LISTEN ON

APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY

 

More often than not when we think about fertility, we immediately start thinking about women. Yes, we are the ones who have menstrual cycles and get pregnant and grow babies, but if it wasn’t for male sperm pregnancy would never be possible. And if a couple is struggling to conceive, it’s about an even 50-50 split about whether it is a male or female cause.

 

In this episode, we’re talking about what makes up an individual sperm cell; how the male reproductive system works to maximise chances of fertilising a female egg and we’re also talking about sperm count – how this is actually measured, how it’s changed over the past 100 years and some advice for couples who are trying to conceive with potentially low sperm counts.

 

HERE’S WHAT WE COVER:

• Everything you need to know about sperm and male fertility
• How the male reproductive system works to maximise chances of fertilising a female egg
• The three main components of sperm count (and how it has changed in 100 years)
• How to maximise sperm quality
• Some advice for couples who are trying to conceive with potentially low sperm counts.

 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to episode 45 of The Fertility Co Podcast. I’m your host, Rachel and today we are talking all things sperm and male fertility.

More often than not when we think about fertility, we immediately start thinking about women. Yes, we are the ones who have menstrual cycles and get pregnant and grow babies, but if it wasn’t for male sperm pregnancy would never be possible. And if a couple is struggling to conceive, it’s about an even 50-50 split about whether it is a male or female cause.

In this episode, we’re talking about what makes up an individual sperm cell; how the male reproductive system works to maximise chances of fertilising a female egg and we’re also talking about sperm count – how this is actually measured, how it’s changed over the past 100 years and some advice for couples who are trying to conceive with potentially low sperm counts.

Male vs Female Reproductive Anatomy

For obvious reasons, we’re usually pretty inclined to think that the male and female anatomy could not be more different. But believe it or not there are a few similarities. Women produce eggs in their ovaries, while men produce sperm in their testes. A woman’s egg leaves the ovary and travels into the fallopian tube, while sperm leaves the testes and travels through a tube called the vas deferens before it is ejaculated. And lastly, a woman’s uterus and a man’s prostate, both in about the same location in the body, produce nutrients for the egg and sperm to optimise their quality and keep them thriving.

There is a very good reason why the testes hang outside of the male’s body. The optimal temperature for sperm is about 3 or 4 degrees cooler than normal body temperature, which is why it’s so important not to overheat the boys – more on this later. The scrotum that surround the testes actually will thicken and thin according to the outside temperature, which is why if a male jumps into a cold swimming pool we see shrinkage, because the scrotum actually thickens and pulls the testes back in towards the body. If he was to then have a hot shower, they’ll drop down and hang further away from the body and the scrotum will thin. It’s all about maintaining a consistent temperature in the testes for optimal sperm production.

Sperm Production

Now unlike females, who are born with all the eggs they will ever have, males produce about 100-300 million sperm each day. The entire process of production and maturation of sperm takes about 3 months, which is why I recommend a pre-conception diet and lifestyle plan of at least 3 months before trying to conceive. Because we want his boys to be in the best possible condition right from the beginning of production. So they’re produced in the testes and stored in the epididymis, which is this series of tubes metres and metres long sort of sitting behind the testes in the scrotum, and this is where sperm learn to swim. It takes anywhere from 2 days to 2 weeks for sperm to swim through these tubes and this is where they develop and are then stored. When they are mature and ready to be released at ejaculation, just before ejaculation, the Cowper’s gland releases what we more commonly know as pre-cum or pre-ejaculatory fluid, a clear, slippery fluid that is released before sperm to go ahead and prepare its pathway to the egg. So it helps sperm to survive and neutralises any acidity in the urethra. For some men, and very likely if it’s round two of ejaculation, this fluid can contain live sperm. Which is why the withdrawal method may not be recommended as a method of birth control – more on this in Episode 30 where I break down the effectiveness of withdrawal, among other non-hormonal methods of birth control. So then, at ejaculation, the prostate and seminal vesicles release semen, a fluid full of nutrients that helps sperm to travel and survive.

Now an individual sperm cell is made up of two parts – the head contains the nucleus, so all of the important genetic information that will be passed along to the future embryo after fertilisation, and is surrounded by a thin sac called the acrosome which contains chemical enzymes that help the sperm cell to actually penetrate the egg. It also has a tail, called a flagellum, which allows sperm to swim out of the male reproductive tract, into the female reproductive tract and towards the egg, as well as helping the sperm to wriggle its tail and actually penetrate the egg.

Sperm Survival in the Female Reproductive Tract

How long sperm can survive in the female reproductive tract will depend on where the female is in her menstrual cycle. If she’s in her fertile window around ovulation, and her cervical mucus is thin and slippery and ideal for fertilisation and conception, then sperm can survive for up to 5 days, giving it a good chance of reaching the egg. If she isn’t fertile at the time, then the thick, sticky mucus will not nourish sperm and it can die in the vagina’s acidic environment in a matter of hours.

