00:56

       Yeah. So in this study, um, we got four groups of people, and that turned out to be men and women, and I can tell you why. Um, and they were, um, one of the centers was Columbia, Missouri, where I was living, and that's rural. It's agricultural. They grow a lot of corn and soy there. And one of them was Minneapolis, urban.

   12. JRJoe Rogan1:01:23

       Mm-hmm.

   13. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:01:23

       And then there were some, I'm just gonna talk about those two. And in those two centers, we saw that men in Missouri had half as many moving sperm as men in Minneapolis.

   14. JRJoe Rogan1:01:38

       Did they associate that with farm chemicals?

   15. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:01:41

       Yes. That's the next study I did. (laughs)

   16. JRJoe Rogan1:01:44

       Oh.

   17. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:01:44

       So then, I took men with good semen quality and bad semen quality and measured how much of the pesticides were in their bodies, and there were significantly more pesticides in the sample of men who had poor semen quality as compared to good semen quality.

   18. JRJoe Rogan1:02:04

       Now, is this because of, is it airborne? Is it like, where you're talking about enormous cornfields and glyphosate and all these other different chemicals are, they, they work their way into the air itself 'cause they spray?

   19. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:02:17

       Or water.

   20. JRJoe Rogan1:02:18

       Water.

   21. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:02:19

       Runoff from the fields-

   22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:20

       Right.

   23. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:02:20

       ... into the water, into the groundwater.

   24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:21

       And then it pollutes the water supply.

   25. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:02:22

       Right. Or air. I, I couldn't, I didn't study w- how they were getting this. But they weren't workers, they weren't agricultural workers, and they weren't living on farms.

   26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:31

       Right.

   27. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:02:31

       They weren't farmers or-

   28. JRJoe Rogan1:02:32

       Just regular folks.

   29. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:02:33

       They're just regular folks living in that area.

   30. JRJoe Rogan1:02:35

       Wow.
6. 1:15:00 – 1:29:13

   These are, these are…

   1. JRJoe Rogan1:15:00

      you go.

   2. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:00

      These are, these are things you might not know. Um, and you can just turn them over. The, um, some of them are about the man, some are about the woman, some are about both. Um, so there's a, they're in the book.

   3. JRJoe Rogan1:15:12

      Okay.

   4. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:13

      But, um, try it. Just turn them over and see.

   5. JRJoe Rogan1:15:15

      Oh.

   6. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:16

      You just turn-

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:15:16

      So what do I do?

   8. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:17

      Turn them over and read the revelation. Well, start... It doesn't matter.

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:15:21

      Doesn't matter?

   10. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:22

       The-

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:15:22

       Should I do it this way?

   12. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:23

       Th- those are the men, the male ones on top.

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:15:25

       Oh.

   14. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:25

       Yeah.

   15. JRJoe Rogan1:15:25

       On top. Okay. The bottom ones are the female ones?

   16. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:27

       Yeah.

   17. JRJoe Rogan1:15:28

       Okay. It was once believed that each sperm contained a miniature preformed human being called an... How do, how do I say that word?

   18. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:38

       Homunculus.

   19. JRJoe Rogan1:15:39

       Homunculus. Really?

   20. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:41

       Yeah.

   21. JRJoe Rogan1:15:41

       That's how you say that? It's spelled animacucule? That's an-

   22. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:46

       Oh, oh, animacule. Yes.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:15:47

       Oh, animacule.

   24. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:48

       That's another name. (laughs)

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:15:50

       (laughs)

   26. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:50

       It's an alternate name. (laughs) Yeah. Yeah.

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:15:51

       I was like, "Wow, why is it spelled so weird?" (laughs)

   28. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:55

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:15:55

       Okay. It was once believed that, um... I would say that's true.

   30. SSDr. Shanna Swan1:15:59

       Well, these are all true.

Episode duration: 1:37:52