Thus far in human history, wearing a man-skirt seemed only good for making a guy look like a trainspotting soccer hooligan to be avoided at all costs.
Well now SCIENCE! has come to the rescue and theorized an actual benefit to the traditional garb, besides winning your FREEEDOM! from the English.
The Kilt-loving Dr. Erwin Kompanje from Erasmus Medical Centre in the Netherlands has done a meta-analysis of the sparsely-available literature.
And his conclusions are that regimental-style kilt-wearing provides perhaps the perfect environment to boost male fertility.
(forgetting his paper is published in a Scottish journal for a moment),
Let’s hear him out. He cites:
1) Increased scrotal temperature decreases total sperm production output. -So much that another study showed wearing a polyester sling can temporarily make a man sterile.
2) Increased scrotal temperature also produces several abnormal sperm that also don’t swim very well, putting into question their ability to fertilize an egg.
3) It also has been known for awhile that lower scrotal temperature, esp. by not wearing pants or going Commando, increases both quality and quantity of sperm production.
SO: Barring utter downstairs-nudity, what garment(s) could a man wear to cover his nethers, yet decrease temperature around the public pubic area as much as possible?
Bingo! -A Kilt.
And finally, his meta-analysis results suggest re: 3), that men who typically wear a kilt in the “regimental” style without any underwear at-all would keep their target-temperatures not just better, but a whopping 10 degrees cooler and thus have much higher sperm count & quality than men who wear briefs and pants.
“Neat! But does this have any real-world application?”, you say.
-Sadly, Yes.
It turns out that for the past 50 years, Sperm Counts have gone down anywhere from 37-50% in at least in the western world. And some researchers working in the 80s and 90s attribute part of the downtrend to wearing both pants and tighter men’s underwear, like boxer-briefs. In-fact, tighter underwear has been shown to raise scrotal temperature by about the same amount you really need to cool it.
So, perhaps wearing a kilt (or a Sarong or Lungi, if you’re from southeast Asia) for men who want to father a child is a actually a realistic option to increase their fertility chances during those crucial years.
And if the worldwide fertility declines (which are thought in-part to be because of lower quality) really are as bad as they seem, a prospective dad might need all the help he can get.
Finally, The Kicker:
Unfortunately, there has yet to be an official, large-scale, standardized & controlled study on kilt-wearing vs. the recommended boxer shorts.
-So we have only a logical-inference based on sparse literature and a few other clothing options out there. And as such, the authors rightly caution that more research is necessary to rigorously prove the hypothesis.
Still, yet another reason to go out looking cool for the ladies, too.
JUMP BONUS!: Siring more baby boys.
Part of the Dr. Shettles Method also suggests lower scrotal Temp is good for having boys, too. -Primarily because Y sperm are less robust than X, and you need to have as many of them surviving as long as possible.
Photo Credits: “Kilts”, by Flickr user Professor Megan
Links:
Source: NationalPost
via: Discover Mag
More Coverage: NHSUK-No evidence (yet) | DailyMail | TheAtlantic | Reddit-Kilts
Source Editorial: SCM-‘Real men wear kilts’.. The anecdotal evidence that wearing a Scottish kilt has influence on reproductive potential: how much is true?
Source Study: ReproductiveToxicology-Fit of underwear and male spermatogenesis: A pilot investigation
Leave a Reply