How To
Enhance Your Fertility
(and help to ensure a healthier baby, too)
Sperm from a man's body unites with a woman's egg to create a totally unique and genetically irreplaceable human life. It's an amazing process. Yet most men know very little about what contributes to reproductive health - or conversely, what undermines it. We seldom think about our fertility or the health of our sperm... except perhaps during sexual activity. Yet science tells us we should consider our fertility and be protective of it.
Indeed, there are things we can do to safeguard our reproductive health...and the well-being of our future children. It all starts with being more knowledgeable about our health in general, and about behavioral choices and environmental hazards that can adversely affect our reproductive well-being.
Infertility Isn't Just The "Woman's Problem" Anymore.
It used to be, and not so long ago, that if a couple was unable to conceive, the woman was the "infertile one." Now it is generally recognized within medical circles that the problem lies with the man in 35% of cases (some say a couple's inability to conceive is due to male conditions 40% - 50% of the time).
This is an incredible statistic, when you consider that the average, healthy male releases somewhere between 120 million and 600 million sperm each time he ejaculates, and manufactures an estimated 400,000,000,000 sperm in his lifetime. It would appear that men have it made in the reproductive department, but this is not always the case, and sometimes things go haywire.
The most common reason for infertility in the male is the inability to produce adequate numbers of healthy sperm. Infertility in men may also be caused by problems delivering sperm into the vagina, as occurs in impotence or in disorders affecting ejaculation, including inhibited ejaculation and retrograde ejaculation (when ejaculate is forced backward into the bladder). It may also be caused by failure of the testes to descend into the scrotum, by diseases or severe physical injuries which damage the sperm-producing structures, or by antibodies to the sperm found in either the male or the female.
Obstacles To Fertilization.
A number of problems can prevent fertilization from taking place, and many of these can indeed originate with the male. The major cause of male infertility is an inability to produce enough healthy sperm.
All of the unwanted pregnancies occurring each year in the U.S. might lead you to believe otherwise, but for fertilization to occur, all systems have to be A- OK, on-line, and fully functional.
For example, your sperm must be present in sufficient volume, it must be active, it must not be clumping together, it must be relatively normal in shape and size, and it must not be adversely affected by sperm antibodies either in the man or in the woman. Further, it must be able to penetrate the barrier of the woman's cervical mucus and overcome staggering odds to ever even reach the fallopian tubes and go on to meet the egg.
When the couple can't conceive despite repeated attempts, your doctor may recommend a semen analysis to assess male factors which might be preventing fertilization. Your sperm will be put under the microscope, literally and figuratively.
Delivering The Specimen.
You will be asked to provide a semen sample by masturbating into a clean, large-mouth, glass jar or plastic specimen cup, or by ejaculating into a special condom without spermicide during intercourse with your partner. The important thing is to keep the sample warm (men are often asked to carry the container under their armpits), and get the sample to the laboratory for analysis quickly. Most fertility experts want your semen within an hour, preferably sooner.
What Does A Semen Analysis Analyze?
The complete semen analysis includes:
- Volume of the semen
- Sperm count (the amount of sperm in a certain volume of semen, also known as the sperm concentration or sperm density)
- Sperm size and shape (morphology)
- Sperm motility (percentage of actively moving sperm)
New, computer-assisted sperm analysis may help assess sperm motility more accurately. Using a computer in combination with the microscope, a technician can assess how rapidly sperm move and how straight they swim.
Other factors that infertility specialists look at include the quality of the seminal fluid in which sperm swim, and the sperm's ability to survive in and move through cervical mucus, as well as its ability to penetrate and fertilize an egg.
