Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here with us too, and
Speaker 1: that makes this Stuff you Should Know. With the snip
Speaker 1: snip addition, snip snip a dish very nice. We're talking
Speaker 1: about getting the snip a k A. A vasectomy a
Speaker 1: k a. A vast otomy if you really want to
Speaker 1: be smart about the whole thing. Um and Chuck, our
Speaker 1: buddy Dave Russ helps us with this. And I have
Speaker 1: to say, Dave is a really big proponent of vasectomies,
Speaker 1: and I get why, but he really is all about vasectomies.
Speaker 1: I suspect he would get a couple if he could. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's funny now that I know about them. It is
Speaker 1: a remarkably basic thing that's being done. And sometimes that's
Speaker 1: sort of the beautiful simplicity of certain medical procedures is
Speaker 1: it's like, just cut that thing there and you're all good.
Speaker 1: There's a problem that's not cut. So it is remarkably easy.
Speaker 1: The recovery time is really fast. It's relatively cheap, even
Speaker 1: if you don't have insurance covering it, which most most
Speaker 1: people don't in the United States, and yet in the
Speaker 1: US and a lot of other countries. Um. The the
Speaker 1: it's really disproportionate the number of men in reproductive age
Speaker 1: who have a vasectomy um compared to the number of
Speaker 1: women who have undergone tubal ligation getting your tubes tied,
Speaker 1: and both are basically equally effective, but getting your tubes
Speaker 1: tied is way more involved. It requires general anesthesia, the
Speaker 1: recovery time is much longer, and it seems to basically
Speaker 1: come down to men just being scared of some guy
Speaker 1: monkeying around their junk with a scalpel um and worrying
Speaker 1: about what the after effects will be. But it turns
Speaker 1: out totally unnecessarily and unfairly. Yeah, I mean, we'll get
Speaker 1: to some of the myths, um and I would say
Speaker 1: it's it's equal parts being scared of those myths and
Speaker 1: quite simply the patriarchy, I mean kind of full stop
Speaker 1: men saying like, uh, you need to take care of
Speaker 1: that on your end. Uh, and and then we can
Speaker 1: start having unprotected sex and the And that's why a
Speaker 1: lot of people frame it as it's a real gift
Speaker 1: that a man can give to his wife or his
Speaker 1: spouse or his sexual partner, you know, the person who's
Speaker 1: monogamously having sex with, Because we should point out vasectomy
Speaker 1: is going to handle pregnancy basically every time. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not going to help with S T I S. So
Speaker 1: if you're running around exposing yourself, the monkey pox of
Speaker 1: vasectomy is not going to help with any of that.
Speaker 1: It's going to just help with the pregnancy partner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I hope that counts as a blanket statement. So
Speaker 1: when we say things like and now you can have,
Speaker 1: you know, all the sex you want without using a condom,
Speaker 1: without fear of getting pregnant, we don't. We don't mean
Speaker 1: like a step right up. What we mean is is
Speaker 1: you know with your monogamous partner you can now live,
Speaker 1: and you know with your monogamous partner you can get
Speaker 1: tested and you can know that that part is safe
Speaker 1: as well. But we are definitely not saying just that
Speaker 1: means you can go around and and spread your seed,
Speaker 1: your your biological material. It was even worse somehow. Oh
Speaker 1: it's terrible, Dave us as well. We'll get to the
Speaker 1: material part. But it's such a gross way to describe
Speaker 1: any thing that comes out of your body. But you
Speaker 1: mentioned the patriarchy. Here's a patriarchal um stat for you.
Speaker 1: Thirty of American women age thirty five to forty four
Speaker 1: have their tubes tied thirty nine percent. Do you want
Speaker 1: to know how many men aged thirty five to forty
Speaker 1: four in America have had a vasectomy. I've got to
Speaker 1: be at least twenty five right percent? Percent? That's it.
Speaker 1: So that means that, um, what more than about three
Speaker 1: times right on the nose, three times more women have
Speaker 1: their tubes side than men undergo vasectomy. And hopefully, like
Speaker 1: as people are hearing about this stuff, um, it becomes
Speaker 1: less scary and maybe more men will be prone to
Speaker 1: do it, because if you're looking to stop having kids
Speaker 1: or never have a kid, this this is a really
Speaker 1: good way to go. It's safe, it's effective, and again
Speaker 1: it's relatively cheap, and the recovery time is like nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of those myths that we mentioned that are not true.
Speaker 1: Or is that the operation is painful, which is not true.
Speaker 1: That it affects sex, that it affects your erection, it
Speaker 1: affects your orgasm and ejaculation, it affects your sex drive
Speaker 1: and testosterone. It means you're not a real man, Like,
Speaker 1: none of those things are true. And if any of
Speaker 1: those dudes were speaking to you, if any of those
Speaker 1: are reasons why you don't want to get a vasectomy,
Speaker 1: then you have no reason to just like that is
Speaker 1: a fact. Yeah, and we'll go into those in more detail.
Speaker 1: But yes, all of those are totally incorrect. Probably everything
Speaker 1: you think or worry about vasectomes is incorrect. That's that's
Speaker 1: a pretty good bet, actually, Yeah. Or if your reason is, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I may want to have kids one day,
Speaker 1: that is a very good reason because as you'll see,
Speaker 1: there is a reversal surgery, but it they definitely haven't
Speaker 1: perfected it. It is expensive, it's more invasive. Um, this
Speaker 1: is something you really need to consider very very strongly
Speaker 1: as a long term life decision. Yeah. Like if you
Speaker 1: were like, oh, it's one more kid, and you're like,
Speaker 1: I regret having this third kid, maybe it is time
Speaker 1: to talk about getting a vasectomy. Or if you're like,
Speaker 1: I think this world is grossly overpopulated, we're treating it terribly.
