How to boost your fertility as a man.

How to improve male fertility?

Each fertility expert gave me the same advice and it was generic, designed to improve chances of any man wanting to have a baby- boosting anyone's chances. In a nutshell, take supplements to boost vital vitamins and improve the flow of blood etc, exercise regularly, cut down caffeine intake and quit alcohol, smoking and protein shakes. Simple. But let's break it down, because I didn't like what I heard and my habits were hard earned and well practiced.

Supplements

My favourite expert wrote down exactly what they wanted me to take, which I'll just list below because I didn't have a problem with that.

1. Vitamin D

2. Zinc

3. Vitamin C

4. Selenium

5. Vitamin E

Combine multiple Vits into single tablets for convenience.

In addition, I did my own research and got the other supps approved by my clinician (I recommend you do this too.)

1. L'arginine

2. Creatine (widely researched within the fitness industry and I was already taking this, which is why I did my own research on it).

Exercise

Men who workout for at least an hour and a half each week have 42% higher sperm concentration, (ivfspecialists.com/blog/does-working-out-impact-male-fertility). Any exercise is better than none, this links with stress and obesity impairing male fertility. The best type of exercise for fertility and testosterone is a mix of HIIT (high intensity interval training) and weight lifting. Worth mentioning here that excessive physical exercise has a negative correlation with fertility. Hitting the right balance can be difficult, see here for a link to workout programme.

Caffeine

The direction I was given here was to limit intake. Aha, I thought, a little give in all the take. Some studies demonstrate that moderate consumption may actually be good for sperm. Apparently, sperm love a caffeine pick-me-up, just like me. Read another article and it will tell you to avoid it. Who knows? Hopefully, the spunk scientists will come to an agreed conclusion one day.

Alcohol

Unfortunately, and there's no easy way of saying this, alcohol is just not compatible with trying for a baby (despite the aphrodisiac effects). Delving deeper, studies have shown that 14 mixed drinks in a week can lower testosterone levels and affect sperm count (the RAF in my day was just a massive drinking club... Ahhhhh, those were the days). This study (bmjopen.bmj.com/content/4/9/e005462) examined 1221 young Danish men, aged 18-28 years, associating semen quality with three measures of alcohol consumption; recent, typical and binging/ English schoolboy drinking. In conclusion, "even modest habitual alcohol consumption of more than 5 units per week had adverse effects on semen quality." To be clear, that's fewer than 2 pints of 5% ABV. And that's the effect it had on Vikings. Damn.

Smoking

Negatively impacts sperm concentration, motility (how sperm swim), shape and causes DNA damage. Smoking is also a risk factor for erectile dysfunction and I quote someone else online here, "which can make getting pregnant a challenge". Yeah, nice one rain man. This guy must be angling for the nobel prize in stating the obvious.

Vaping?

What about vaping? Well, research is still quite immature in this field but here's a pretty good article on it: conceivehealth.com/blog/does-vaping-affect-sperm-and-male-fertility . In it, we learn that nicotine significantly lowers sperm count, motility etc etc and even the weight of the testes. You may look cool but the more you do it, the smaller your balls get. Vaping nicotine free also gets bad press due to the oxidative stress it causes, better to keep away when trying for a baby.

Protein Shakes

“Absolutely ridiculous. Why? Tell me the exact ingredient I'm not allowed and I'll find a shake without it...” I'd heard enough by this point and was willing to argue about anything. If the consultant had told me that I wasn't allowed Wuhan covid-bats I would have challenged them. But shakes were a convenience I wasn't willing to give up, seemed trivial and unnecessary. I succumbed, however, and just ate about 50 chickens a week to make myself feel better. A quick Google search helped me find this fantastic website, mrfertility.co.uk. They provided the answer I didn't want to hear, confirming a "worrying trend" of declining fertility rate in men who use protein shakes. (Anabolic steroids are also bad, I shouldn't have to state this...).

What is not advertised but helps to improve male fertility?

Sperm temperature. Nobody spoke to me about this and that's surprising because its backed by lots of science based evidence. Testicles are on the outside of the body for a reason. Just wearing tight underwear can increase testicle temperature by up to 1 Celsius. I mention snow balls in another article here and I still can't find anything else on the market like them. 2 years on I'm still wearing them for their testosterone boosting benefits and because they just feel good.

Having read this far trying to find an answer, I hope I've at least pointed you in the right direction. At worst, you know a fat, alcoholic smoker who lives exclusively on Mars bars and spends whole days in his hottub, boiling his balls 'cause he can. He also happens to have 19 kids. All I can say is, there's always a manlier fish...