The Jordan Harbinger Show
1254: Justin Houman | Wiggling Out of the Male Fertility Crisis
09 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.
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Just visit jordanharbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today's episode is about something half the population has and the other half has to deal with, male fertility. And before you check out, trust me, this is not just about whether you can populate a small village.
Male fertility is basically a diagnostic report for the rest of your body, your hormones, your cardiovascular health, your metabolic health, even your longevity. Dr. Justin Hooman is a urologist, surgeon, and men's health specialist at Cedars-Sinai, and he's at the forefront of what a lot of experts are calling the male fertility crisis.
Global sperm counts have dropped more than 50% in the last 40 years. And most men have absolutely no idea. It's not just a fertility problem. It is a massive red flag warning sign. Low semen quality is associated. Yeah, I had to get that word out there. Get ready for it. There's a lot more where that came from.
Low semen quality is associated with diabetes, heart disease, testicular cancer, even earlier death. And yes, we're going to talk causation versus correlation, because otherwise this whole episode becomes one giant WebMD panic attack.
We'll get into variocells, one of the most undiagnosed fixable causes of male infertility, the explosion of at-home sperm testing, why AI is suddenly analyzing sperm better than actual humans, the bizarre rise in penis size. Yes, really. And you knew that, folks. I couldn't go a whole week without referencing penises on the show.
We'll also discuss what every man should be doing in his 20s, 30s, 40s, and whether you should be banking sperm now, like you're prepping for the apocalypse. Would you have kids during the apocalypse? Probably not, but you get what I'm saying. We'll also hit hormonal decline, testosterone, porn, erections, dopamine, peptides, PRP, shockwave therapy, Botox for your dick. That's a thing.
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Chapter 2: What is the main topic of the male fertility crisis?
One. OK, that's when you put it like that. Yeah.
But to your point, I do think men are getting married at a later age, therefore they're having kids later. But there's no question about it. We're unhealthier, right? We're less healthy now than we were 20 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago. We're eating more processed foods. We wake up and we're sitting at a desk all day, coming back, watching Netflix all day and rinse and repeat.
That's the whole thing.
Chapter 3: How does male fertility relate to overall health?
It's unhealthy living, really. It's poor food, poor exercise. We're consumed by screens and all of that just ultimately leads to unhealthy life. So I think it's those three things.
Okay. But it's global sperm counts. It's not just Americans. Globally, we're all still hooked on screens and stuff, too. There's more commuting. But it seems like some countries would be less affected by the same stuff as we are, like obesity and all that stuff.
America definitely is more obese. But the world as a whole, it's more processed foods. In order to feed the 7 billion people on Earth, we have to mass produce food.
So processed food is lowering our sperm count, too?
For sure. Really? Yeah.
What's the mechanism behind that?
in simple terms, it's not good for you, right? Processed foods aren't good for you. The more unprocessed natural foods that you have, the better off, not just for your reproductive health, your hormonal health, your overall health, your cardiac health across the board.
You're saying my nanoplastics and my Cheetos is not good for my fertility?
It's good for now. It's a dopamine hit, but after that,
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Chapter 4: What are varicoceles and how do they affect male fertility?
Sure sounds like the wrong direction. Yeah. Can it plateau and this could be the new norm? Yeah, potentially. But I do think to a certain extent we're making it sound a lot worse than it is to make it sound like human race is going to end.
That's good. We need that in the thumbnail for the YouTube version of the show.
Otherwise, people with the intention span of a gnat won't click on this. We need more data. We need good, longer data. I think right now we have some data points. We have to capture this longer term to see where this is actually, if it's real and where the trend is heading.
It sounds though like it's mediumly a fertility problem, but it's more of a canary in the coal mine of men's overall health because I'm no doctor, but I'm going to guess that healthy people have higher sperm counts generally across the board than somebody who's unhealthy. So if we see low sperm count, It's not just probably that one system in the body that's affected.
We're like looking at, I don't know, cardiovascular health is maybe not as good. Maybe there's something we can't measure like your immune system or whatever that is. It's just sperm is easier to count because you can put it in a glass and run it through a machine as opposed to, I don't know, the current state of your heart or your immune system or some other system that's harder to quantify.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, perfectly said. So yeah, exactly. If you have lower sperm counts, you could say that lower sperm counts can mean that overall you're in poor health.
But now we have data, I think it was about a year ago in Sweden, they published something where they said guys who have lower sperm counts, lower sperm counts, there's a number of things, how they sperm look, how they move, the morphology, how they look, their counts, all these things. Ultimately, men who have lower sperm counts can have mortality at a younger age. They die younger.
Okay, this is the correlation versus causation thing, right? It seems more like people who have a bunch of shit wrong with them and die early also have low sperm counts.
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Chapter 5: What are the alternatives to testosterone replacement therapy?
