Imagine your testicles are a car factory. First the factory workers make a chassis, then they fit an engine, the wheels go on and finally they add the body and doors. Everything is going well until the day of the factory foreman’s birthday. To celebrate, everyone in the factory goes out for lunch and gets horrendously drunk. When they go back to work, they are still drunk and forget things like putting the bolts on the wheels and connecting the engine to the drive shaft.
All the drinking the workers have been doing gives them a case of the mad munchies and they binge on unhealthy foods. Coincidentally, the suppliers to the factory send petrol instead of diesel. Not noticing the difference, the factory workers fill up the car engines with the wrong fuel anyway.
A few months later, there is a fire in the building next to the factory. Clouds of smoke from the fire drift over to the factory. This makes it difficult for the workers to see what they are doing and they put doors on the wrong way and mount the engines back to front.
Following customer complaints, inspectors come round to review the factory. Worried the inspectors might find something wrong, the workers become nervous and the stress causes them to perform poorly.
Because it takes three months to make each car, every time an incident happens, the entire batch of cars in production will be affected for the next three months. So until the factory workers can cut out heavy drinking, junk food, smoking and stress for at least three months, the factory will continue to make fewer cars and the cars it does make will be poor quality.
Nice Story, But Let’s Get Back to My Testicles
The story (written by my husband, who possibly thinks about his testicles too much) covers five key areas to increase fertility. I have expanded on these below and include an extra tip that we couldn’t find a tasteful way to fit into the story.
Alcohol
Take it from me, no woman wants a man who regularly suffers from brewer’s droop. If that isn’t enough to cut down on the happy juice, studies clearly show that men who are heavy drinkers have lower testosterone, reduced sperm count and a higher number of abnormally shaped sperm.
Diet and Weight
You can’t make a good omelette from bad eggs and you can’t make good sperm from a bad diet. Not eating enough fruit and veg and bingeing on junk food won’t provide the right building materials for good sperm. This is worse if you are either overweight (which messes with your hormone levels) or underweight (where your body is in starvation mode and doesn’t have enough resources for sperm production).
Smoking
I’m hoping that stopping smoking should be obvious if you want to have children. It damages sperm DNA and you may not live long enough to see your children grow up. Increase fertility by using a less damaging e-cigarette to start cutting down (without the additives they put in cigarettes, nicotine is not as addictive, making it easier for you to quit for good). If you live in the UK and need help with quitting, use the NHS SmokeFree Service.
Stress
Practically everyone knows a couple who were desperately trying for a baby for years without success, but fell pregnant almost immediately when they gave up trying. The most obvious effect of stress is a reduced libido (you become less interested in sex), but it may also affect your fertility in other ways. If you think you might be suffering from stress, you can get help from the NHS site: NHS Understanding Stress.
It Takes Time for Men to Increase Their Fertility
It takes three to four months for your body to make each sperm. Because of this, if harm is caused to your sperm, it will take at least three months before you are ejaculating swimmers that are unharmed again. So if you improve your diet and lifestyle, you need to keep it up until your partner becomes pregnant. Otherwise you risk damaging your growing sperm for another three months.
Bonus Tip
Having too much sex is bad for male fertility. If you have sex every day, you can reduce the amount of sperm in each ejaculation. This is a problem because sperm help each other in the long journey to the egg. The less sperm, the less teamwork and potentially the less distance they can cover.
Instead, give your testicles a chance to stock up on sperm and increase fertility by only have sex every other day. Don’t worry that it won’t be enough, as sperm can survive in a woman for up to five days and still fertilise the egg.
So Is That It?
What I have covered so far is as far as most family doctors will go (we only get ten minutes per patient). It covers the basics to increase fertility, but if you are sub-fertile or just want to supercharge your sperm, then you’ll really want to check out the diet and lifestyle tips in the next sections. Not only can you learn what affects your fertility in these sections, but they also teach you how to make the necessary changes that will boost your fertility. These extra sections are:
Lifestyle
Your job, your hobbies, your habits, where you live and what you do. They all affect your fertility. This section takes you through the top lifestyle sperm killers and tells you what you can do about them to increase fertility. Check out the guide here: Is Your Lifestyle Wrecking Your Chances of Becoming a Daddy
Foods to Avoid
Plenty of people will tell you what to eat to increase fertility, but it is actually more important to know what foods to avoid. Learn how the foods that you have been told are good for you are actually bad for baby making and what the alternatives are. Check out the guide here: Fertility Unfriendly Foods to Avoid
Food to Eat
Tired of hearing about the latest super food that boosts the male libido? Avoid the fads and stick to common fertility friendly household groceries. They are cheaper to buy, easier to find, and you don’t need to worry what the next trendy fertility food will be. Check out the guide here: Fertility Friendly Family Food Favourites
Fertility Supplements
Would you pay four times the going rate for a pack of aspirin when the shop next door has them at the normal price? Learn the truth about male fertility supplements; do they really increase fertility and if so what really counts. Check out the guide here: The Truth about Male Fertility Vitamins
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