According to health experts, the number of male infertilities has risen quite dramatically in recent decades. Up to 15% of couples are unable to conceive a child. This finding alarms experts and pushes them to dig deeper for the real cause behind men’s infertility issues.
Male infertility is the inability of men to get their partners pregnant. The main contributory factors for this issue are certain medical conditions, environment, family history, undescended testicles, and lifestyle choices. This only shows there are causes beyond your control while there are some that depend solely on your choices.
Causing harm on yourself through poor lifestyle choices and environment is unforgivable. The responsibility of taking care of yourself lies in your hands. You’re able to prevent compromising your health by getting yourself out of harmful environments and, most of all, tossing away the poor lifestyle choices you do every single day. These include the following:
1. Alcohol use
While some study claims alcohol consumption can be good for the body, health experts warn men who want to have children to stay away from alcohol consumption. They say alcohol can create a total wreck to the quality of a man’s sperm aside from causing harm to his libido. Alcohol lowers a man’s testosterone levels and causes impotence, which is some of the things that reduce a female partner’s ability to conceive.
2. Drug use
Numerous studies have proven how recreational drugs can cause a negative impact on a person’s health. Whether you’re a male or female, you’re bound to sabotage your health, especially your fertility, with the prolonged use of recreational drugs.
Some men use anabolic steroids to aid them in their bodybuilding goals. These drugs may work great for this reason but if you’re planning to have a baby, you better weigh your options well. With prolonged use, anabolic steroids could shrink the testes, which prevents sperm production. This side effect might not be permanent, but it would take two years after you stop consumption for the sperm to return to its normal production.
Other recreational drugs such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin were found to decrease your testosterone levels as well as libido or sex drive.
3. Tobacco use
Because smoking is most often directly linked to medical health conditions like vascular, heart, and lung diseases, its effects on men’s fertility are quite overlooked. Smoking tobacco has been found to cause damage to the reproductive systems of males and females alike causing erectile dysfunction in men while posing complications for pregnant women.
The chemicals in tobacco smoke can affect a man’s sperm count, quality and motility, which decreases the chances of fertilizing an egg.
4. Excessive weight
Excessive weight or obesity is another lifestyle choice that can lead to infertility. Though this is most apparent in women, men who have excessive weights can suffer from infertility issues as well. Obesity has been linked to lower testosterone levels in men and erectile dysfunction issues. The only way to get your partner pregnant is to lose excess weight. Regardless of how difficult it looks, the rewards are great when you have a baby who can inspire you to follow a healthy lifestyle.
5. Diet
Your diet incredibly affects your fertility without even realizing it. The foods you eat or don’t eat affect your hormones, which means you might be eating foods that support fertility or not. In fact, headlines had been appearing, telling you how to boost your fertility if you want to have a child. This is because recent studies have shown the relation of diet to a person’s fertility.
Men who followed a healthy diet were found to have improved semen quality while the opposite happened to men whose diet consisted mostly of saturated or trans fats. A study published in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology recommends that a diet consisting of poultry, seafood, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables can improve the semen quality in men and better fertility in women.
6. Stress levels
Whether we like it or not, stress is part of our daily life. When you’re able to manage the level of your stress, you can navigate through life with more ease. But when your stress levels are high, you certainly got a problem. Failing to manage your stress can impact your overall health, including your ability to reproduce. Though there are not enough findings that support the direct connection of stress to infertility, psychologists claim it’s how stressed individuals manage their stress that leads to infertility issues.
When a person suffers from excessive stress, they’re unable to think rightly. To cope, they may resort to poor habits that can sabotage their health as well as their reproductive systems. These habits can range from excessive drinking to smoking to drugs or poor eating, all of which could be harmful, as stated above.
You need to have a better coping mechanism to reduce the negative impact of stress on your fertility. Some popular techniques nowadays include acupuncture, mindfulness, journaling, aerobic exercise, and many others. The choices are limitless.
7. Technology use
If you’re wondering how on earth technology can harm your reproductive organs, you’re probably right. There’s no direct link between the two. But how you use technology is where the problem starts. Your gadgets, your laptop to be specific, emits heat. Placing it on your lap while working on something or watching a movie can heat up your balls. Too much heat ultimately leads to infertility.
Your balls are placed outside of your body because the sperm needs to be 4 degrees cooler than your body temperature. The sperm thrives in an environment that’s neither too cold nor too hot. If you’ve noticed, your balls stick closer to your skin on cooler temperatures, while it hangs loosely when the temperature is warm. When exposed to elevated temperatures, the sperm dies and with prolonged exposure to heat its production, count, motility, and quality get affected. You better keep your laptops or cellphones away from your testicles to maintain fertility.
8. Age
Age doesn’t come with your lifestyle because it’s a natural process. But when it comes to conception, you need to have a definite plan of when you’re going to have a baby. Older men have lesser chances of getting a woman pregnant and their sperm count and quality are also reduced with age.
