142: Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Male Infertility & Sperm Storage – with Tom Smith

Pregnancy takes two to tango. Infertility is caused by the man half the time. 

In this episode, we dive into the topic of male infertility, as more couples than ever before in recorded history are struggling to have a child. 

Why is this happening? And what can a guy wanting a child do to ensure his genes get passed down to the next generation? 

Statistics show that when a couple cannot have a child, the male has the infertility issue 50 percent of the time. More men are opening up to this topic as the industry loses its stigma.  

Tom Smith is just the right guy to provide us some answers.  

Tom is the CEO and co-founder of Dadi, a cutting-edge male fertility business disrupting the industry. His entrepreneurial pedigree includes the sale of two software startups, and he began his career as a member of Apple’s first iPhone team. 

This Toronto-native has a lot to say about the sperm bank industry – how it stayed stagnant for forty years, and you will be impressed with how Dadi innovations make the male infertility treatments accessible for men while providing affordable sperm storage.    

Male sperm count and health are often an overlooked angle to infertility. With Dadi, you can get tested from the convenience of your home and obtain your results within 24 hours of returning your sample. 

Please don’t be embarrassed by this topic. Tom understands what you’re going through. If you know a couple struggling with infertility, be sure to send them this episode.  

In this podcast, we cover:

• Why did Tom shift into the male fertility industry and leave the tech industry?
• The factors causing severe drops in male fertility globally
• How Dadi serves men struggling with infertility (business model)
• How to get your sperm count tested (conveniently and comfortably)
• What a guy with a low sperm count can do to raise his fertility
• The latest developments in artificial insemination
• Porn and sex robot influences on male fertility

There is no single factor causing male infertility. Multiple elements are converging:

According to Tom, many factors are working together to decrease men’s sperm counts. 

We know that male fertility counts have been in steady decline over the past 40 years. For example, if you are, say, 33 years old today, when your father was 33 years old, he was likely 50 percent more fertile than you are now. 

Partially to blame for this decline in male fertility are environmental factors like toxins, plastics, and chemicals. 

According to Tom, another significant factor is the general health of the male population. Many men today are living “non-active” lifestyles. Also, our diets are much different today, with all the processing and additives, dyes, and chemicals in the food. 

Then, consider how young people are waiting longer to have children, steadily increasing later and later. This means many couples are ready to have a baby when they are past their peak fertility point.  

What is the mission of Dadi? To “normalize the conversation around reproductive health.” 

Tom shares how his company is strategically creating awareness of the male’s part in infertility. Dadi’s industry innovations are a big reason why this topic is spreading. 

For example, the company offers the Dadi kit, which makes it so much easier for men to provide their sperm samples without the awkwardness of going to a clinic and then escorting them to a smaller room where they get asked to masturbate into a cup. Even though the room is private, that process can still be quite uncomfortable for most men. 

So Dadi moved the process to the home thanks to their revolutionary home kit, delivered right to your door. Once your sample is in the cup provided, you push a button that releases a preservative that keeps your sample in a quality condition while returning to Dadi. 

FedEx returns the kit overnight, and you will then receive your fertility report in 24 hours. Your sample gets stored for free for a year. Storage is super helpful for those men going through chemotherapy. 

Whatever your reasons for wanting to keep your sperm frozen for future usage, you certainly can do that through Dadi for just $99 per year.   

Men should be proactive when it comes to their general health and their fertility in particular. There are factors in your environment that try to steal your dream of having a child. Once you know those factors and what to do about them, you become empowered with knowledge. 

Tune in and hear what Tom Smith has to share. Male infertility shouldn’t be a taboo topic. Your dreams of becoming a dad are still possible. Dadi is offering you a chance to get there. All you have to do is walk through their door by tuning in. 

This podcast could be your first step to becoming a father.  

Episode Resources:
AHP Listeners get $20 off total order with code: BIOPTIMIZERS20  on Dadi Kit 
Dadi on Facebook
Dadi on Instagram
Tom Smith on LinkedIn

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning. Good afternoon. And good evening. It's Wade T. Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast. And today we are going to talk about male fertility and you know, this is an often overlooked aspect of men's health. And the statistics say that approximately one in seven couples are infertile and half of all known infertility can be attributed to the male factor. So we're going to talk about, we have an expert today. That's going to kind of dive into this. It's a topic that I'm very interested in. Just on a longterm projection of birth rates, particularly industrialized countries. We talk about toxins and stuff. I was just listening to some specifics on Brett Weinstein's podcasts, where he was discussing this with his wife. It's a great resource of science and everything, and they were bringing this topic up, but it's something that I see increasingly more and you look back history.

