Turek On Men's Health » birth control pills

Timing (And Position) Are Everything

Paul Turek, MD — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:00:39 +0000

Does timing and position matter for sex like it does for surfing?

Missionary? Doggie? Cowgirl? Kneeling Lotus? Quarter moon? Full moon? No moon? Is there really a best lovemaking time or position to have a girl or boy?

History of Designing Sex for a Boy or Girl

Methods for determining baby gender are ancient, even prehistoric, and range from astrological, to dietary to positional. One of the earliest references to this concept is the Chinese Birth Gender Chart, said to have been discovered in a tomb near Beijing for where it lay for 700 years. It supposedly now resides in the Institute of Science in Beijing. It claims to predict the sex of the child from the month of conception and the age of the mother.

It has also been said the many myths about sex position and timing determining baby gender resulted from the mad rush of lovemaking that followed the end of the World Wars and the return home of soldiers. I’m sure this influx of war torn yet triumphant, and testosterone laden yet depraved men gave new meaning to the term “Honey, I’m home!” for many mid-century modern couples.

The Lovemaking Myths

Here are the most common myths regarding sexual position and timing to help get that boy or girl. Sorry, no pictures. I hear these from patients all the time, as they look at me bright eyed, with heads nodding, searching for my blessing.

Eat meat and salty food to get a boy.
Splurge on desserts to get a girl.
Both partners eat lots of fish and vegetables for a girl.
Make love standing or doggy style and during a quarter moon or at night for a son.
Use the missionary or cowgirl position and during a full moon for a daughter.
The Shettle method suggests having sex as close to ovulation as possible, for a boy, as boy sperm are less robust than girl sperm. Do the opposite for a girl.
If the male partner climaxes first, then a boy will be conceived. The opposite is suggested for a girl.

The Lovemaking Truths

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Despite all that you may have heard, there is no real data supporting the idea of a “best” position or time for sex to conceive a boy or girl. In fact, a prospective study of couples starting to conceive was actually published in 1995 in the New England Journal of Medicine that reported no relationship between the timing of intercourse and baby gender. Ah, but they did not study lovemaking position, thus keeping that myth and folklore alive! Come to think of it, that would be an interesting study to do, and one that I imagine would have no trouble enrolling subjects…

The Curse of Women’s Urine

Paul Turek, MD — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 22:21:26 +0000

Estrogens and the manly man.

There must be something in the air… or water. The Bolivian President Evo Morales recently asserted publicly that hormones found in mass-produced foods are “feminizing” men. Speaking about chicken in Bolivia, which he believes are “loaded with feminine hormones,” he suggested that when men eat chicken “they are diverted from their nature as men.” So, is this how metrosexuals came to be?

But wait, the Vatican commented on this issue a year earlier, although they blamed female hormones from birth control pills for the increased estrogens in ground water. Pedro Castellvi, writing in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano in 2009, stated: “we have sufficient data to affirm that one of the reasons for the not insignificant rise in male infertility in the west, is the environmental contamination caused by the pill.” Actually, it’s not the birth control pill itself but the urine from women taking the pill.

In fact, to date, the urine of women taking birth control pills has been blamed for worsening sperm counts in men, the growth of female sex organs in male fish, breast growth in young men and the early onset of puberty in young girls. What next?

Can I add a little balance to this discussion? First of all, exactly what is happening to men in Bolivia such that the President is not happy with them? Are they more civilized and less disruptive? Second, male infertility is not necessarily increasing in the western world; it may even be true that men have lower sperm counts now than a generation ago not because they are less fertile but because women are more fertile. Third, estrogens are found everywhere in the environment including in many plants (phytoestrogens) such as soy and legumes, and are not produced exclusively from the urine of women. Fourth, the intersex conditions that have been reported in many animal species tend to be caused by a very specific exposure at a very specific time point during fetal development and have been linked to pesticides, bisphenol A, dioxins and other environmental contaminants (xenoestrogens). Fifth, did we somehow forget about the worldwide obesity epidemic in humans and the fact that fat converts male hormones to female hormones? Lastly, there is little evidence that substantially increasing a man’s estrogen levels as an adult will dramatically alter anything, except maybe waist size and color preferences. Where the truth lies in all of this is currently unknown, but it is hard for me as a urologist to see how women’s urine could be blamed for so much.