Speaker 1: I don't want to introduce yet another human into it
Speaker 1: and screwed up even more. Um, that might be a
Speaker 1: good reason. I have a sectomy too, and apparently that's
Speaker 1: an increasing um the reason for gen z and millennials
Speaker 1: getting vasectomies these days. Yeah, Or if you have already
Speaker 1: bore a couple of children and you look at your
Speaker 1: partner and say, hey, dude, I don't want any more kids,
Speaker 1: how about you get a vasectomy, and they give you
Speaker 1: a reason that equates to I want to keep my
Speaker 1: life options open. That's a different conversation. Yeah, then you're
Speaker 1: with the wrong person, right, you know, But no, on
Speaker 1: down the road, I might meet someone else. Right now,
Speaker 1: I guess I should say, Chuck, we've we've been talking
Speaker 1: almost exclusively about like men and women, you know, like
Speaker 1: biological sex um as far as vasectomies go. And I
Speaker 1: actually looked. I was like, is this part of transitioning
Speaker 1: in the trans community? And I saw that probably isn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can imagine like going from transitioning from
Speaker 1: male to female. Um, you might want to get a vasectomy.
Speaker 1: But I saw specifically that the hormone therapy renders that
Speaker 1: like no and void, there's no point in getting one
Speaker 1: from what I saw, right, So that's why we're using
Speaker 1: the terms that we're using in the words we're using
Speaker 1: so um. One of the things about a vasectomy One
Speaker 1: of the reasons why it is so great is because
Speaker 1: it is basically a hundred percent effective at preventing pregnancy.
Speaker 1: And like I said, tubal ligation is is just as effective, um,
Speaker 1: but as far as other stuff that men can do
Speaker 1: to prevent to act as birth control, I mean, like
Speaker 1: vasectomy is far in a way superior to all of them.
Speaker 1: Like you've got coitus interrupt us a k a. The
Speaker 1: pullout method. Yeah, that's only seventy eight percent effective. I
Speaker 1: am too. You can just ask the pullout king if
Speaker 1: that works or not. Hey, get in here, pullout king,
Speaker 1: and then uh, condoms are eight five percent effective. That
Speaker 1: seems high to me too, but I guess actually no,
Speaker 1: and on second thought, it's probably pretty accurate. But even still,
Speaker 1: that's a fifteen percent chance every time you have sex
Speaker 1: that you're going to accidentally impregnate your partner. That's what's
Speaker 1: so great about vasectomy. You have no worries whatsoever because
Speaker 1: there's a whole bunch of steps that we'll talk about
Speaker 1: that say Okay, you're good to go go forth and
Speaker 1: have sex with your partner, that one partner that you're
Speaker 1: monogamous with and is monogamous with you as much as
Speaker 1: you like without a condom for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Anytime you want, just go ahead and do it. Do
Speaker 1: it in a changing room at Target, do it in
Speaker 1: your card at the police station when you get arrested
Speaker 1: for doing then changing room and Target, none of these
Speaker 1: places you should do that. But you could because you
Speaker 1: don't have a condom on you and it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: in that sense. Uh. You mentioned it being relatively cheap.
Speaker 1: Did you say the actual number, which is about a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks? Yes? I did not. Okay, okay, yes you
Speaker 1: did not. That kind of episode, Chuck. A thousand dollars
Speaker 1: is certainly nothing to sneeze at. But um tubal ligation
Speaker 1: is about six times that much. Um. Condoms aren't cheap.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're choosing to have a lot
Speaker 1: of sex and were a lot of condoms and you're
Speaker 1: going to run up a bill there. Uh. And it
Speaker 1: doesn't take super long. It's a twenty minute outpatient surgery,
Speaker 1: very very low risk of complications. Uh. It does not
Speaker 1: require general anesthesia like tubal ligation does. It's just local anesthesia,
Speaker 1: which that right there is like there's your like how
Speaker 1: much do you love me kind of thing? Are you
Speaker 1: going to let me risk dying under general anesthesia comp
Speaker 1: here to your local anesthesia. That's the that's what makes
Speaker 1: that kind of conversation hard when you're like, should you
Speaker 1: get your tubes tied or should I get a vasectomy?
Speaker 1: You know absolutely, uh in recovery time, it's just a
Speaker 1: couple of days later. Um for vasectomy is you're kind
Speaker 1: of doing pretty well, and it takes a few weeks
Speaker 1: or up to a few weeks for recovery for tubal ligation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because tubal ligation is so much more invasive. You know,
Speaker 1: it's it's a much greater surgical procedure. Um. And then
Speaker 1: one other thing that is really important is like, like
Speaker 1: I said, it's considered a gift from the guy to
Speaker 1: his wife because you're saying like, hey, you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about this stuff anymore. You don't have to
Speaker 1: take the pill anymore, you don't have to get an
Speaker 1: I U D, you don't have to get injections. Um,
Speaker 1: you don't have to get your tubes tied. Like I'll
Speaker 1: handle this for both of us, and I'll take one
Speaker 1: for the team. And that that really is like a
Speaker 1: genuine gift that you can give your partner. That I mean,
Speaker 1: like they I imagine they will value you for it
Speaker 1: at the very least to put it in a really
Speaker 1: sta away Sure, no pun intended, No, sadly, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not that sharp today. Well, let's take a break. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna sharpen you up, and we're gonna come back and
Speaker 1: talk about the procedure right after this. All right, so
Speaker 1: we're back. We're talking vasectomes. Keep saying it like it's
Speaker 1: got an F in their vasectomese vasectomies, And the point
Speaker 1: of a vasectomy is to keep your sperm away from
Speaker 1: your semen. Uh. And this is where Dave uses a
Speaker 1: word that just cracks me up. It's that material. Uh.