 Wade Lightheart: We see people with 10 kids in the family, and now it's, you know, one or two. And is that all, is that all industrialization? What we're going to find out today because today's guest is Tom Smith, who is the CEO and co-founder of Dadi is an entrepreneur who's includes woops whose work includes growing and selling two software companies. The first in 2014 and the second in 2016, he was a member of Apple's first I phone team. That's pretty cool and interesting that you got into this topic. So most recently he was the co-head of a product of a billion dollar media company, Giphy, and Tom is a board member of canopy and a strategy advisor to Giphy along with being a co-founder of Dadi. Tom is responsible for the growth and development of the organization. Its employees, Tom is a Toronto native. So am I now living in Brooklyn, New York. And he graduated from the London school of economics in 2009, where he received a bachelor of science in managerial economics and strategy. Tom, welcome to the podcast

 Tom Smith: X, Y, Z. Yeah, that was the full bio there. So no, thank you. Thank you so much excited to be here. Okay. First

 Wade Lightheart: Question often, how does a guy working for Apple in the tech industry end up in male fertility?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, so it's, it's a pretty unconventional, I think story to a certain degree and to be clear, I mean, I was straight out of college and I joined the first iPhone T and I was a junior analyst and, you know, had a great time learning some from some, some incredible people. But by no means that I have a huge strategic impact on the roll out of the, the iPhone 

 Wade Lightheart: Around Steve jobs. Did you ever meet him?

 Tom Smith: I did meet him. Yeah. And my, my first desk in Cupertino was about 150 feet from his office. So I had a very privileged kind of start to my career.

 Wade Lightheart: Fremont. You are yelling at you like, like the word legends kind of go or

 Tom Smith: No, no, no, no meetings. So I was, I was spared. I was kind of spare that, that whole experience, but yeah, I mean, you know, it is an unconventional story, but ultimately I think actually what sparked my interest in and really drew me into the industry and space was I think, fairly similar to your story. In a lot of ways where, you know, very suddenly a close friend of mine, I was diagnosed with cancer and it was obviously a shock to the family and to friends and to everyone around them and ultimately learned about the male fertility journey the signs, the technology, the services through that lens, and really just saw an opportunity to take this 40 year old industry that had not modernized through that entire time. And what I mean by that is, you know, there was no advancements and you know, how collection was ultimately done, there was no change to the service structure. The price points were astronomically expensive, and we just saw an opportunity to take some of the modernization that comes from a lot of the other services out in the world today and apply that to this kind of nascent industry. And that's what really sparked it. And that was about four, four and a half years ago. Dadi itself has been live for about two years and a half, two and a half years. And yeah, certainly certainly trying to push the forefront of this space. Yeah. I just had some interviews

 Wade Lightheart: Recently where we were talking about this from the female perspective and, you know, infertility among being, you know, psychologically or socially challenging inside of a relationship when you're trying to have kids or want to have kids, but there's also just the economic costs of, you know, it's like 20,000, 25,000 a shot if you're using in vitro fertilization with Tesla, like a 10% success rate. So you're, you're really, you're, you're playing worse than Vegas odds and at a higher roulette table, I would say, if you go down that road before we get into all that stuff, and I love the fact that you're, you're modernizing the industry. I think that's, if that would be the easy way to do it using kind of your tech background to say, how do we optimize it? So beyond that, like, what's the problem here? Like, are you clear why infertility is happening much more pervasive than it was before? I mean, I have a lot of thoughts about it. I've read some research on the disappearing male and testosterone levels dropping and the highs of estrogens. There's a lot of research in around the variety of toxins inside of industrialized nations contributing to it. It could be obesity issues contributing or highly processed food diets. What is it like what what's, what is a composite of those are, what are the big factors?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, I think like anything in the health space, it's, it's rarely attributed to a single factor, but, but really, you know, multiple different elements that are converging together, you know, there with the kind of renewed focus on the space. And the last couple of years, there's certainly a lot of research happening right now on this subject, but here's what we kind of do know at a high level male fertility counts over the last 40 years have been in steady decline. What that means is, you know, I'm 33 years old when my father was 33 for example, he was very likely 50% more fertile than I am today. So it had, you know, in simple terms, 50%, more sperm in a middle leader of a, of seaman. And, and really, you know, there's certainly a lot of environmental factors. So, you know, toxins and plastics and chemicals are, are kind of the, one of the leading factors.

 Tom Smith: But I think what a lot of it also boils down to is health like a lot of other things in, in this space and, you know, fundamentally, you know, we're, we're living a, you know, a non, a non-active lifestyle, you know, diets body mass index, all of these elements are certainly trending in the wrong direction and what's happening in a lot of cases along with the environmental factors are these issues are compounding with other lifestyle habits and societal habits. You know, one of the cheap ones being that couples are waiting longer and longer to have children. If you look over the last 25 years, the, the, the range in which a first-time couple is having a child just continues to increase. And, you know, one thing that the, the larger market is certainly aware of is the idea of a female biological clock.

