Now that it’s January, many of us have made resolutions that include losing weight or being more active. Now that you’ve made this resolution, I want to share with you a recent study done to investigate the effect of different exercise regimens on semen parameters. Infertility docs are used to talking to the female partner about her exercise regimen and how it affects fertility but we now have some evidence to show that men who are very active may have a lower chance of conceiving.
The investigators split the study participants into three groups. Group A trained for approximately 3 sessions of 60 minutes per week. Group B trained for 5 sessions of 90 minutes per week and group C trained for 10 sessions of 120 minutes per week. The researchers found that men in group A did not have altered semen parameters but men in Groups B and C did. The most significant finding was that the shape of the sperm (referred to as morphology) was low in groups B and C.
What does this mean for you?
In order for a sperm to fertilize and egg it needs to be normally shaped. If you have a small amount of sperm that is normally shaped and you do get pregnant, don’t worry. Your offspring will not be abnormally shaped. Once the sperm is inside the egg – the egg doesn’t really remember that the sperm was funny looking.
Now that you have this information, look at your training regimen. If you train for more than 60 minutes per session for 5 or more sessions per week, you may want to consider cutting back. You don’t have to stop, but cutting back may increase your chances of conceiving.
Hope this helps. This study was published in the December edition of, Fertility and Sterility by Vaamonde et al.