Speaker 1: He says that semen is all of the material that
Speaker 1: comes out of the penis during ejaculation. For some reason,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It just sounds like you're pulling a
Speaker 1: silk scarf out of a sleep or something. That's that's great,
Speaker 1: but when you add biological in front of it, it
Speaker 1: gets even worse because you're like, for some reason, you
Speaker 1: just imagine it everywhere for as I do at least,
Speaker 1: but sperm and semen are two different things, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: sperm is just one tiny component component of semen and um.
Speaker 1: You could make a really good case that semen exists
Speaker 1: if you're into intelligent design and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: as a vehicle for sperm. But what humans have cleverly
Speaker 1: figured out is you can keep the semen, you can
Speaker 1: get rid of the sperm, and you can do this
Speaker 1: you can spread the biological material all over the place
Speaker 1: without any worry of getting pregnant because all you're doing
Speaker 1: is removing the sperm from entering the semen, and the
Speaker 1: semen comes out like normal. It's just sperm free after
Speaker 1: of a vasectomy, that's right. Uh. It's called a vasectomy,
Speaker 1: by the way, because of the vase the A S
Speaker 1: deference a k a. The sperm duct um that is
Speaker 1: basically the target of this operation. It is a tube
Speaker 1: in the scrotum in the pelvis. It's called the vast deference.
Speaker 1: There are two of them because you have two testes
Speaker 1: and so a vase difference. If you well, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about what you actually do, but it's called a vast
Speaker 1: ectomy because of that, right, And you can remember that
Speaker 1: by saying a vasectomy makes a vast deference in your
Speaker 1: sex life. Very nice those off the cuff. I do
Speaker 1: not have that written down at least so um with
Speaker 1: so with the with the vasectomy, the vast deference is
Speaker 1: just cutting. That's it. The vest difference from each testicle.
Speaker 1: That's that's all there is to it. I mean there's
Speaker 1: a little more to it, but it's really that basic.
Speaker 1: You want to talk about the procedure. Yeah, like I said,
Speaker 1: you've got these two vast deference each one, uh is
Speaker 1: about twelve to eight eighteen inches. But size isn't important
Speaker 1: here from what I've been told. Uh. And they run
Speaker 1: from the base of your test e s up around
Speaker 1: to the back of the bladder where your seminal vesicles are.
Speaker 1: And like you said, their their job is to take
Speaker 1: your sperm mix it in with the rest of your
Speaker 1: semanic material. Which I don't think we said what it was.
Speaker 1: It's fluids from the seminal vessel, fluids from the prostate, uh,
Speaker 1: and from what's called the bulb I had it earlier,
Speaker 1: the bulba erethoral grands. No, I'm afraid not go ahead
Speaker 1: hit me. I think it's bulbo your rethroll. Yes, it
Speaker 1: absolutely is so bad to me, is one of the
Speaker 1: worst words I've ever seen. It looks like what it describes.
Speaker 1: In my imagination, that word looks like it can't you
Speaker 1: can't you just see it. But you put all this
Speaker 1: stuff together, and you've got the biological material that comes
Speaker 1: out of the penis during ejaculation, Like Dave says, right,
Speaker 1: So the vast difference its role is to move sperm
Speaker 1: from the testies too. I think the prostate um to
Speaker 1: deliver this to your um, to your semen. And again,
Speaker 1: when you have a vasectomy, all you're doing is cutting
Speaker 1: the vast difference, so you're removing sperm from the equation um.
Speaker 1: And now I think it's probably time to talk about
Speaker 1: the surgery step by step, right, And I think when
Speaker 1: we do this, most people who don't know about this
Speaker 1: are going to be amazed because it is wham bam,
Speaker 1: thank you, ma'am kind of surgery. Considering what you're doing
Speaker 1: and the effect that it has, the outcome it has,
Speaker 1: it's incredibly simple and fast. Yeah, maybe we should cue
Speaker 1: up Yakety Sacks. That's the perfect Did you ever see
Speaker 1: Dolly Parton at um? Oh? I can't remember what the
Speaker 1: glaston Bury I think festival I did she said, I
Speaker 1: can play yakety sacks backwards and she turns around and
Speaker 1: plays it. Oh my god. Still after all this time,
Speaker 1: she is National Treasure, International, Treasure Global. So what they're
Speaker 1: gonna do is they're gonna numb the area that they're
Speaker 1: going to be working on with local anesthetic on either
Speaker 1: side of the scrowtum. That may be the most harrowing
Speaker 1: part for for people listening to this. H They're gonna
Speaker 1: make two small incisions at the top of the scuretum
Speaker 1: so they have access to uh each vast deference, and
Speaker 1: they're going to I love that, he says. Gently. They're
Speaker 1: going to do gently withdraw part of it through the incision.
Speaker 1: They're gonna snip it, and they're gonna seal it up.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the stitches, sometimes they cauterize it. Uh. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a combination of things. But they're basically just gonna seal
Speaker 1: up that tube and they're gonna close those tiny incisions
Speaker 1: up with stitches or maybe glue even that is it.
Speaker 1: Whatever they have lying around exactly a little sawdust and spit.
Speaker 1: But that's it, man, that is it. And again, yes,
Speaker 1: the guy is cutting into your scrowedum, into your junk um,
Speaker 1: I should say, I mean guy in a gender neutral way.