 Tom Smith: So we know that women have a absolute cliff starting at medical calls when they're no longer able to procreate on the male side. Really what it is is it's a curve where you're, you kind of reach a typical peak male fertility around the age of 28. And then there's a, again, a steady decline from there. So it's a combination of factors that are compounded together. That's leading to this infertility crisis. You know, you, you set up the beginning of the talk one in seven couples can't get pregnant today. And the, the definition of infertility is actually a couple of trying for a year and being unable to wow. And it is one in seven. So certainly this is a fairly significant and serious matter. And, you know, one of the things that, you know, we certainly are encouraged to continue to push in this space is, you know, most conversations I have, whether it be with customers or partners or investors, is that everyone knows somebody that's had an infertility journey or story whether it's themselves or their siblings, or very close friends. So this is certainly a systemic issue. And we're really trying to a draw awareness on, on the space, but to layer in, you know, accessible services that help to combat this problem. Yeah.

 Wade Lightheart: This is a, I think it's a growing issue for many of the reasons that you've been able to illustrate with your work with Dadiis, is can you kind of break down the elements that you're involving? Are you kind of looking at the factors that are contributing to it? Are you aggregating data? Are you providing resources for people? Can you kind of explain the whole business model of Dadi and perhaps I would, I would think who is it that you're serving and how is it that you've revolutionized kind of how people are approaching this? I guess that's the real question. Yeah.

 Tom Smith: So our mission at Dadi is to normalize the conversation around reproductive health. So chief Lee, we're trying to draw awareness of male factor in fertility. So all, all the, the, the elements we, you know, you just mentioned, and we just mentioned what we do today is we offer the Dadi kit. So that's a service whereby we've taken the in-clinic experience of going into a fertility center or going into a sperm bank, masturbating in a little room, and then having the corresponding testing and storage taking place. And we moved it in, in, in the home experience for collection. So when you order the Dadi kit, it gets delivered to your home and the comfort and security of your own home, you can collect into our cup. We've really tried to innovate in this space and as such, we've designed a really quite a performance kit so that the technical details here is when you collect into the cup that semen needs to be mixed with a preservative to allow it to survive the overnight journey back to our lab.

 Tom Smith: So when you collect, you screw on the lid and you hit a button on the led, which releases a preservative, you place the cup back in the kit. And the kit itself is designed to maintain a specific thermal range regardless of the outdoor environment. And that's important for this firm to survive the journey back to the lab. So within 24 hours of collection and handing to FedEx, you've received a complete fertility report. That report is comparable to what existed in the, in the existing industry. And then we store that deposit for annual, for free for a year. And then there's an annual subscription for $99 a year. The kit itself is $199. The equivalent service, if you went to a sperm bank or a fertility center is 1500 to $2,000, right? So this is an order of magnitude more affordable. And if you think back to what our mission is, is to normalize the conversation and increase accessibility.

 Tom Smith: So price was a huge part of this equation that we worked really, really hard to take a first principles approach on trying to bring that down. And the second was accessibility and that's through being able to do it at home versus multiple visits to a doctor's, et cetera. And I think, you know, a lot of your listeners and I'm sure, you know, you're very well aware on the male side specifically, you know, we don't really have that habit of going to the doctor. And I think many men will find any excuse to not book one of those appointments. So by able, by being able to, to change the entire experience of bringing it in home, you know, we've really expanded the, the overall market of who's getting tested when and where to your question of who's engaging in the service today.

 Tom Smith: It's really men in every single stage of life. So we have individuals that are in their teens. We have individuals that are in their seventies. If you look at teens, for example, I mean, a lot of those cases have to do with health related issues. So oncology and cancer related issues are huge. So similar to kind of the thing that sparked my, my interest in this space and really the idea there is when you are sick with cancer, before you start chemotherapy, you should really get tested and stored so that you're able to, to be able to procreate and, and have that optionality in the future when in many cases that, that won't be possible after chemotherapy on the other end of the spectrum and men in their seventies, that one's a little bit more maybe a science fiction compared to hard science.

 Tom Smith: I mean, I think what's remarkable about what we're actually doing is we're storing a key building block of life and a part of your biology literally little nodes of, of, of, of yourself and, and humans from are being cryogenically stored. And when stored, they can actually survive for 200 years under those cultures that that's a theoretical 200 years because obviously they haven't modeled that the industry is only 40 years old, but certainly 40 years has, has passed that test. And the theoretical limit is 200. Our medium customer is an aging millennial. So someone in their kind of early thirties, late twenties individuals who may or may not be in a relationship and certainly just want to get themselves tested and, and be able to maintain that option into the future. So that's, that's really who we service today. So

 Wade Lightheart: I guess there's a couple levels to this too, because you're talking about testing for men who might not be in a relationship as well. Cause I think automatically one of the, I think the male psychological components is to not even consider the fact that they might be infertile, even though they are planning to have kids, maybe they're going through their work career or their dating career, whatever. And haven't quite lock things down because in a lot of cases, I think in today's world is much more complicated as far as economics. If you look at typically, you know, getting a home, starting a family, all these things have been delayed extensively in industrialized nations. And for a lot of millennials, for example, home ownership is pretty much off the table for them. And one of the big social issues that we are certainly facing today how does a guy like, so I, I I'm fascinated with the testing side of things because this is, I think that realistically, if, if the average male's sperm count is down 50% from our ancestors at any given age, our likelihood of impregnating a female, when we do get to that situation is going to be significantly lower.

