As a society, I think we are doing better job recognizing that more and more infertility is due to sperm issues. When it comes to getting pregnant, there’s so much more to sperm quality than just “having some.”

Men can have low counts, low motility and a low number of normally shaped sperm (called morphology).

When one of my patients has any of these abnormalities, I check a male hormone panel. This includes: FSH, LH, free and total testosterone, TSH and prolactin levels. I may also recommend genetic testing: Y chromosome microdeletion, Cystic fibrosis mutation screening  and a karyotype.

Depending on the hormone levels (please ask your doctor about your own special situation), I may recommend Clomid.

Yes, Clomid for men. When a man has low testosterone levels, it seems common sense that you would treat that with testosterone. Well, that is the last thing you want to do. When you give a guy testosterone it actually knocks out the sperm and doesn’t improve it. Read the rest of this entry »

A recent Danish study published in American Journal of Epidemiology showed that men who drank more soda (equivalent to 4 sodas per day) had a lower sperm count than men who didn’t drink as much soda  – and when they compared caffeine intake – the difference didn’t seem to be related to caffeine.

This totally makes sense – the guys who were drinking more sodas also ate more fast foods and ate less fruits and vegetables.  Of course their sperm counts are going to be lower – right?

But what if it’s actually something linked to the aluminum cans? Read the rest of this entry »

Infertile men were found to be were found to be 2.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with high-grade prostate cancer compared to fertile men according to a recent study published in this month’s Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Cancer Society.

Don’t jump to any conclusions. The study did NOT show that infertile men were at higher risk of prostate cancer compared with fertile men. What they found is that infertile men Read the rest of this entry »

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.