Couples who are having trouble conceiving a child often go to great lengths to get pregnant. But before they try artificial insemination or in-vitro fertilization (IVF), they first must figure out whether the source of the problem lies with the male or female partner. For men who learn that their sperm counts and sperm potency are a source of the problem, zinc and folic acid supplements can seem like the best first step. Zinc is essential for sperm development, Alpha Drive Rx Official and folate, the natural form of folic acid, helps form DNA in the sperm. Over-the-counter nutraceuticals containing these ingredients have been promoted as a natural way to improve sperm formation, sperm counts and mobility. Unfortunately, not only do these supplements appear not to work, they may actually damage sperm DNA. "It's important for men of all ages to eat a healthy diet to maintain fertility, but you don't necessarily need to take something extra to help you achieve better sperm parameters. Sperm counts, mobility and shape were also similar between the two groups.

There was one surprising difference: The sperm of men who took the supplements had a higher proportion of broken DNA. DNA fragmentation, as this is known, has been found to contribute to male infertility. Men taking the zinc and folate supplements experienced more abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and other gastrointestinal symptoms than did men in the placebo group. Zinc and folic acid supplements can be beneficial, just not for fertility. "The take-home message for men is that, for the first time, there is high-quality data that zinc and Alpha Drive Rx Official folic acid do not improve live birth outcomes or semen function," said James M. Hotaling, a co-author of the study and a urologist at the University of Utah specializing in male infertility. The study involved researchers from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine, along with those from the University of Utah. "This large, well-controlled, Alpha Drive Rx randomized study shows us that nutraceuticals like zinc and folic acid really don't improve the chances of a couple getting pregnant and actually can cause side effects that are not beneficial," explained C. Matthew Peterson, a reproductive endocrinologist and one of the study's principal investigators.

As some of you may know, I started out as a radio journalist. And when I discovered the web in around 1996, I knew that, to me, radio and TV were not the dominant news media any longer. Nowhere but on the web was it possible to research and cross-reference from dozens or resources with various origins. You could directly access the press agencies for news without having to read the politically or sensationalist tainted derivates in various outlets. The amazing thing was the humble link. And as the cool kids said back then Cool URIs don’t change. In other words, the web was about retention and accumulation of content. An ever growing library that by its very nature was self-indexing and cross-referencing. And this is what is being actively killed these days. But let’s go back a bit before I start focusing on that problem. Let’s take a peek at the slow decline of the web as a news medium.

The great thing about the web was that everyone could become a publisher and let their voice be heard. Finding places to write and create web pages was easy. But many of them were also short-lived and we learned the hard way when - for example - Geocities shut down, "free" didn’t mean "yours forever online". When "web2.0" became a thing, the publishing model got turned on its head. Instead of writing in an own publication, the idea was to comment and do smaller posts on a topic, linking to resources, or adding a funny image without alternative text. Accumulatively adding to threads, so to say. A bit of a reminder of Bulletin Boards or Forums, but with less focus. At that time I worked on various social media ideas in Yahoo, hitherto one of the main sources for people’s daily news, replacing daily papers. The model of Yahoo and others back then was simple: buy news content, spruce it up a bit and show ads around it.