So that's what it is. You could say they're unhealthier, right? Whether it's cardiovascular rise, cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, metabolically, maybe hormonally, they have low testosterone levels. This can impact them long-term. So yeah, it's essentially their overall health. The reproductive health is a snapshot of their overall health.
So if you do have low sperm counts, it's kind of a wake-up call. Hey, fix your overall health picture.
The thing that's crazy about the sperm count thing is the number of my friends who are healthy, upper middle class or higher, have never been schlubby, overweight guys, have never had real serious health problems. This is sneaking up on them, too.
Chapter 6: How can erectile dysfunction signal cardiovascular health issues?
The thing is, they also find out when they're like 40 because they're like, I'm trying to have kids and it's been really tough. And it's like, well, OK, but I don't get it. I'm a surfer and I work out three times a week. I eat right. And I'm 150 pounds and five foot ten, you know, not overweight. What's the deal? And it's like they'll go and get a sperm test.
And you may have had a low sperm count for the last 20 years and you just never knew because nobody tests until there's a problem.
Exactly. And there's no symptom.
Yeah, you can't look at the results of anything on your own, so to speak, and go, that doesn't look right. It happens in a laboratory only.
These days, you could do an at-home semen test. You can. Oh, yeah. There's a handful of companies out there. Huh. You just do it at home.
Let's talk about that because I feel like that's a good idea. How does that work? Do we have to freeze it?
So these companies, they've created a preservative and they're able to measure the decay. But ultimately, once you ejaculate in a cup at home, you mail it in. Based on the algorithm, they're able to measure what your sperm counts are quite accurately. If any guy, whether he's 22 or 42, you want to have a kid, 52, it doesn't even matter.
Doing an at-home test, I don't know, it costs 150, 200 bucks.
Can you recommend a company or two that's doing this?
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Chapter 7: What lifestyle changes can improve hormonal health?
I think there's Daddy, Legacy.
Why are they named creepy things?
And these companies do cryopreservation as well.
Okay, so you can freeze your sperm. Through them. What age should men look at freezing? You know, women freeze their eggs in their 30s if they're doing the career thing or whatever. What age should men do this? Is it like you're 25, do it now because it's all downhill from here or what?
There's obviously no hard and fast rule on this. I'd say that if you're thinking about doing it, just do it. 10 years ago, it was very expensive. There's only a handful of places in each city, these cryobanks. Now you could do these at home, cost a couple hundred bucks per year. It's not bad. It's an insurance policy. The same way you insure your car, your home, rental insurance, same thing.
It's an insurance policy.
Buddy of mine recently became a father as well. He had testicular cancer. And I want to say that then he went and froze a bunch of sperm, had that cancer thing taken care of, survived, obviously. And then like 10, 15 years later was, hey, I'm going to need that parachute that I left over there. And it worked. He had kids. Not everybody has a heads up like, hey, you have testicular cancer.
Sometimes I guess you could get injured or something like that. And it could be too late.
Luckily, you have two testicles.
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Chapter 8: How does diet impact male fertility and hormonal balance?
Look, I love the Oura Ring. It's amazing. They sponsored the show before, but I've been a customer since Gen 1. It's an incredible device, but it's basically a canary in the coal mine. You test something and then you go, I want to dive into this more, not, oh, I'm diagnosing myself with sleep apnea because of what the ring says. It just tells you to get something else tested.
That's all it really does. But that's extremely valuable, especially like you said, for guys that never go to the doctor because I don't know reasons. So can you do something like that for your fertility? Like, is there a workout that improves my fertility or is it just diet?
No, it's more than diet. So I try to keep it simple. What's good for your heart is good for your testicles. It's good for your sperm. So lifestyle is one of them. Within that, I talk about diet, exercise, sleep, and stress. Sure, that makes sense. Right, try to optimize your diet, healthy diet, minimize your processed foods, more unprocessed foods, vegetables, lean proteins.
So exercise-wise, combination of cardio, heavy weightlifting, that's good for your hormonal health. We know you need good testosterone levels within the testicle in order to have good sperm health. Testosterone replacement therapy, that shuts down your testosterone. That shuts down your sperm production as well.
Oh, yeah, I've heard that. Sure. That's what dudes on steroids, the joke is always like the testicles are little tiny rocks and don't work.
Yeah. Exactly. So sleep, get seven hours of sleep a night. That's good for hormone health and stress. It's good for your testosterone levels if you're minimizing your stress. The other thing is, like we talked about, the varicoceles, right? Can you optimize your sperm health?
Yeah, you have to do a physical exam, see a reproductive urologist, they'll do an exam, make sure everything's okay down there. If you have, we could correct those. The earlier you correct those, the better off you are. There's genetic aspect to sperm health. There's not much you can do from a genetic standpoint. And then supplements is something a lot of guys talk about.
So there's certain supplements within the fertility category that can help. Coenzyme Q10, that's a great one.
Oh, really? Just CoQ10?
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