The jelly-like consistency of semen also helps sperm to survive, purely because it’s consistency helps to stop it leaking straight back out of the vagina after sex. It also contains sugars for instant energy for sperm so it can swim faster and more efficiently to get to the egg. After a couple of hours, this jelly-like consistency tends to melt and then much to our annoyance, it begins to leak out.

Sperm Count

Surprisingly, an ejaculate contains relatively small amounts of sperm. Like I said, males produce anywhere from 100-300 million sperm a day, and the number of sperm per ejaculate, which is about 2-6 mL is 100-500 million sperm. This sounds like a hell of a lot, but actually sperm is only about 5% of the content of ejaculate. The rest is fluid, mainly from the seminal vesicles as well as the prostate gland.

For women who want to avoid pregnancy, it doesn’t matter how many million sperm there are inside a man’s ejaculate, for birth control it’s more about knowing when you are or are not fertile, whether any sperm could survive and whether there’s actually an egg there to be fertilised. If there’s no egg, no matter how many sperm are present, pregnancy isn’t possible.

For women who are trying to conceive, there’s a hell of a lot more to a male’s sperm count that how many sperm are present in ejaculate. A semen analysis is one of the first steps in assessing a couple’s fertility if they are struggling to conceive. It’s far less invasive than female fertility analysis, so this is where we often start. And a semen analysis looks at a couple of things – it tells you what percentage of sperm are of normal shape and size, called morphology, and what percentage are rapidly moving forward and swimming in the right direction, called motility. So it’s these three factors – number of sperm per ejaculate, morphology and motility – that tells us whether a sperm count is normal, low or infertile.

But, just like with women, I think the word infertile is thrown around far too commonly and quite frankly it’s a devastating word to hear. Of course, looking at sperm count absolutely gives a good indication about chances of conception, but to say someone has no chance of fertilising an egg, well it only takes 1 out of that 100-500 million, so unless you’re producing no good quality sperm at all… What ultimately determines male fertility is the number of sperm that have the capacity to fertilise an egg. And like a lot of things, the numbers can vary.

A man’s sperm count would probably be considered normal if an ejaculate contained at least 20 million sperm per ML, and ideally we’d like it to be between 20-200 million. We’d also consider the count normal if the total number of sperm were 250-300 million, but of course we want the percentage of sperm with normal morphology and motility to be as high as possible. If your total number of sperm is above average, but your motility and morphology was very low, then they’re still potentially going to have trouble fertilising an egg. And the problem is that the expected numbers change. One lab may want this result, while another wants another. So just like nutrient levels you check with a blood test, you want to know the actual numbers. Because if your doctor tells you it’s all within normal range, you really want to know if you’re at the lower or higher end of normal. So, the questions to ask here are: Is the count considered normal, low or infertile (again I’d prefer the word sub-fertile over infertile) and to also ask how the lab actually reached this conclusion. Get an explanation rather than just a number figure or a diagnosis. If he does get a less than ideal result, repeat the testing at least one more time over the next couple of weeks. Just like different factors affect our menstrual cycles, different factors affect sperm, it’s totally normal for a single ejaculate to be inaccurate or contain a lower than expected count.

An Alarming Downward Trend

Over the last almost 100 years, the world has seen an alarming decline in sperm count and quality. In fact there was one study from 1940 to 1990 that showed that sperm concentrations fell from an average of 113 million sperm per ML to 66 million. Another study of almost 45,000 men found that from 1973 to 2011, the average sperm concentration fell by up to 60% in Western countries.

Conceiving with a Low Sperm Count

Like I said right at the beginning of this episode, for couples who struggle to conceive, the cause is about 50-50 male and female. So if your partner’s sperm has been tested and the results are not ideal, then that pre-conception preparation window is really recommended to help improve the quality of sperm as much as possible. You can hear my pre-conception advice for males in more detail in Episode 22 – Preparing Your Partner for Pregnancy, but in a nutshell here are some of the key things you’ll want to address:

• Nutrition – of course that’s going to be number one. Diet is everything, and so just like you are likely focusing on including all the key nutrients you need for optimal hormone balance, egg quality and to support a growing baby, he also needs key nutrients to optimise the quality of his sperm. And that previous episode I just mentioned includes all the key nutrients and where to find them in your food, some of the main ones are vitamin A, folate, zinc, vitamins C and E, and omega 3 fatty acids.
• Next, keep the testes cool. They hang outside the body for a reason, and even 1-2 degrees can make a difference to sperm count and quality. Avoid hot tubs and saunas, avoid sitting for long periods of time, either at work or in the car and avoid crossing the legs, cycling can have a huge effect.
• You also want to keep phones and laptops away from the testes. Most men keep their phones in their pockets, and this exposure has been shown to reduce sperm count, motility, morphology and ultimate viability. Avoid unnecessary exposure to this radiation by keeping phones out of pockets and laptops off laps.
• I hope it goes without saying if you’re trying to conceive, but just like the female, the male should also be avoiding smoking and alcohol because of the effect of sperm count and quality.
• Exposure to xenoestrogens, just like female hormones, impacts male hormones and in turn effects sperm quality, especially their motility. Check out Episode 24 for more details here, but chemicals that mimic the sex hormones, including BPA from plastics can have a real effect.
• Finally, exercise, but in moderation. Excessive exercise, which would be considered 2 hours of high intensity 5 days a week, or cycling for more than 5 hours a week, has the potential to reduce sperm quality. So exercise is good, but not too much.