 Wade Lightheart: And it would be reasonable to assume that, Hey, maybe I should get checked to see where I'm at, or at least hit myself in a more peak state for that other peer time. Is that part of the, as part of the education that you're offering as well, like to get people aware of this as guys can in particular?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, no, I mean, you hit the nail on the head there. I mean, fundamentally or give a great example, take, take myself, you know, when I turned 30 I was quite interested in going to the doctor and I hadn't been for years. And when I went, I said, you know, give, give, run the gambit. I want to know everything, you know, about my current positioning. And, you know, one of the things that was never brought up after that gambit of testing was my fertility. You know, it would probably shock many of your listeners to find out that you know, infertility is impacted one in 10 men, natural. So we have individuals that, you know, complete a data kit and send it into us. And ultimately we look under the microscope and there's no sperm. The ejaculatory looks totally normal. The volume, the viscosity, everything visually looks fine.

 Tom Smith: But when you actually analyze it, there, there's no sperm there. And that 10% number is certainly a spectrum. So that would be the extreme end. And then there's, there's kind of a bridge towards normalcy, but to your point, normalcy has, has changed, you know, the, the who in 2010 released their fifth edition for the kind of markers of male fertility and, and what they perceive to be the 50th percentile or what's normal. And quite honestly, men do not meet that virtual these days. And, you know, I believe there's a concerted effort going on right now to kind of reevaluate those levels. So, you know, certainly the, the subject of male fertility and fertility in general is really misunderstood. You know, at daddy, we spend, you know, considerable amount of resource and time trying to educate customers, you know, we're in the process of, of really building out an educational platform that she'll will further kind of shed a light on this.

 Tom Smith: You know, and then we're, we're going, trying to go beyond that and really trying to be a positive force in the industry more broadly. And we're doing that through research and data as you, as you mentioned. So, you know, we have a really interesting study coming out later on this year with our partnership with one of our medical advisors from John Hopkins where we actually took data, fertility levels, obviously anonymized and, and, you know, customer privacy and protection is at the forefront of, of everything that we do. But we took that data at scale and provided the John Hopkins and they did a fantastic job kind of recalibrating infertility and fertility levels by zip code. And through that, they are beginning to further understand you know, what's impacting this, whether it be pollution or socio economic reasons. And all of that I think is, is, is gonna in the pursuit of trying to contribute to, to re re kind of normalizing and, and helping one understand the real facts and figures between male factor infertility. Mm,

 Wade Lightheart: Well, so then what what has the research shown so far? What are some of the factors, because I guess there's another thing I'm thinking as well off the top of my head is like, okay, let's say I'm a 30 year old guy. I want to get have children one day. I'm thinking, I don't know where I'm at, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through this experimentation. And I find, Oh, I've got lower sperm counts. And I want, are we able to mitigate some factors? Do we know some factors that can change that? Cause I could say, okay, well, I'm going to do this, this and this and a year from now, I might get a better count and things like that. So are you doing that kind of testing as well?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's tricky, right? Anything in the health area really is individual dependent. But, but certainly in many cases there are lifestyle factors that could, that could be helped to, to reverse some of the, these, these elements. So you know, alcohol consumption you know, regular drug use, caffeine consumption, sleep all of these factors have, have a big impact. I mean, I think one of the other things that's important to, to kind of recognize in this space is there's also a lot of variability in your day to day. So, you know, a great example is when I was first kind of talking to different labs and, and looking to partner I was, I was instructed that, you know, if, if for example, I took a five hour plane flight on a given day across country the pressure and the heat that comes from sitting in that seat could have a, an impact on my daily production of sperm that day.

 Tom Smith: If you take that same concept and you kind of apply that more broadly, you know, you look at activities like biking you know, putting a hot laptop directly on your lap. I mean, these are kind of myths that that certainly have been around in society, but in fact, they are fundamentally true. So there are certainly are kind of macro factors and, and some, some micro factors that you can implement in your own life to improve these scores. But you know, more fundamentally weighed, as you mentioned, the first step is really getting tested to establish whether there's a problem or not. And then from there talking to a medical professional to understand what can be done to try to improve that, but that's, that's really

 Speaker 3: Helpful and I'm all about testing and then experimenting and moving forward. Are there any factors we know the, kind of the things that might be driving it down. Is there anything that you guys have been able to conclude

 Wade Lightheart: Leads to increase factors like positive components? Was it exercises or the dietary adjustments? Is it you know, what, what those elements be if you have that data or maybe you don't? Yeah.

 Tom Smith: I mean, I think that that's going to be a little bit more time before we're able to add scale, being able to prove out some of these factors, again, like we're just at the early stages of shining a light on, on this overall industry. But I think one of the other things that's worth mentioning that, that you brought up is, you know, take taking the situation today, that's happening quite often between two couplers. I mean, you mentioned homeownership, right. Hung over ship is really pointing to this idea of economic and fertility, which is what it's known and the kind of academic world where it's really expensive to have a child today. Even if you can do it through natural means you know, and, and the competitiveness is only increasing. So what's happening to a lot of individuals that are, you know, within my generation is they're waiting longer to have a child.

