How Nutrition, Alcohol, and Heat Exposure Relate to Sperm Health

So, the next question was submitted by Marina, and Marina was wondering about male fertility. Marina says, hi, Rhonda, could you please advise on improving sperm quality, particularly motility, morphology, and DNA fragmentation, especially when having good reactive oxygen species levels? So, it's not oxidative stress. I know about the general rules, like being fit and active, not being overweight, but would appreciate if you could be more specific. Or even, even talk about some supplements. It's a bit of an under-researched area compared to female fertility. Okay, so there was one systematic review of meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials looking at the influence of oral vitamin and mineral supplementation on male infertility.

So just as a brief overview, Some things that affected total sperm count were omega-3 and coenzyme Q10. Sperm concentration were affected by selenium, zinc, omega-3, and CoQ10. Sperm motility were affected by selenium, zinc, omega-3, CoQ10, and carnitine. Sperm morphology was affected by selenium, omega-3, CoQ10, and carnitine. The dosage, the dosages were for selenium, it was 200 micrograms per day. For L-carnitine, it was 2 grams per day. For CoQ10, it was 200 to 300 mgs per day. For zinc, it was 66 milligrams per day. For EPA, it was 1 gram per day. And for DHA, it was 700 milligrams, or sorry, 700 milligrams per day. Yes, 700 milligrams per day. And as mentioned in the question, oxidative stress is actually one of the main mediators of male infertility.

So sperm damage induced by reactive oxygen species, about 30— anywhere between 30 to 80% of male infertility cases have been attributed to oxidative stress. It causes sperm dysfunction. It's related to cellular damage triggered by reactive oxygen species. It occurs naturally in sperm cells because high levels of sperm motility induce reactive oxygen species, but too high of levels of reactive oxygen species are what's strongly correlated with sperm DNA damage and low percentages of sperm fertility. Selenium is essential for spermatogenesis, and it plays a role in actually increasing glutathione peroxidase expression and activity. Selenium is important for the production of glutathione-related enzymes.

So, you know, making sure you know, getting enough selenium in the diet is important for that reason, for sperm, for sperm health. Zinc is another one that's important. So zinc also plays a part of this antioxidant response. It's got a membrane-stabilizing activity by inhibiting membrane-bound oxidative enzymes. So an excess of antioxidants could result in significant adverse events and can promote that what we were talking about earlier, reductive stress, which can be detrimental for male fertility. So again, you don't want to have too— you don't want to just sort of randomly start overdosing on too many antioxidants either because then you might cause the reductive stress effect. But having enough of them is really important.

Omega three has been shown to so DHA is actually highly concentrated in sperm cells. It's actually one of the cell types, interestingly, that has a very high concentration of DHA. It has anti inflammatory and antioxidant effects. It mod it modifies the cell membrane composition again, so it plays a lot of important roles in sperm. CoQ10 is also important for mitochondrial function. And it inhibits peroxide formation in seminal fluid. So it basically could reduce sperm oxidative stress through that mechanism. And then L-carnitine and L-acetyl carnitine play important roles in sperm metabolism by basically providing immediate energy for use by spermatosa, which positively affects the sperm motility as well.

It's also involved in the transport of fatty acids across the mitochondrial membrane so that fatty acids can get in and be used as energy as well. So L-carnitine also plays a role in that. So those are some of the supplements, at least evidence-based, that's been shown to play a— to positively affect a variety of sperm characteristics as we, as we mentioned. Alcohol, I would say, is one that can negatively affect sperm. So there was a meta-analysis investigating the impact of alcohol intake on semen quality by looking at 18 different cross-sectional studies. And basically daily alcohol consumption worsened semen quality, particularly in terms of the volume and sperm morphology.

There was also a very recent study looking at in vitro fertilization, and it found that alcohol intake in men basically prevented in vitro fertilization from working, and it had to do again with the sperm. So alcohol, probably something to avoid, if not dramatically reduce. When trying to conceive. And then also, uh, sauna use, hot tub use can affect sperm motility temporarily. It's very transient, but for someone who's trying to conceive, probably best to not be doing the sauna and hot tub, particularly if you're having fertility problems because of the effects on sperm motility. Those effects go away after about 6 weeks. So again, hot tub, sauna, great for a lot of, you know, health parameters, but for some, for a male trying to conceive, it can affect sperm motility in a negative way.

As mentioned in the question, obesity definitely, it reduces, you know, it's been shown to reduce testosterone, leads to fewer spermatosa. So definitely weight loss is an important strategy for any male trying to conceive as well. And then Mediterranean diet is one that's been associated with improved, you know, basically sperm outcomes as well. General, general, I guess things that you could just— exercise helps as well. So like things that, that you would think would be good for, you know, health are generally good for sperm with the exception of sauna, which Does you know decrease sperm motility? Nick is asking in the chat whether it's important to or advisable to take DHA and EPA separately, one in the morning and one in the evening, as I do. I don't know that it's necessary.

I don't know that it's you know it's it's just I the omega three brand that I take happens to do it. In a high EPA and high DHA sort of version. You can choose to do that if you want, but I don't know that it's bad to take them together. I don't, I don't, I don't think that it is, to be honest. Justin's asking if you can use the sauna as the, as a form of contraception. No, absolutely not. It, you know, even though it affects sperm motility, Many sperm can still make it, and it's probably exacerbated more in people and men that already are having fertility issues. I know some people that were under the impression that sauna could be used as a form of contraception, and boy, were they surprised by a baby. So definitely not. Not advised.

Beck is asking about sauna for females before contraception. There's no evidence that it has a negative effect on females before contraception. And so now, after, like, during pregnancy, I, you know, again, on the safe side, I would not do the sauna because there's some evidence that doing hot tubs can— women that do hot tubs during pregnancy can sort of have— it can lead to fetal developmental problems. So it can have some negative effects on brain development.