To optimise your chances of conceiving if you know there’s an issue with sperm count or quality, here are two things you can do to maximise your chances of conceiving:

• Your partner should avoid ejaculating for a couple of days leading up to your fertile window, so about 3-5 days before you start to observe fertile quality mucus, but no more than a week.
• Have sex only every second day during your fertile window, to give him time to build up his sperm count, but try as best you can to include ovulation day as one of those days.

Once again, this is why understanding your cycle and being able to identify your fertile window is so damn important when trying to conceive. If you want to know more about identifying when you’re fertile and being confident in knowing when you ovulate, then I do invite you to join me in my free Fertility Masterclass. It’s totally free and when you sign up you’ll get instant access to watch at your leisure. Link is in the shownotes for this episode or you can head straight over to fertilityco.com.au/masterclass.

So that’s all for another episode. I don’t often talk about male fertility but it takes two to make a baby and we need good quality sperm for pregnancy to happen, so it is absolutely worth understanding. And like I said, it’s far less invasive than a lot of fertility testing that women go through, so it’s definitely up there as one of the first things to investigate if your fertility journey isn’t going as planned.

You can get today’s shownotes with everything I talked about in this episode, as well as links to freebies and other related episodes at fertiltyco.com.au/45. Don’t forget you can also join the Fertility Masterclass over on the blog there too.

Now, this is my final episode before I head off on maternity leave. It feels like I’ve only just got into the routine of recording again, and I contemplated doing a full-on binge creation of a chunk of episodes to keep you going while I took a break, but ultimately I decided not to. I want my maternity leave, and especially those precious final weeks before I actually have bub, to be as calm and relaxed and restful as possible so I’m wrapping up everything at once and going completely into my bubble for a little while to prepare for everything as best I can. I honestly don’t know at this stage when I’ll be back with new episodes, I don’t have a plan or a date in mind at all. Hubby tells me I’ll be bored on maternity leave and I won’t be able to help myself but I honestly don’t know how I’ll be feeling so I’m not making any promises or plans I can’t stick to at this stage.

Thank you for listening, thank you to those who have been listening from the very beginning. It’s bye for now and in my absence, please don’t forget that knowledge is power!

When you truly understand your body, you are empowered to make informed decisions and take control of your health!

Until next time.

LINKS & RESOURCES

Want to say goodbye to hormonal contraceptives and their weird and unpleasant side effects?

Want to improve your chances of conceiving quickly and naturally?

You need my Fertility Roadmap– My simple 3-step system to understanding your body’s natural fertile signs and pinpointing ovulation day so that you can use this knowledge to achieve (or avoid) pregnancy.

Related Episodes:

Episode 1 – Menstrual Cycle 101

Episode 2 – Am I Ovulating? The One Check You Can Do Every Day to Know For Sure When You’re Fertile

Episode 9 – Can I Get Pregnant During My Period?

Episode 12 – The Menstrual Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 1

Episode 13 – The Follicular Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 2

Episode 14 – The Ovulatory Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 3

Episode 15 – The Luteal Phase – Menstrual Cycle Masterclass Part 4

Episode 18 – Is My Cervical Mucus Normal?

Episode 19 – Coming Off The Pill (Part I)

Episode 20 – Coming Off The Pill (Part II)

Episode 22 – Preparing Your Partner for Pregnancy

Episode 24 – Household Items That May Be Affecting Your Fertility

Episode 30 – Your Hormone-Free Options for Birth Control 

OTHER FREE RESOURCES

Does your pelvic floor need a little extra TLC? Take the Pelvic Floor Quiz and find out how to start strengthening your pelvic floor today!

Want to make sure you’re exercising safely during your pregnancy? Get your Free Guide: 10 Exercises to Avoid During Pregnancy.

ENJOYED THIS EPISODE?

If you enjoyed this episode and the Fertility Co. Podcast generally, I have a favour. Please take two minutes to subscribe, and to write a rating and a review. You can do that on Apple Podcasts right now by clicking here. If you are an Android user, you can follow the podcast on Spotify here. Those actions will help the podcast reach more people, and I would be truly grateful. Thank you so much.

KEEP LISTENING!

LISTEN ON: APPLE PODCASTS | SPOTIFY