 Tom Smith: And that waiting longer, again, begins to compound these factors together. That's leading to this 15% of couples who aren't able to conceive through natural means. The second factor is finding the right person in, in today's environment, you know, dating is difficult and certainly the move to online, I think, broadens the available let's say inventory or scope of, of who you have access to, but it doesn't necessarily lead to you, you know, finding that right person any sooner. So really the economic and fertility and, and waiting to find a partner is also leading to delays, which is also being combined with these lifestyle factors and environmental factors and causing this larger issue. Well,

 Wade Lightheart: That's insightful. What happens once you've got your sperm stored and how, what, what kind of innovations or technology might be happening around improving fertility? Like what does that artificial insemination, whether that's in vitro or, you know, in vivo all that sort of stuff, can you kind of shed some light on any, if there's any developments or what happens after you have it stored?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, so, you know, starting with the storage, which is really key you know, one of the things that we looked at when validating the male fertility space is, you know, typically what a, what a deposit is collected. So this would be something in, in clinic. What they would do is they would take the volume of that and they, they would fill it into a vial and then put it into an tank. And depending on the amount of volume for a given individual, they might aliquot that, or divide that into one, maybe two vials. You know, to your point, when you look at, you know, IUI or IVF or XC which is the kind of newer form of, of, of in vitro fertilization less sperm is ultimately needed over time. So one of the innovations that we brought on the daddy side is we automatically take every deposit and divide into three vials.

 Tom Smith: Those three vials give every customer an opportunity to have had three chances to fertilize from one single collection, because ultimately when you post all that deposit, so you take it out of that crowd tank, you can't freeze it again. So if you really only have one vile, you know, you're, you're kind of all one and done right then and there. So we focused on trying to innovate on how much or, or your number of opportunities from a single collection. And then again, if you kind of look at the, the ecosystem IVF, the technology is certainly getting better. You know, the 10% number that you kind of quoted before, I believe that relates to IUI, which is, you know, the, kind of the simplest of the three versions of IVF exceed, which is on the other side of the spectrum. I mean, these are, these are all ultimately, you know, reproductive assisted reproductive technologies, but on the other end,

 Wade Lightheart: Just for our listeners. So they know what that, that technical terms. Yes,

 Tom Smith: I'm actually, I have to look it up one moment in truck plight, Clyde [inaudible] sperm injection. So I buy that,

 Wade Lightheart: Oh, that's a super CrowdRiff fragile listic X BLS show, those kind of words. I always like to get what those are just, what does that mean? I think for sure. So

 Tom Smith: Yeah, I mean, the real difference is if you take kind of IVF what it's really about is taking an egg and surrounding it with 50,000 sperm and letting one wiggle into the egg to fertilize it. And typically the fertilization rate is around 35% for, for, for IVF exi is really a, a pretty incredible and new innovative space where ultimately they take one egg and they take one sperm, they immobilize the sperm. In many cases, they chop off the tail and actually stick it directly into the egg to fertilize. And that has roughly a kind of a 60% fertilization rate. So still, you know, there, there there's a lot of work to be done on the technological side to improve that fertilization rate, but certainly we are heading in the right direction, which is really important. And, you know, when you think about, you know, what it is that the daddy's trying to offer us, we're trying to give our customers as many opportunities to to fertilizer as possible. And, you know, we really believe that the entire IVF industry is heading towards XC.

 Wade Lightheart: Is there known things that are causing a drops in sperm that you're absolutely sure of. So for example, I knew a considerable number of people in the bodybuilding industry who were using steroids and, and I would like to separate maybe steroid use versus testosterone replacement. So there's two levels to that game. So steroid use for our listeners or, you know, athletes, and oftentimes those who are concerned about cosmetic ideals will engage in the use of stair anabolic steroids to enhance their physique. And then either for athletic performance, cosmetic reasons, if that's one thing, and then there's testosterone replacement therapy, which is increasing amongst, I know, half a dozen guys in the online internet space who I'm friends with that are, you know, 38, like deviation of three, four years who are on testosterone replacement therapy. Some of them are trying to have kids and are having a difficult time. So do you know any data on that as it cause that's become much more pervasive than it was say 20, 30 years ago?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, absolutely. You know, by no means, am I an expert in this space, but we certainly do know that steroid usage blocks a lot of the receptors and signals from the appropriate hormones. Now, I think one of the things that is at least somewhat positive is it does seem, you know, we we've looked at some research from Mayo clinic at a number of other institutions that are show that when stopping that usage, it does seem to come back. But ultimately, you know, certainly if you're, you're about to begin a cycle and to head into that space, we would certainly recommend that you kind of test and store cause ultimately you don't know what, what is happening. You know, I think that the golden rule here is like in the case of fertility, fertility is really mapped to your health. And it's quite clear that, you know, taking certain drugs and, and steroids and these types of, of activities have an impact on your health. So it's, it would be logical to assume that there would be an impact there. And certainly before you undergo anything like that, especially at a younger age, it would make sense to, to get yourself tested and storage. Well,

