There is widespread concern among parents that diapers are extremely dangerous for boys - they allegedly cause overheating of the genitals, which will lead to the inability to have children in the future. We decided to check whether there is a scientific basis for such fear.

From time to time, alarming headlines appear in the media about the dangers of diapers for the reproductive health of babies: “Are diapers dangerous? British scientists believe it's time to return to gauze."Channel One"), "Ryazan pediatricians: What diseases will your child get if you keep him in diapers?" ("Komsomolskaya Pravda"), "French experts: baby diapers can cause infertility in the future" ("Rambler News"), "The generation that grew up in diapers is increasingly suffering from infertility today - urologist" ("365 Info"). Diaper opponents pay attention to the fact that “over the past 25 years in Europe the number of men suffering from infertility has increased. If you consider that diapers have been used there since the late 60s, the connection becomes obvious.” The authors of some materials go further in their reasoning and think diapers are almost a weapon of genocide: “The main flow of diapers to Russia comes from abroad. <…> Isn’t the supply of our country with baby diapers a well-thought-out and disguised move by foreign intelligence services to undermine the demographics in Russia? The version is absurd at first glance, but against the backdrop of the interest shown by some foreign intelligence services in collecting genetic material from Russians, it looks quite convincing.”

The diaper, or rather, a waterproof cover with a cotton layer absorbing secretions, was invented in 1946 by American Marion Donovan, who was tired of endlessly washing and drying her child's wet clothes and bedding. She used a shower curtain for her very first cover and then discovered that parachute nylon was more waterproof but still breathable. The inventor patented her new product, but large companies did not consider the project commercially viable. It was not the mother who brought diapers to the masses - it was the grandfather of three grandchildren who did it. Procter & Gamble chemist Victor Mills, like Marion Donovan, was tired of washing and drying diapers, so he decided create disposable diapers. It is to him that we owe the name Pampers (from the English verb to pamper - “to cherish”, “to pamper”). Moreover, the problem of heating the baby’s skin when wearing a diaper got up as part of the first experiment that Mills conducted in the late spring of 1958 in Dallas (the thermometer there rarely rises during these months) goes down below +25 °C). Neither parents nor children liked the new product, but the inventor realized his mistake in time and, having slightly modified the design, transferred testing to the cooler state of New York. Parents were impressed by the convenience and comfort of the new invention, and Procter & Gamble launched mass production of diapers.

In 2000, a group of German scientists from Kiel University. Christian Albrecht spent study to examine how scrotal temperature changes in a disposable diaper. The experiment involved 48 boys under the age of four and a half years. Miniature thermometers were placed directly into the diaper and measured the temperature of the scrotum at intervals of 30 seconds. within 24 hours. It turned out that on average the temperature under a disposable diaper was 0.6–1.1 °C higher than on the control day, when the child did not wear a diaper, but was wrapped in a cotton diaper or wearing cotton clothes. It was within the framework of this study that scientists suggested that such an increase in temperature is one of the reasons for the increase in male infertility.

High ambient temperatures can indeed lead to a deterioration in the quality of sperm - there are fewer sperm in it and they are less mobile. Optimal testicular temperature for spermatogenesis amounts to +34 °C, overheating leads to the death of sperm precursor cells and makes a man temporarily infertile. IN experiments In mice, whose reproductive system is similar to humans, immersing the hind end of a male's body in water at +43°C for 15 minutes killed most of the progenitor cells and made the rodent sterile for a while.

It is on this effect founded the ancient Japanese method of male contraception “samurai egg” - a man who did not want to have offspring took hot baths every day for a month (the water temperature should be approximately +45 ° C). A 2017 meta-analysis of existing studies showedthat the thermal contraceptive method works even with small (1–2 °C) long-term increases in scrotal temperature, and the Pearl index (an assessment of the effectiveness of contraception, calculated as the number of unplanned conceptions within one year in 100 couples using one method) was 0.8. For comparisons, the Pearl index for interrupted intercourse is from 4 to 20 points, for the male condom - from 2 to 13, and for combined oral contraceptives - from 0.3 to 7 (the first number is with ideal compliance with the rules, the second - with typical compliance). At the same time, the method of thermal contraception is completely reversible — 100% of volunteers three months after stopping the heating of the scrotum demonstrated the same quality and quantity of sperm as before the experiment. That is, even if the testicles in diapers overheat so much as to make a person sterile, this is a completely reversible process and fertility returns to normal three months after the cessation of excess temperatures.

However, a much more significant argument against the myth of critical overheating leading to infertility is not that thermal sterilization is a reversible process. At the age when a child wears a diaper, his reproductive system has not yet matured - the seminiferous tubules, through which sperm is released into the vas deferens in men, are only cellular cords that do not have a lumen, Leydig cells, responsible for the production of testosterone, also not active, and without adequate levels of testosterone and other hormones that begin to be produced during puberty, the testicles do not produce sperm. Diapers cannot affect the process of spermatogenesis in a child simply because the process itself does not exist at this age.

Moreover, as shown study 2002, diapers increase the temperature of the scrotum no more than reusable diapers with inserted layers of gauze, as well as warm pants or blankets. Therefore, diapers do not create any additional risk of infertility if you do not wear them constantly in adulthood. Instead, on the ability of men to have children provides influenced by a number of other factors. Besides diseases, risk of infertility increases smoking, drinking alcohol, being overweight and having a sedentary lifestyle.

Cover image: Wallpaper flare