Speaker 1: You know, who knows who your erologist is. But they
Speaker 1: like they they are cutting into it. They know what
Speaker 1: they're doing. It's really just cutting through a little bit
Speaker 1: of skin that again has been anesthetized locally. And I
Speaker 1: mean that's it. Like this, it's almost like cutting a
Speaker 1: rope and then taking a lighter and burning each end
Speaker 1: so that it doesn't fray any longer. That's pretty much
Speaker 1: analogous to a vasectomy, except the rope is in your
Speaker 1: your scrowed them and they don't use it like a
Speaker 1: big lighter. They probably use something else to cauterize it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then your riding your horse the next day. Actually,
Speaker 1: you probably don't want to be doing that next day.
Speaker 1: You want to wait a week to ride your horse.
Speaker 1: But the point taken, you know. Uh. They're also what's
Speaker 1: called no scalpel vasectomes, which are not completely no scalpel,
Speaker 1: but there are no incisions made in a technical sense.
Speaker 1: They use a this sounds even norse. Actually they use
Speaker 1: a punch tool to punch a small hole in the
Speaker 1: skin of the scrotum, and then they withdraw the section
Speaker 1: of the vast difference that way. Um, you still have
Speaker 1: to use a scalpel to cut the cut the tube,
Speaker 1: but apparently you heal up a little bit faster with
Speaker 1: this method. Yeah, because there's no actual incision. It's just
Speaker 1: a puncture wound basically. So yeah, I mean it's smaller
Speaker 1: surface area to to recover, I guess. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: you're thinking, Josh Chuck or doctor, doctor, well what about
Speaker 1: all that sperm? I got so much sperm? Where is
Speaker 1: it gonna go? And it is gonna build up? And
Speaker 1: that you know that's a problem. Uh, that is not
Speaker 1: what happens. Your body absorbs the sperm. You don't get
Speaker 1: some big, like massive sperm build up. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you about your sperm and where it matures over seventy days.
Speaker 1: And then also it's in the epididymus. And your epididymus
Speaker 1: is eighteen feet long, and it's coiled up in your testies.
Speaker 1: Each testicle has an epididymus that's eighteen ft long if
Speaker 1: you stretched it out, and this is where the sperm
Speaker 1: kind of gathers and grows and and gets ready for action.
Speaker 1: And apparently after your vasectomy and the sperm has nowhere
Speaker 1: to go. It stays in the epididymus, which naturally absorbs
Speaker 1: it back into the bloodstream because if you, you know,
Speaker 1: don't see any action for a while, your sperm can
Speaker 1: get kind of old and your body wants new, fresh
Speaker 1: good sperm to be used, so the old stuff gets
Speaker 1: absorbed anyway happening, Yes exactly. This isn't like some new
Speaker 1: thing that your body has to do. It's just that's
Speaker 1: all it does now is absorbs sperm. It doesn't ejaculate
Speaker 1: it anymore. Right, Um, you mentioned the term bestotomy earlier.
Speaker 1: Technically that's probably what it should be called. Uh ectomy
Speaker 1: is is usually when you are removing something, and you're
Speaker 1: really not removing anything in this So if you want
Speaker 1: to get super technical, you could call it a bestotomy
Speaker 1: and your doctor might just say yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: got you, or they might be like, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to give you a nice valium too, because you impressed
Speaker 1: them so much. There's one other thing about the sperm.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of vasectomy called an open end vasectomy,
Speaker 1: where they just caught or eze them the tube leading
Speaker 1: to your prostate and the tube that's coming right out
Speaker 1: of your testicle is left open. So that the sperm
Speaker 1: actually just does flow out into your scrotum and it
Speaker 1: gets absorbed in there as well. And is it like
Speaker 1: one of those uh spaghetti sprinklers that kids run through
Speaker 1: when you turn it on. No, it's like one of
Speaker 1: those um those like air blow guys that like tire
Speaker 1: stores used to bring in the customers. I think it's
Speaker 1: more like that or either one, because they're both the life. Um, this,
Speaker 1: like we mentioned, takes about twenty minutes, doesn't even have
Speaker 1: to take that long. Sometimes they can get you in
Speaker 1: another and as little as ten minutes you might get
Speaker 1: a little bit of pain meds. But um, and you
Speaker 1: know this is from from Dave sort of telling his
Speaker 1: firsthand that after the first day or so, it's really
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal. But you're gonna be
Speaker 1: resting for twenty four hours you meet chilling out in bed. Basically, Um,
Speaker 1: you want to wear this is pretty funny. Um, you
Speaker 1: want to wear tidy whitey's very tight underwear or a
Speaker 1: jock strap for forty eight hours? Right, Probably the tidy
Speaker 1: whities is preferable. I don't know, jock strap is pretty good. Look,
Speaker 1: you just don't want to think swinging around because you
Speaker 1: have two incisions on your scrotum that have been stitched up,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to, you know, loosen the stitches,
Speaker 1: I think is the point. Yeah, what else you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Cold pack? No, no, no doubt, like actual frozen bag
Speaker 1: of frozen peas could work, um, because it could become inflamed.
Speaker 1: Your body has been insulted and it's going to react
Speaker 1: with inflammation. That helps with it. Um. Again, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have pain, and you probably won't need them after the
Speaker 1: first day. You might need like advil or tail and
Speaker 1: all or whatever. Your regular analgesic is. Um. But like
Speaker 1: we're saying earlier, you can't ride a horse for a week, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: in a couple of days, you can do desk work
Speaker 1: and stuff like that and you're off your feet, but um,
Speaker 1: no sports and and uh no sexual activity for a week.