 Wade Lightheart: Well, that's one of the separations that you might not know this because it might be something for an endocrinologist, but is the difference between steroid use versus testosterone replacement for people who are determining the different steroid use is using, you know, super physiological over and above dosages to create an anabolic response in the body. And that may have long-term detrimental effects. Short-Term, it's probably not that marginal, particularly with injectables, but with testosterone replacement therapy, that's the use of either creams or injections on a real on a moderate basis in order to get to Stastrom levels to normal, what would be considered normal because we're seeing a real crash here of testosterone levels to give you an example. I think as in the 1970s today, the average 20 a person in their twenties as the testosterone levels of a man in their seventies, in the seventies. Wow. So we're seeing w well, the that's blue light electromagnetic frequencies, whether it's toxins in the diet, we don't know exactly what it is, but the results are quite significant. And what I do know which has been proposed by some people is high levels of blue light stimulation can throw circadian rhythms and also cause high levels of cortisol, which can suppress testosterone levels. Do you guys, are you guys tracking any information or research in regards to the difference between steroid use or testosterone therapy and its impact on fertility? So we're

 Tom Smith: Not you know, there, there certainly has been a little bit of discussion from other groups where, you know, we might partake in certain studies. I think for us, what we really focus on is trying to run a, an optimized service, right. Trying to make sure that that individuals have access to this in all 50 States. I mean, another good example of, of access is, you know, the U S itself actually has a, a fairly well-developed cryo network and footprint, other countries around the world, even in Western Europe have very limited access to these, these types of services in general, but they're still broad squats of the population who don't have access to sperm banks or cryo centers. And, you know, certainly we, we operate on the FedEx network. So I believe it's 98% of the country is ultimately covered. And we do have customers from every single state as a result. So we, we don't specifically have, have any kind of active projects in testosterone or, or in, in steroid usage, but we certainly know that it's an impact. And we certainly hear from customers that who are thinking about engaging in these services speak to us first. Okay, great. 

 Wade Lightheart: So what do you anticipate is coming down the road for daddy and what you're going. So what's the future envision of the companies, and obviously you're a convenience factor. And then also you have some data aggregation factor that I think that's going to be very superior just out of convenience and cost effectiveness. What do you anticipate is going to happen over the next five to 10 years considering the challenge that's prison that you guys are feeling?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, so, I mean, I think for us, you know, we're, we really pioneered this direct to consumer experience for nail fertility. You know, what's beginning to happen now is we're starting to partner with more and more larger organizations. So this is both on the medical side. So hospitals and fertility clinics themselves who see the benefits of having a service like ours be completed you know, COVID certainly helped to accelerate a lot of these behaviors. You know, the idea of going into a clinic and sitting around with a bunch of people and then going into another smaller room is a bit of a nightmare increasingly, so during COVID. So we certainly see a further kind of decentralization of sperm testing and storage, and daddy wants to be in plans to be on the forefront of that. I think the other thing that we see is, you know, we think this infertility space, you know, measuring the kind of tens of billions today, domestically, you know, has an opportunity to grow significantly that as more and more couples are impacting and the technology gets better and the need continues to increase.

 Tom Smith: So as a, as an organization, we're really a collection of kind of product service operators. I know we see opportunities on the female side that are, that are largely not tackled and, and kind of poorly serviced today. When we also see opportunities on the IVF side, on the deep kind of technological level. So, you know, for us, we're at the start of this again, two and a half years into this journey, but we certainly have a longterm thinking approach to how we want to tackle this space. And, you know, we call it the fertility stacks. So the different layers of services that are involved here and, you know, we're starting at the bottom, but we see opportunities to kind of reinvent and bring the kind of product expertise and the modernization and the price and accessibility to many more aspects of the fertility space. Yeah. One of the, kind

 Speaker 3: Of go into a fun direction here, cause my brain always kind of extrapolates of what do you anticipate that we will enter into an age in the future where we get into the situation of like thoroughbreds. So I grew up on a farm and my dad worked in a horse farm and then they were using mechanical insemination to stud out various horses. And then I'm thinking, well,

 Wade Lightheart: What would a guy, what would like Elon Musk's

 Speaker 3: Sperm be worth to certain groups of individuals who might be in fertile or, you know, what would you know, your favorite scientist or person based on the value or athletic ability or things like that that might be you know, kind of a weird thing where people are actually selling off their value. Because

 Wade Lightheart: One of the things that I think is kind of, we're going to do a fun, little thought experiment here on the awesome let's do it, which is one of the things that we see emerging right now from a technology standpoint is number one, the development of robotic sex partners, which is now a new trend. And of course you know, we have pornography which has impacted relationships. And now we're going to go to the next level, which has started, it's very popular in some countries that are experiencing differences between male and female populations. Like you look at China in Japan in particular, which are in dire population collapses. So the common threads right now are, Hey, we're going to have too many people on the planet, but if you actually do the numbers, we're, we're more likely to experience population collapse, particularly because we have a lot of older people, not a lot of younger people and there's, and many of the social programs, which the older population is dependent on would enslave the younger people to this.

