Getting Pregnant Naturally_ Healthy Choi - Winifred Conkling [36]
Avoid wearing synthetic fibers during exercise. Lycra shorts can trap the heat, especially during a workout.
Exercise, but avoid workouts that heat the testicles. Rowing machines, cross-country ski machines, treadmills, and jogging are the worst culprits when it comes to overheating. Swimming and yoga are good alternatives. After exercise, allow your testicles to hang free and cool off.
If possible, avoid occupations that keep you in the heat. For example, welding or boiler maintenance operators can work in environments that routinely reach a sperm-killing 120 degrees F.
Try a cold water treatment. One study found that spraying the scrotum with cool water for two minutes in the morning and evening improved sperm counts in half the men studied.
Give Yourself Time to Recover from Illness
Your body produces about 50 million sperm each day, but it takes about three months for those sperm to be ready for action. It takes about seventy-eight days for sperm to be produced and twelve days more for them to mature. Any kind of viral illness with a fever—even a bad cold—can lower sperm counts for the full three months. The medications you take to treat an illness can also interfere with sperm production. If you have a normal or high sperm count, illness may not lower your sperm count enough to interfere with conception. But if your sperm count is more modest, it may be enough to cause temporary infertility. So be patient; give your sperm time to bounce back after an illness.
Take Steps to Manage Diabetes
Diabetes can wreak havoc on your body—and your sex life. The disease can damage sperm production, and it can cause progressive damage to the blood vessels and nerves in the penis, sometimes resulting in impotence. An estimated 22 to 55 percent of all diabetic men are impotent. Some—but not all men—regain their potency when they bring the illness under control, either by exercising and losing weight or by taking supplemental insulin. To protect your fertility, consult your doctor and take steps to control the illness if you are diabetic.
Find Out if You’ve Had Mumps—and Get the Vaccine if You Haven’t
Mumps is a virus that can cause infertility if it reaches the testicles of a male who has passed puberty; severe cases can damage tissue before puberty as well. (Most childhood cases of mumps do not impair fertility.) Not every case leads to sterility; in roughly half the cases, the virus does not damage the testicles. Other times only one testicle is damaged and the other can compensate.
Fortunately, only about 18 percent of mumps cases occur in men during or past puberty, and in 70 percent of those cases, the virus infects only one testicle. Even if both testicles are affected, when properly treated the disease can usually be stopped before it damages both testicles. In fact, only 5 percent of men who contract mumps become permanently sterile.
If you have not had mumps, talk to your doctor about having a vaccine against the disease.
Treat Varicocele
A varicocele is a varicose vein in the spermatic cord inside the scrotum. These enlarged veins (like those that can form on the backs of the legs) may cause infertility in some men by increasing the temperature inside the testicles. Most varicoceles form above the left testicle in one of the vessels that transport blood from the groin back to the heart.
Varicoceles form deep inside the testicles. While the affected vein cannot be seen, in many cases it can be felt. The condition is said to feel like “a bag of worms” over the top of the testicles. The condition is not painful; in fact, about 8 percent of all men have them, often without experiencing infertility or other problems. However, researchers have found that the condition in roughly 30 to 40 percent of infertile men, and fully 80 percent of those with varicocele have abnormal sperm profiles.
A varicocele can be tied off surgically. In most cases sperm production improves three to six months after the procedure, and in some men up to a year later. About half of all men who undergo