Speaker 1: So here's the sort of trick is you're gonna still
Speaker 1: have sperm in your system after a vasectomy. Uh. So
Speaker 1: there's a chance if you had unprotected sex with your
Speaker 1: partner right away, uh, that you could get them pregnant. Uh.
Speaker 1: You need to clear the system. So it takes up
Speaker 1: the fifteen to twenty ejaculations to clear the system out.
Speaker 1: So if you want to go back to having sex
Speaker 1: that you know, like literally one week after you have
Speaker 1: had this operation without getting pregnant with your partner, you're
Speaker 1: you know, do the math, You're you're welcome back to
Speaker 1: seven grade. Basically, yes, So like for a good three months,
Speaker 1: they're basically like, you need to really be careful and
Speaker 1: they're going to get you in there um afterward as
Speaker 1: part of this post operative care about you know, anywhere
Speaker 1: from like a month and a half to three months
Speaker 1: later to say, okay, give us a sperm sample and
Speaker 1: we're gonna see if you have any any guys swimming
Speaker 1: around in there, and uh, if you pass, they will
Speaker 1: say you've got no sperm, go forth and have fun um.
Speaker 1: And if you don't pass, they'll say, okay, well we
Speaker 1: need to to you know, keep safe a little longer
Speaker 1: and then come back and give us another sample. And
Speaker 1: they'll keep doing that until there's just no sperm found,
Speaker 1: like zero no sperm, so zero percent sperm, I guess
Speaker 1: is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, am I reading
Speaker 1: this correctly? Though? Because you can have sex seven days later,
Speaker 1: it takes fifteen to twenty ejaculations yet they check you
Speaker 1: out six to twelve weeks later. Yeah, they're saying, like
Speaker 1: you behave as if you did before your vasectomy for
Speaker 1: six to twelve weeks. Like if your wife or your
Speaker 1: partners on the pill, she should probably stay on the
Speaker 1: pill for six to twelve weeks until you get the
Speaker 1: all clear if you use condoms, keep using condoms, and
Speaker 1: during that time when you have sex, there is that
Speaker 1: risk that you will still get pregnant until you get
Speaker 1: that all clear from a sperm test that finds no sperm. Right,
Speaker 1: But is that because they assume it will take six
Speaker 1: to twelve weeks to have those twenty ejaculations. I got you,
Speaker 1: I got you. I don't know, because that does seem
Speaker 1: like a really long time, doesn't it. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: that's why I said, welcome back to seventh grade. If
Speaker 1: you want to knock that out in a week, I'm
Speaker 1: glad you went back and explain that. I thought you
Speaker 1: were what you were saying, like you're worried about getting
Speaker 1: someone pregnant. I can say this in a grown up way.
Speaker 1: Does that mean you can masturbate twenty times in a
Speaker 1: week and clear out your system and you're you'll be good?
Speaker 1: To go or is it really like you really need
Speaker 1: to think about this six weeks later to twelve weeks later.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I would guess if you boasted to
Speaker 1: your urologist that twenty ejaculations is not going to take
Speaker 1: you six weeks, they might say, okay, well, schedule lists
Speaker 1: for three weeks from now or four weeks or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know. I would think, so, yeah, yeah, I would guess,
Speaker 1: so all right, because they have like a wall of
Speaker 1: fame in the office. Right, it's just covered here in
Speaker 1: two days. Um, so yeah, I fifteen to twenty ejaculations
Speaker 1: and ejaculations and ejaculation, right, it doesn't it doesn't have
Speaker 1: to just be through intercourse or coitus, I think, is
Speaker 1: what the kids call it. That is true. How many
Speaker 1: times have we said ejaculation in this episode? More than ten?
Speaker 1: I would say, So you want to take another break
Speaker 1: and then come back and talk about some of the
Speaker 1: risks involved, because there are risks, it's true, but they're
Speaker 1: just fairly small. Yeah, let's get let's do that and
Speaker 1: get back to it. M Okay. So when you cut
Speaker 1: into a scrotum, when you cut a part of an
Speaker 1: internal network of tissues, um and steal it back up
Speaker 1: and called it as it. There are risks UM, even
Speaker 1: though you're not under the risk of general anesthesia. UM,
Speaker 1: you could conceivably get an infection at the incision site.
Speaker 1: UM that you can get blood clots um inside of
Speaker 1: the scrotum, Blood can show up in your semen, your
Speaker 1: scrotum can become bruised. All of these things, at least
Speaker 1: the first few that I mentioned are stuff that you
Speaker 1: probably will get as a result of a vasectomy, but
Speaker 1: they're going to clear up fairly quickly. And again that
Speaker 1: bag of frozen Peace can really help with the inflammation
Speaker 1: the tile and all or advil come and help with
Speaker 1: everything else. There are some some actual possible longer term
Speaker 1: complications that you should be aware of though. Two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a very small percentage I think one to two
Speaker 1: people who have chronic pain after the surgery. UM. And
Speaker 1: these are the people in this category or the part
Speaker 1: of the percentage of people who one day might want
Speaker 1: to get this reverse because of that chronic pain. UH.
Speaker 1: An abnormal cyst called a UH spermato seal, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah, that could develop UH in the coiled
Speaker 1: tube located at the upper part of the testicle UH
Speaker 1: that collects and transports that sperm. But these are, like
Speaker 1: we said, these are down. If you're down in the
Speaker 1: low single percentage points, it's you know, considered very low
Speaker 1: risk UM. And you know, the the upshot of her
Speaker 1: the UM. The upside of it, I should say, is
Speaker 1: that again, UM, you actually will probably experience, at least
Speaker 1: as far as some studies have found, UH, an increase
Speaker 1: in sexual satisfaction. Because cutting your vast difference has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with hormones. That has nothing to do with UM,
Speaker 1: your ability to get an erection, your ability to ejaculate.