 Wade Lightheart: And then we have inflationary aspects and all those kinds of components. But with robotics, I can see a lot of men opting out of the game and like particularly younger males digitally, you know, Hey, you know what, I can buy a robot girl for 15,000 and I can get another one and another one. And it just kind of go through this and, and, and get my sexual needs met and not have the responsibility or the financial responsibility of being in a, in a divorce situation or an economic situation that I can't maintain or manage. Do you anticipate that there will be these kinds of things started to emerge in this new society?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, so, I mean, you know, this is obviously just, just a thought exercise here, but you know, I, I think the, the, the, the one for me is probably porn. You know, porn has certainly changed a lot of behaviors within my, my generation and that those behaviors have certainly had impacts on relationships. You know, I think again, through the result of COVID, I mean, there has been some disturbing statistics that I'm coming out around, you know, how often men are engaging in masturbation and, and viewing pornography if you combined yeah. I mean, again, like, I, I, you know, I don't want to kind of be misquote here, but I believe it was something like and I, I heard this on the Recode podcast from Scott Galloway, but ultimately it was that, you know, men on average or mass spring three times a day and certain demographics as a result of, of COVID.

 Tom Smith: Yeah. And that's up by a significant margin from what existed previously. I think if you combine that with a sex robot, as you're describing, and, you know, the, the, the ability to, you know, obviously not have to engage with another sexual partner elements and technologies like VR and other things that continue to kind of close the walls and, and, and don't promote you know, further engagement between couples and individuals. Yeah. I think there's, there's an opportunity for a real dark future whereby artificial insemination, whether it be IVF or IUI all play a really significant role in, in the kind of procreation story. I mean, Japan is definitely a significantly impacted nation. They actually have the highest infertility levels of, of any developed nation. You combine that with an aging population and a decreasing birth rate it's causing an effect where, you know, these technologies are going to be crucial for, for the ability for that culture and that society to maintain certain levels. So, yeah, another

 Wade Lightheart: Issue coming because of their one child policy, which the tradition was to have more males than females. And so we have a massive part of the Chinese culture that is not going to father children, or have go external to the traditional methodologies or before. So we were seeing already impacts of social engineering, if you will.

 Tom Smith: Yeah, actually I think on the Toronto side, I was listening to an economist article this week. I believe they, they just increased that to three three, three children per family. So they're, they're clearly seeing and modeling out, you know, the direction this is heading and, and trying to promote further behaviors. You know, the real question is how easy is that for a lot of couples to execute? Cause it isn't as, as clear cut as it was back in the den the back of the day. So, you know, these thresholds might even fundamentally not be met. So yeah, there's certainly some, you know, dark skies in, in that regard potentially on the horizon. But I think, you know, to, to kind of bring it back to kind of present day, you know, it's really around gathering information and educating yourself, you know, you said yourself, why don't you, you love to test and you love to kind of understand I'm one of those people as well. I've tried every device. I'm, I'm a kind of a product tester by, by nature. You know, one of the areas that I'm looking deeply into right now is just how to optimize sleep. And I think fundamentally all of these behaviors do lead to hopefully better results on the fertility spectrum, but it really starts with getting tested.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Trying to sleep in New York every time I go there, it's almost in impossible. There's a buzz in that city that makes sleeping. I remember staying at the infamous Chelsea hotel one time and I'm up at three o'clock in the morning and can't sleep for whatever this, the, that hum in New York. And I go downstairs and the lobby is like, no other hotel lobby I've ever seen at three o'clock in the morning and I'm going does anybody sleep around here? I talked to him, the guy just like, because like now I moved here 17 years ago. I haven't slept since

 Speaker 4: And the other guys laugh at all, just kind of

 Wade Lightheart: Agreed with it. And that was the kind of just kind of a common thread of New York. So is, and, and of course when you get into these industrialized areas, are you seeing with the Hopkins research differences between being inside an industrial city versus being in a rural cities? Is that legit or is that total fallacy?

 Tom Smith: The, the, the, one of the results from this study, which will be published later on this summer was, was really around pollution. The, the pollution and those environmental factors did have a correlated effect on one's fertility. So certainly, you know, the opportunity to, to be out in the countryside in a more rural setting didn't seem to have a correlation and an effect. That's

 Wade Lightheart: Very interesting. And is any of those impacts related to fluoride? I know that was brought up recently. So there was there's flooring, which is naturally occurring element and then there's fluoride. And I know there was some CDC information, which was, I thought fantastic. I, I read in Dr. Tenant's book healing is voltage and demonstrated States that use fluoride versus States that don't have dramatically higher obesity levels with the, or it's, it's, it's significant. And there doesn't seem to be any legitimate statistical evidence that supports the use of fluoride in water, even though it's pervasive in many different cultures. Any, if you don't have research on that, I think that would be a good one to check out because I think when fluoride goes through the next level of scrutiny, and I think it starting at the Weinsteins we're talking about on dark horse, I think that could be a culprit because of course it was used for sterilization in world war II by the Nazis. Yeah. So no, no data

