Men who eat unhealthy have worse sperm
You can hardly avoid it: at some point in your life, your surroundings (and sometimes even strangers) start to meddle with the question of whether or not you want children, or they even ask if you have already started trying. Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly clear to many people that asking these kinds of questions really needs to stop because it can be unnecessarily confrontational and is also quite private. For people who have been trying to get pregnant for a while, it can be very difficult to avoid these kinds of questions.
When you decide to try to get pregnant, women usually start by adjusting their diet: no alcohol, getting extra vitamins and minerals from food, taking folic acid, and so on. And yet, for many women, it doesn't happen immediately in a short time. Problems with getting pregnant have multiple causes. A few of those causes are, for example, that endometriosis could play a role, there is an irregular ovulation, or that the egg fails to implant properly in the uterus after fertilization. Strangely enough, it is actually always causes that are thought to lie with the woman that are looked at first, but it now turns out that men have a greater influence on successful fertilization than one might think.
Research has shown that men's lifestyle has a huge impact on the quality of sperm. Even if there are enough sperm cells present, it can be the case that those sperm cells simply do not have the strength to successfully fertilize an egg. Here's how it works: when the sperm cell merges with the egg, it spreads out in order to build healthy DNA. In men who live unhealthily, the sperm appears to be less capable of spreading properly (the fragmentation), making it impossible to build a good DNA strand. There are also missing pieces in this DNA strand, and when pieces of DNA are missing, there is no chance of viability of the fertilized egg, because during cell division that same DNA strand is constantly copied, but important information is missing. This can lead to a miscarriage, even before the woman's bodily functions (besides providing the egg, of course) have come into action. In the Netherlands, a fragmentation test can be done for about 300 euros for men. In Germany, such tests are routinely performed as soon as a medical fertility treatment is started.
It is therefore important that men also immediately adjust their lifestyle when the decision has been made to try. The most important and easiest things to tackle: drink less coffee, drink less or no alcohol, take extra vitamins and minerals, eat less sugar and carbohydrates, and get more healthy fats. For women, it is good to know that it really isn't always her fault; maybe it's just the man who needs to try a bit harder. Also good to know: it takes about 75 days for a sperm cell to mature, so don't be discouraged if the important goal of the lifestyle change is not immediately achieved.
Source: fitforfertility.nl, Image: screenshot Friends
