A little talked-about male pre-sexual ritual goes something like this: It's a Saturday night. This guy is meeting with his best girl, down at the River Bottom Jamboree at nine in the evening. But, before deciding on what to wear, the guy wants to make sure that his sperm count is as low as it can be, just in case they decide to go and ?do the deed.? So he immerses himself from the waist down in hot water, eyeing a thermometer as the mercury bubbles to around 116 degrees Fahrenheit. He does this in the hopes of temporarily stopping sperm production. Forty-five excruciating minutes later, he rises up out of the tub, rosy cheeked and temporarily infertile, staving off fatherhood for another night.

Men have already engaged in this simple ritual since the late 5th Century B.C. The Greek physician Hippocrates wrote about the supposed effectiveness of applying heat to the male's genitals to lower male fertility. To this day, many men still try to use this method as a non-medical male birth control method.

Modern science and medicine have made possible the invention of various birth control methods and devices including cervical caps, diaphragms, patches, pills, and sponges. Many of these, however, have been designed for use by women. The hot bath option excluded, men only have two realistic options for preventing unwanted pregnancies. The most popular method is the use of a prophylactic condom. It is relatively convenient since it does not involve the use of a drug. While it helps shield a person from certain sexually transmitted diseases, it is by no means a fail-safe product. Even the condom can accidentally break and cause unwanted pregnancy. But for its simplicity of use and affordability, the condom will continue to be the birth control of choice for most men. Vasectomy is also a choice that is available but is not too popular due to its permanent sterilizing effects and the surgery involved which scares not a few men. Recently, some men in the U.S. began to use an alternative which makes use of hormones that affects a man's testosterone levels. Testosterone levels in the blood determine how much sperm a man will produce. In a healthy male, the testes receives hormonal signals from the pituitary gland which, in turn, causes an increase in sperm production. At certain levels, testosterone causes the pituitary gland to turn off its signal to the testes which causes the sperm count to drop. The result of this cycle is a steady, continuous level of sperm for the man. A hormonal male contraceptive, or a male birth control would work by artificially raising the level of testosterone in the blood, thereby tricking the pituitary gland into thinking that plenty of sperm has been made, causing it to turn off the testes? sperm production. As a result, the number of sperm in the body drops, and the chances of an egg being fertilized after sex are further reduced. With this, there is a cue for researchers on how to further develop a safe male birth control pill. Hormonal male birth control is still being studied for its long-term safety and effectiveness.