 Tom Smith: On that specifically, but no, I'll absolutely mentioned to the team and I think it's a great point. I, again, like I, I heard I, when I work out in the morning, I listened to, to the economist most mornings. And you know, another thing that was talked a lot about was inside air quality for example, and, and its effect on, on health. And again, it wasn't directly related to fertility, fertility, but fundamentally it's all, all connected. So, you know, I think, I think as a result of COVID and some of the funding and research that's been happening, you know, hopefully many more aspects of the way that we live will be examined. And we can only hope that that will then translate into into higher fertility levels or improved fertility levels. But, you know, let's wait and see,

 Wade Lightheart: What are some other services that you are looking at offering here in the future?

 Tom Smith: Yeah, so, you know, we're, we're actually in like kind of heavy development phase. So you know, we are planning on releasing some, some new information on some services in the next couple of months. And I, this was probably the

 Speaker 4: Worst answer to kind of, huh. I understand that

 Wade Lightheart: Some proprietary issues that are involved. So I just thought I'd throw it out there.

 Tom Smith: Yeah, no, I've been, I've been like whenever we get getting run into launch, look, let's, let's definitely let's definitely look to set up a conversation about it. Cause I think we have some, some really cool and interesting things kind of in the works with some, some new experts in some other fields, but we know as an organization we're really focused on, on fertility and infertility, so everything is kind of within that ecosystem. Beautiful.

 Wade Lightheart: Can you, is there any other items that you'd like to share with our audience that we haven't covered in this episode that you think are important that I might've skipped over or missed? Yeah, I think

 Tom Smith: The fundamental kind of message. And, and, you know, I, again, we're a service called Dadi and, you know, we we'd love to engage with anyone who's looking for additional information. We're actually in the process of releasing a, kind of a free ebook on, you know, the, the beginning to end the soup to nuts, if you, if you want to draw that pen out there, but on, on male fertility but I think fundamentally it's, it's really, you know, power comes from education and, and power comes from optionality and, you know, given how underserved the male fertility market is today and how little education information is put out there we'd really invite anyone to you know, engage with the daddy service and at a, at a baseline get tested. Again, we give everyone a year of free storage. So they have an opportunity to decide whether storage is, is right for them. It is free to cancel, so there's no kind of hidden costs in our, in our proposition or offering. But we're really trying to just be a change maker in the space and, and draw that awareness and normalize that conversation. So, you know, it's podcasts like yourself that helps us get the word out there. And we're, you know, excited to talk to anybody who wants to learn more. So please reach out to Tulsa, D a D a D I K I T Dadikit.com and we're happy to provide any permission. That's

 Wade Lightheart: Awesome. And do you have any other resources like social media or things that you're doing that people can kind of follow and learn more, stay up to date as they kind of engage in this process? Yep.

 Tom Smith: So we're on social. So, you know, you can go to our Instagram account, which we're in the process of just relaunching now. So that's at Dadi kit on Insta, but really in the next couple of days. So by the time this airs certainly you know, we will have a brand new educational portal on our website with tons of resource and articles and a number of other factors that are there. And then, you know, as the year progresses, our, our involvement in research, as I mentioned, will continue to increase. You know, we're just at the, at the point now where we've been in business long enough that we've gathered this data. And we've engaging with our, our medical advisors at Stanford and John Hopkins and Walter Reed to kind of put the best information out there. And I think in the coming years, you know, we really hope to be an engine that helps us support the research side, just as much as the service side.

 Wade Lightheart: Well, this is very exciting. I love the fact that you've been able to bring down the cost and the convenience of being able to store. I think that's a great issue. I know I have a number of friends that have gone through that process. And if you can make that an easier transition, I think more men would be supportive or engaged in that process. So congrats on that. And we look forward to hearing regular updates about the aggregation of this data and what we can do for positive impact in regards to reducing the things that are lowering sperm counts and potentially finding out what the things are to increase for sperm council. Thank you, Tom, for joining us today and for all our listeners I hope you enjoyed this podcast. And more importantly for our female listeners and our male listeners. Look, if you're a lady that's looking to getting pregnant, pregnant by your partner, you know, maybe have this conversation, turn them onto this site. It's not a loss of masculinity. Just because you might be suffering from infertility, it's actually an opportunity to engage in the processes and procedures that allow you to you know, make the next generation of kids come forward. And I think that's a great thing.

 Tom Smith: Absolutely. Thank you so much where it's no, it's been great.

 Speaker 4: All right, there, you have it. Then another edition of the

 Wade Lightheart: Podcast. Let me know if you liked it. You can smash the like button, share it and put it out to the people who might be in that situation and not know how to breach the subject. I think this topic is great and we hope you enjoyed it. We'll see you very soon.