Speaker 1: There's another one UM instead. Again, it's just removing sperm
Speaker 1: from the equation. That that's it. That's right. UH. Testosterone,
Speaker 1: don't worry about that. That is produced in the test
Speaker 1: is like the sperm. But there's a different kind of cell.
Speaker 1: It's called the late late egg cell or the lighting cell.
Speaker 1: I like the second one better, let's go with that,
Speaker 1: the lighting cell UM. But it goes it has a
Speaker 1: one way trip. It goes directly from the tests into
Speaker 1: the bloodstream. It does not go through the vast deference.
Speaker 1: There is no impact whatsoever on your testosterone. UH. In
Speaker 1: sex drive and in fact, it may actually increase your
Speaker 1: sexual desire. Um. They've done studies. It had one in
Speaker 1: Germany that said that, uh that if you've had a vasectomy,
Speaker 1: you have a greater or at least they reported greater
Speaker 1: satisfaction than the control with orgasm, with sexual desire, with
Speaker 1: satisfaction of intercourse with erectile function. Spontaneity, that's a big one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of it may just be psychological,
Speaker 1: like all right, um, I'm free, I don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about this anymore, so that that'll probably increase all
Speaker 1: kinds of happiness. Yeah, exactly. I get the impression that
Speaker 1: that is um from this German study from I think
Speaker 1: two thousand and seventeen. Um. They they surveyed both men
Speaker 1: with vasectomies and their partners, uh, and found that the
Speaker 1: partners were like, yeah, actually it's a little more arousing.
Speaker 1: The actual act of sex didn't change for me at all,
Speaker 1: but there's something, there's something going on here, And I
Speaker 1: think I would chalk that up to spontaneity and not
Speaker 1: having to stop to like put on a condom or
Speaker 1: you know, feeling freer because you didn't have to take
Speaker 1: a pill that day. That kind of thing. It wasn't like, doc,
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you. We started doing some crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: Have you ever done it in a target changing? Oh no, no, no,
Speaker 1: don't tell your doctor that. So um, well, we said
Speaker 1: it's you know, a thousand dollars, which is, like you said,
Speaker 1: nothing to sneeze at all. But compared to tubal ligation,
Speaker 1: which is six thousand dollars at least, um, it's much cheaper.
Speaker 1: The thing is, in the United States, insurance companies don't
Speaker 1: have to cover vasectomies. They do have to cover tubal
Speaker 1: ligation procedures. And it's probable that that accounts in addition
Speaker 1: to the patriarchy that you mentioned full stop. Um, in
Speaker 1: addition to that full stop some people just being cheap
Speaker 1: and saying like no, I mean like we can get
Speaker 1: a tubal ligation for like fifty bucks and you know,
Speaker 1: rather than vasectomy for a thousand dollars. And if there's
Speaker 1: any man out there who does not want to get
Speaker 1: a vasectomy, he's going to hammer that point home every
Speaker 1: chance he gets until he went he gets his way. Yeah. Maybe, uh,
Speaker 1: we mentioned people getting wanting these reverse About six percent
Speaker 1: of people who get a vasectomy end up wanting that reversal.
Speaker 1: Like we said, some of those come from the chronic
Speaker 1: pain category, and other people you know, want to have
Speaker 1: kids and decide, oh I've made a great mistake. Um,
Speaker 1: that'll cost you between five and fifteen grand and it'll
Speaker 1: take four to six hours. And even when you do, uh,
Speaker 1: if it's considered you know, quote unquote successful, your pregnancy
Speaker 1: success rate UM is between thirty and moving forward. So
Speaker 1: some people say, just go I v F. Then if
Speaker 1: you want to do that and get that sperm directly
Speaker 1: from the testicles, uh, because as a much better success rate,
Speaker 1: you can do that if you want. That'll still cost
Speaker 1: you a bundalow IVF. It's not cheap, yeah, but it's
Speaker 1: a lot less invasive and permanent than reversing your vasectomy. Right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Um, Remember how we said that vasectomes are
Speaker 1: like effective or something like that, they have like a
Speaker 1: one percent fail your rate. I think we said that
Speaker 1: that failure rate comes very often from something called reconalization.
Speaker 1: Did you see that part? I don't think it's all
Speaker 1: that part. So reconalization is where the vast deference grows
Speaker 1: back together. It creates new tissue that basically go around
Speaker 1: the stitches or the clamps or the cauterization and grows
Speaker 1: new tubes that seek out and connect with the other
Speaker 1: end of the vast difference and reconnect. It's which is
Speaker 1: it just goes to show you that nature finds a way.
Speaker 1: But again, O, man is it? Life almost had it? Um.
Speaker 1: But again this is really really rare. And apparently the
Speaker 1: positioning of the to the separate ends of the vast
Speaker 1: difference has a huge effect on that too, Like you
Speaker 1: don't want to leave them anywhere near each other, you know, Oh,
Speaker 1: I see you over there. And one of the things
Speaker 1: about that reversible vasectomy UM, like apparently that's a holy
Speaker 1: grail in neurology. Uh, And they're looking at ways to
Speaker 1: to basically temporarily UM create a vasectomy. There's stuff called
Speaker 1: reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance. It's a type of
Speaker 1: gel that you can put into the vast deference and
Speaker 1: then it has to be flushed out later on UM
Speaker 1: to remove it, and then all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 1: like your vasectomy was reversed. Yeah. That this falls under
Speaker 1: the same category of like simplicity, Like I imagine they
Speaker 1: were trying to think of an easy way to reverse this,
Speaker 1: and somebody was like, hey, you have any gum, You
Speaker 1: have any chewing gum? Right, we could, we could clog
Speaker 1: up that tube. And that's basically all they're doing. They're
Speaker 1: clogging the tube with a gelled implant, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it makes a lot of sense. Better make sure that
Speaker 1: that clog is pretty tight. Yes, apparently that has a
Speaker 1: failure rate from one Indian study in two thousand nine
Speaker 1: of four percent, where again of vasectomy as one percent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think safety is the concern. They're right, absolutely right.
