Hi everyone. Today I am going to talk about male birth control. This is an adult topic, but since most of my readers are adults, I think it is okay. More importantly, my mission for this blog is to provide information about health wealth and wisdom so that people can make informed decisions. Recently, doctors at the Martin Luther University in Germany published results of their male birth control study. They studied 320 healthy males between the ages 18 to 45. Every 8 weeks, the men received injections of long acting testosterone and progestin. In low doses, testosterone stimulates sperm production, but in high doses, it actually suppresses it. In my book The Great Testosterone Myth: Honest Facts No Hype, I talk about effects of testosterone. Check it out at Amazon.com.

So high doses of testosterone suppresses sperm production for several weeks and addition of progestin suppresses it even further. The failure rate of this form of birth control was 7.5 percent. In comparison condoms have a failure rate of 12 percent. All female birth control measures (except hysterectomy or tying the tubes) combined  have a failure rate of 9 percent.

The hormones are administered as an injection every 8 weeks. Sperm production returned to normal after stopping the injections, but the subjects did experience depression and other mood disorders and because of these side effects, the study was stopped. Obviously, more work is needed to overcome the neurological side effects. But the results are promising. The alternative for men is a vasectomy.

It should be noted that this form of birth control and many other forms do not protect against sexually transmitted diseases. The best form of birth control is abstinence.