Ladies, there’s no need to ask your men to become monks when you want to become pregnant. Smoking, drinking alcohol or using drugs might not be that good for your health, but it when it comes to semen quality, these lifestyle choices seem to have little influence.
British researchers analyzed the lifestyles of 2.250 men, of which 950 had poor sperm quality (low numbers of swimming sperm). The findings showed that the number of mobile sperm between the patients who didn’t smoked versus those who smoked 20 cigarettes a day was almost the same. Furthermore there was “little evidence” that recreational drug use, a high BMI or excessive alcohol consumption affected sperm quality.
The study implies that lifestyle advices given to tackle men fertility may be futile. “This potentially overturns much of the current advice given to men about how they might improve their fertility and suggests that many common lifestyle risks may not be as important as we previously thought,” says study leader Andrew Povey, from the University of Manchester.
Although the researchers found out that lifestyle does not affect the mobility of sperm, it could still be possible that it may influence other factors that determine the quality of the sperm, such as the size or the shape of the sperm.
Source: BBC
Photo: Max Mayorov/Flickr
Povey, A.C., Clyma, J.A., McNamee, R., Moore, H.D., Baillie, H., Pacey, A.A., & Cherry, N.M. (2012). Modifiable and non-modifiable risk
factors for poor semen quality: a case-referent study Human Reproduction : doi:10.1093/humrep/des183
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