Speaker 1: So I saw it explained as with a with a
Speaker 1: pill with women UM, the control group in when you're
Speaker 1: figuring out safety is pregnant women and UM pregnancy is
Speaker 1: riskier than the side effects are complications from taking the pill.
Speaker 1: So the pill wins out. It's safer, it's justified, and
Speaker 1: that's how it gets um UM the green light for
Speaker 1: use UM. With a male pill, the control group is
Speaker 1: just healthy men. There's no pregnancy, so the male pill
Speaker 1: has to stop sperm production withoutside effects, like any side effects.
Speaker 1: Because if you go beyond a healthy male um as
Speaker 1: the which is the control group, then all of a
Speaker 1: sudden it's less safe and it probably won't get approved,
Speaker 1: so they're actually, yeah, there actually is. I'll though I
Speaker 1: don't know how hard they're working on a mail pill.
Speaker 1: Probably not so hard, although you never know. Is that funny?
Speaker 1: I'd rather not say. Come on, um, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: finish up with a little bit of talk on eugenics.
Speaker 1: We did an episode many, many years ago about sterilizing addicts,
Speaker 1: specifically uh, which is you go back and listen to
Speaker 1: that episode. It's pretty interesting, probably somewhat outdated at this point,
Speaker 1: but who knows. Yeah, just the use of addicts I
Speaker 1: think is outdated, so but it's still it's a pretty
Speaker 1: interesting episode. But this is a notion that started out
Speaker 1: all the way back in the mid eighteen hundreds. Veterinarians
Speaker 1: started experimenting with dogs, giving dogs vasectomys instead of castrating them,
Speaker 1: and in the eighties started performing performing them on men.
Speaker 1: And of course it didn't take very long for eugenicists
Speaker 1: to get involved and say, hey, this is a great
Speaker 1: thing because we can just essentially nouter crim pinals, we
Speaker 1: can neuter people who are mentally ill, we can neuter
Speaker 1: people who are poor, and that will solve a lot
Speaker 1: of the world's problems. Yeah, and so the eugenics movement
Speaker 1: really took this up. Um. There was a guy named
Speaker 1: Dr Harry Sharp in the United States. He was a
Speaker 1: leading performer of vasectomys among eugenicists, among anybody. I would
Speaker 1: guess he actually performed the first vasectomy for non medical reasons. Um.
Speaker 1: It was on a nineteen year old inmate at a
Speaker 1: reform school in Indiana who had complained of excessive masturbation,
Speaker 1: and so Sharp game a vasectomy and said that he
Speaker 1: quote became more of a sunny disposition, brighter of intellect,
Speaker 1: and ceased to masturbate end quote. And um, he kind
Speaker 1: of went from there within a decade on just a
Speaker 1: tear where anybody who he deemed or the eugenics movement
Speaker 1: deemed undesirable to the gene pool should be should receive
Speaker 1: a vasectomy. Yeah. Alongside him was an American named Albert
Speaker 1: Osner published a book, or I guess at least a
Speaker 1: pamphlet called Surgical Treatment of Habitual Criminals, Uh that advocated for, uh,
Speaker 1: you know exactly what it says, making criminals sterile. Um.
Speaker 1: And it was just sort of a time in the world,
Speaker 1: and especially in the United States where they thought that
Speaker 1: like I said, if you were in an almshouse, if
Speaker 1: you were in an asylum, um, if you were certainly
Speaker 1: if you were in prison, then it was a good
Speaker 1: option to force a vasectomy on somebody. And this happened
Speaker 1: to an alarming degree. I think through the end of
Speaker 1: World War Two they estimated about three hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: thousand UH forced sterilizations without consent. I did not see
Speaker 1: a racial breakdown, but you can bet that it affected
Speaker 1: people of color more than others. It just would make
Speaker 1: sense because that's how it's kind of gone in this country. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. I mean, America was deaf really an
Speaker 1: early proponent leader of eugenics. But if all this sounds,
Speaker 1: you know, ghastly familiar, that whole thread was picked up
Speaker 1: by the Nazis in the early nineteen thirties and they
Speaker 1: sterilized countless people, both um through vasectomys and um through
Speaker 1: tubal ligation. And apparently I didn't realize this. Switzerland had
Speaker 1: early eugenics law, apparently the first eugenics law, and they
Speaker 1: targeted the roma, and the roma could were still subject
Speaker 1: to involuntary vasectomys up until nineteen seventy two in Switzerland,
Speaker 1: isn't that insane? Yeah, that's uh, that's shameful. And by
Speaker 1: the way, when I said it made sense that they
Speaker 1: forced sterilization probably on people of color more you know
Speaker 1: how I meant it? Right? Everyone Sure, it didn't mean
Speaker 1: that made sense in any kind of ethical way. It
Speaker 1: made sense because that's how people of color have been
Speaker 1: treated in this country. I like the person who thought
Speaker 1: that this had to have been their first episode and
Speaker 1: now explained it to that one person. Just want to
Speaker 1: clear that up. Alright, good, everybody knows chuck. So ending
Speaker 1: it on eugenics is kind of a sour note. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about one more old timey thing, um medical procedure.
