- Sep 13, 2002
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I mean, any other form of birth control has to be better, no?
Heat-based contraception, also known as the thermal method, involves raising the temperature of testicles from their usual 34-35 degrees up to a toasty 36-37 degrees. One way to achieve that is by pushing them back into the inguinal canal and keeping them there for several hours a day. The team from the Toulouse University Hospital also developed a device to do just that – the hilariously named but absolutely real “Toulouse ball lifter”.
Heat-based contraception, also known as the thermal method, involves raising the temperature of testicles from their usual 34-35 degrees up to a toasty 36-37 degrees. One way to achieve that is by pushing them back into the inguinal canal and keeping them there for several hours a day. The team from the Toulouse University Hospital also developed a device to do just that – the hilariously named but absolutely real “Toulouse ball lifter”.
The ball lifter is a pretty simple tool: a tight pair of underwear with a hole at crotch height. You slide your penis and scrotum through it, so that your balls are pushed back into your body, where they need to stay for 15 hours a day. At that temperature, their ability to produce sperm is inhibited, and after three months – the length of a full sperm regeneration cycle – your sperm count should fall below what is considered fertile. Illustrator Guillaume Lion made a full comic explaining this principle in detail.
