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.

You just had your first visit with your infertility doc to talk about a plan.

She rattles off the following:

“you can either do OI or COH and it’s up to you if you want to do an IUI. But I would do an HSG in this cycle before your ART treatment. During the treatment, we will do scans to make sure your ovaries are responding the way we want them to and after we trigger you with HCG we will do your IUI. Then check a UPT 14 days after your IUI. And no need to do BBT or OPK during treatment but some women do. We can also move right to IVF with ICSI. But given your story – don’t recommend PGS for you.”
Got that?
Well if you didn’t, I’m going to break it down for you.

When you do infertility treatments you can do anything from take pills to shots just below your skin. In the “old days” the shots were given in the muscle and very painful. Not so anymore. Sub-q is how we refer to the location where the shots are given now – just below the skin.

Let’s define some terms that you may hear in the infertility clinic:

1. OI = ovulation induction. Usually done with pills such as Clomid or Clomiphene citrate. You may see: “CC” on your paperwork. It all means the same thing. Some docs use Femara which is in a family of medications called aromatase inhibitors. You may see “AI” on your paperwork.

2. COH= controlled ovarian hyperstimulation. This usually refers to taking injectable medications such as the hormones FSH in combination with LH or alone. Read the rest of this entry »