Speaker 1: It is misguided, but it's not nearly as bad as
Speaker 1: vasectomys for eugenics. Um. There's an Austrian andrew chronologist named
Speaker 1: Eugene Steinuk, and he said, I've got this great idea.
Speaker 1: If I cut just one vast difference, the other one
Speaker 1: will still be able to contribute sperm to the seamen,
Speaker 1: but the severed vest difference will give up on sperm
Speaker 1: and go into overdrive for producing hormones like testosterone, which
Speaker 1: will give men just this huge boost of virility, and
Speaker 1: he started going crazy performing it on everybody who would
Speaker 1: step up. Yeah. Basically like, if you want to increase
Speaker 1: your sex drive, you can have this elective procedure. Uh.
Speaker 1: And people like Sigmund Freud and writer William Yates use
Speaker 1: this uh procedure and under went this procedure to boost
Speaker 1: their sex drive. Yeah. And apparently, um, they were like, well,
Speaker 1: actually testosterone works totally differently and that what you just
Speaker 1: did all these people doesn't work at all. So I
Speaker 1: guess Steinock went retired in disgrace. Um. And if you
Speaker 1: thought that was a pretty fun factoid, prepare for this one, Chuck.
Speaker 1: I think you should take us out with us. Okay. Uh,
Speaker 1: day found a statistic because and who knows that this
Speaker 1: is correlation or not, but there is a statistic because
Speaker 1: you you're supposed to lay around for a couple of days.
Speaker 1: When you're laying around for a couple of days, maybe
Speaker 1: you're reading a book, educating yourself, or maybe you're just
Speaker 1: watching a lot of television. But didn't they find that.
Speaker 1: I think the finding was that the procedure went up
Speaker 1: a lot during March Madness in c double a basketball
Speaker 1: tournament time, so men could have an excused to lay
Speaker 1: around and watch it. Is that right? A thirty percent
Speaker 1: increase in vasectomy procedures in the US during the first
Speaker 1: round of the n c a A A basketball tournament. They
Speaker 1: call it vast madness. I gotta know if that's true.
Speaker 1: If that's why, gotta know? Well, the only way to
Speaker 1: find out, Chuck, is to undergo of a sectomy procedure
Speaker 1: and ask your eurologists during the middle of it, because
Speaker 1: you won't be under general ESTI anesthesia, it'll be local
Speaker 1: mhm uh do you got anything else? I've got nothing else? Okay, well,
Speaker 1: Chuck said he's got nothing else, which means, of course
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener mail. That's right. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is from our buddy Mark Koontz. Mark and Gayl Counts
Speaker 1: are longtime listeners and and real life pals of mind.
Speaker 1: They came to our show in Cleveland, and Gayl is
Speaker 1: a longtime movie crusher. But Mark wrote us an email
Speaker 1: about suicide Awareness Month, which it is right now. Uh.
Speaker 1: And this is a Mark is you know he's out
Speaker 1: there doing like the tough work. Great dude. Uh. September
Speaker 1: is back to school season, guys in Suicide Prevention Month,
Speaker 1: which means you. Suicide prevention is on my mind more
Speaker 1: than usual. As know. I'm a licensed art therapist at
Speaker 1: Clark County Educational Service Center in Springfield, Ohio, helps schools
Speaker 1: meet the mental health needs of thousands of students. Most
Speaker 1: people think of suicide prevention with youth means focusing on
Speaker 1: trauma and handling and handing out hotline information, and of
Speaker 1: course sometimes you do those things. But my favorite suicide
Speaker 1: prevention program and the reason I'm writing is called Sources
Speaker 1: of Strength. That is a youth led suicide prevention program
Speaker 1: that has been used in schools across the U. S
Speaker 1: and Canada and Australia. Sources of Strength are things like
Speaker 1: positive friends, mentors, and mental health. These are some of
Speaker 1: the protective factors that we can rely on when we're
Speaker 1: stressed or to help us get through a crisis. UH
Speaker 1: And for the past year I've been trying to get
Speaker 1: sources of strength and every single one of my county
Speaker 1: schools and with funding and support from the Ohio Suicide
Speaker 1: Prevention Foundation and Prevention First with an exclamation point, schools
Speaker 1: in Ohio can implement sources of Strength at no cost.
Speaker 1: So if your list some thing he just want to
Speaker 1: Grant for like tin Grand or something like that, which
Speaker 1: is genius grant. He's won it before, I think, but
Speaker 1: he says. If you're listening to this and you're in Ohio,
Speaker 1: you can learn by visiting Sources of Strength Ohio dot org.
Speaker 1: Even if you're not in Ohai, you should still visit
Speaker 1: the Sources of Strength dot org website and learn about
Speaker 1: the sources eight protective factors. Also, adults need protective factors too.
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank both of you for always advocating
Speaker 1: for mental health as well as spreading useful and be
Speaker 1: official information to all of us, and for being positive
Speaker 1: people in the world. Your voices mean so much to
Speaker 1: so many. Greatest thanks from your old pal Mark Counts.
Speaker 1: So hey Mark and Gale and your cute pets. I
Speaker 1: appreciate the work you're doing. Yeah, same here at Mark. UM.
Speaker 1: That's magnificent stuff. Thanks for writing in to let everybody know. UM,
Speaker 1: if you want to write in like marketed and just
Speaker 1: basically say I'm a hero without saying I'm a hero,
Speaker 1: we would love to hear from you and tell everybody
Speaker 1: about out that you can wrap it up spanking on
Speaker 1: the bottom and send it off to stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
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