I'd love to know your opinion of doing TBM w/ a divacup for TTC a girl?
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I'd love to know your opinion of doing TBM w/ a divacup for TTC a girl?
I am not sure how I missed this but I did. Sorry for the late response. This is what I now know about sperm-
Sperm cells in the testis are pretty quiet . . . they don't seem very interested in swimming. Human spermatozoa are completely still in the male reproductive system, which is an acidic environment, and that an as-yet-unidentified proton pump keeps the proton levels even higher inside the cell. This makes the internal environment, with a pH of 6.0, more than 1,000 times more acidic than the female reproductive tract, which has a pH of 7.4.
However, after they are ejaculated into the female reproductive tract they become activated and get with the program. We already knew that the sperm cells need to raise their pH in order to kick into their swimming mode . . . but we didn't know how that is actually done.
In an article in the journal Cell, researchers report that they have the answer . . . one-way proton (H+) channels called Hv1 that open when sperm enter the female reproductive tract. Increasing the intracellular pH triggers the influx of calcium ions, which in turn activate the sperm flagellum. And they're off!
The increase in intracellular sperm pH also enables the sperm's acrosome to become activated and get ready to do its job, too.
"We know the Hv1 channel, when opened, can allow protons to exit, and activates a cascade of biochemical reactions that cause the spermatozoa to move, mature and prepare to fertilize the egg," he said. "In order to activate sperm cells, this ion channel must be activated."
So, what that means is when sperm are exposed to an alkaline environment or substance, they activate and basically start swimming. It is believed that there is atleast a second activation that takes place somewhere in the fallopian tubes too.
Sperm can live outside the body for about an hour. So, if you do the diva cup thing, add the lime, you are attempting to keep the semen pH low(which is alkaline by default to protect the sperm from the vagina's acidic environement) and not have your sperm activate yet or atleast slow them down after they come out of DH(sperm are stored at a pH of 6- semen is a higher pH). I assume you do this to try and kill the Y sperm since they do not live as long and it is said that they do better in acidic environments in hopes that the X hang on and end up being the one to make it to the egg.
Spermatozoa are actively transported from the vagina via the cervical canal and the uterine cavity to the ampulla of the oviducts, where fertilization occurs. In the human vagina, the ejaculated semen is deposited near the external cervical opening where the environment is very acidic due to lactic acid and thus hostile to spermatozoa (Harper 1988). The alkaline pH of the ejaculate protects spermatozoa in this acidic environment (Speroff et al. 1994). This protection is, however, temporal, and most spermatozoa only remain motile in the vagina for a few hours (Fordney-Settlage 1981, Speroff et al. 1994). The spermatozoa are transported into the cervical canal by the pressure alterations in the vagina due to the female orgasm assisted by the normal motility of sperm (Fox et al. 1970, Speroff et al. 1994). During their transit in the female reproductive tract, the spermatozoa are stored in cervical crypts (Harper 1988). The passage of spermatozoa through the cervix is thought to maintain the muscle contractions of the reproductive tract wall and some properties of the spermatozoa. The interactions between sperm and mucus and the motility of spermatozoa during the transport are important, and one cause of infertility is presumably the impaired sperm movement through cervical mucus (Speroff et al. 1994). The change in the composition of cervival mucus at mid-cycle also affects the passage (Fordney-Settlage 1981, Harper 1988, Barratt & Cooke 1991).
The release of spermatozoa from human cervical crypts may continue for several days (Yanagimachi 1994). Motile sperm has been recovered in the uterine cavity up to 24 h after intercourse (Rubinstein et al. 1951, Moyer et al. 1970), occasionally even at 85 h (Harper 1988). The transport of spermatozoa from the cervix to the uterotubal junction is mainly attributable to uterine wall contractions (Yanagimachi 1994). The human endometrium prepares for ovulation by secreting a unique kind of fluid to the uterine lumen. The fluid has a different protein pattern, ionic composition, and volume than at the other stages of the cycle (Casslén & Nilsson 1984, Casslén 1986, Harper 1988). This fluid serves to suspend spermatozoa and to keep them viable during the transport process, and it also contains macrophages that remove dead and nonviable spermatozoa.
So, if in fact, X sperm are able to survive in harsh acidic conditions and you make sure that your CM is acidic or you make it that way through douching(which will also get rid of favorable CM which is helpful for Y) and keep it that way through O, I think you either accomplish what you attempted to do OR you kill everything!
By keeping pH low, or attempting to, you are going against the natural design of fertilization and sperm will not activate in an acidic environment. Some will activate just by being in semen once they leave the man's body, but if they are in that cup before you and you drop the pH, I think they either die or hopefully, all the theories about pH are correct and it helps your cause.
That is MY opinion and Atomic and Viene may believe differently!!
Brilliant answer nuthin!!
If I may just paraphrase to make sure that I and everyone has this right, science indicates that sperm do not activate unless they are in an acceptibly alkaline environment. NO sperm, neither X or Y. That's why CM and semen are alkaline, to help as many sperm as possible survive and make it to the egg. SO, by doing TBM and diva cup, we end up probably killing off (rendering inactive and unable to swim) the majority of the sperm, leaving less (if any) available to make it to the egg. Some probably survive in pockets of higher pH. This fits in with the whole, less sperm = more daughters that we've seen proved true time and time again.
LOL my husband got up in the middle of answering this Q.
This instinctively makes more sense to me than the idea that X and Y sperm, basically identical cells that split from the same cell originally, matured in the same testicles for the same period of time, differentiated only by a tiny snippet of DNA, for some reason "like" drastically different pH levels. And the fact that the whole female reproductive tract is designed to produce copious amounts of alkaline fluids that actually activate sperm and help keep them alive, is somehow a mistake???
I'm not saying low pH doesn't help sway pink, I'm just saying, the reasons (that X and Y sperm behave differently in different pH) don't make sense to me, given the design and function of the human body and the fact that they're basically identical. I could very well be 100% wrong.
I DO think TBM with a Diva cup can sway pink and I wouldn't shy away from giving it a shot, but I wouldn't take anything to dry up my EWCM. It would seem to me that TBM with Diva cup might thin out the troops a lot, and if the pH theories are right, potentially give a leg up to the X sperm. Then, the CM would be present on scene to help the survivors find the egg.
Thank you!
I wrote a bit more about it here.
http://genderdreaming.com/forum/show...gender-swaying