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A doctor from my girlfriend's family was talking to her over the weekend. She explained to me that he was talking about how there is proof that cellphones decrease sperm count when being stored in a pant pocket. In addition if the cellphone is being held in the shirt pocket it can affect heart rate.

He then went on to do a demonstration where he made her hold out her arm, and push up on his extended arm. When nothing happened he place a cellphone against her heart and asked her to try it again, where then she had less strength (?) and could not push up.

I have heard that there are still conflicting studies on how cell phones may cause brain cancer, but if there is still no definitive proof either way, how can this doctor be so sure of other bodily functions that are impaired by cell phones. It sounds to me that he may have been misinformed.

Are there any studies out there that show otherwise, that cellphones do in fact affect either sperm count or your heart / strength?

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    That demonstration is very similar to one that someone from some MLM/Pyramid scam demonstrated to me a few years ago, but it was used to demonstrate what they claimed was the effect of not receiving "zero point energy" from a mysterious medical device they were selling. My main questions for that doctor are: 1. What are these studies he's referring to? 2. What was that test supposed to prove? 3. Can he prove that he's really a doctor?
    – Randolf Richardson
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 12:42
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    The demonstration you heard of was likely Applied Kinesiology, a common way of duping people into thinking something unrelated is responsible for a change in strength or balance.
    – Alain
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 13:48
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    There is Does frequent cell phone use reduce the sperm count of men? which this is a possible duplicate of but the other question doesn't have any answers and this one is better written anyways.
    – Sam I Am
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 15:08
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    I noticed the previous question, but saw that it did not have nay answer so decided to post mine again, hoping to find some. I can vouch that he is a doctor, but I have not had any time to talk to him personally about his claims, or else I would ask him about his sources. In response to the Applied Kinesiology. It does sound likely that this was the case. ... I take back that I don't know any of his sources. I remember being told that he got his information from an 'informative lecture'. Probably a common place for such demonstrations as the arm strength test.
    – CMacDady
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 21:30
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    CMacDady, could they be confused and thinking about laptops and sperm count? snopes.com/medical/toxins/laptop.asp
    – Larian LeQuella
    Commented Dec 12, 2011 at 23:45

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On that related question, there was a deleted answer that stated the following (All that follows is a direct copy/paste from that deleted answer):

The study they appear to be referencing for their statement is "Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation from a Cellular Phone on Human Sperm Motility: An In Vitro Study" (Erogul, Oztas, et, 2006, source)

To summarize, they took several sperm samples, let them rest for 20 minutes, separated them into two groups and exposed one group to an active GSM phone 10cm (~4")from the samples for 5 minutes. Immediately all sperm samples were sanalyzed for motility, and those samples exposed to the GSM phone radiation had a greater number of lower motility sperm than those that remained unexposed.

They did not analyze the sperm later to see if the effects were temporary.

They did refer to another study, "Impact of radio frequency electromagnetic radiation on DNA integrity in the male germline." Aitken RJ, Bennetts LE, Sawyer D, Wiklendt AM, King BV. Int J Androl 2005;28:171e179 which suggested that rats who were exposed to active GSM radiation for 12 hours a day, 7 days a week showed some change in the reproduction system of male rats, but not enough to change the resulting sperm.

The takeaway of this study, as with so many cellular radiation studies appears to be that more study is needed to determine long term effects. Most of these studies merely point to the fact that RF radiation does have immediate effects on all kinds of organic tissues, but so far few have shown damaging effects that last long after the radiation has ceased.

However, I think it's a fair bet that if you want to make sure that your sperm are at their most motile, you should avoid placing a 5 minute long or longer phone call while holding the phone within 4 inches of an open dish of sperm immediately prior to needing the sperm at their most motile state. Note that your skin blocks most of the radiation at and above 800MHz from penetrating more than several mm into the body, so sperm you are carrying are unlikely to be affected unless you embed the transmitting antenna in your vas deferens.

Also, try to avoid making 12 hour long calls while holding your phone within 5cm of your testes every day. Even your reproductive organs don't have that much to talk about.

Not sure why they deleted it...

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    Well for whatever reason, it does provide more information of the subject and a possible sources to be misinterpreted as conclusive results. Thanks for re-posting this.
    – CMacDady
    Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 4:23
  • @Larian, maybe this answer should be CW?
    – Sklivvz
    Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 10:35
  • Vocabulary looks vague. Saying "active GSM phone" gives very little information: the cell phone is not powered off. But we don't know if it is waiting for a call or sms ("standby"), in a call, in data transfer... Which is a very important parameter since the radio signal emitted by the phone is much more intense during a call for example.
    – Totor
    Commented Jan 21, 2017 at 0:00

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