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Acupuncture for infertility and conceiving.
I have been treating fertility clients for 14 years. In all these years I have been the biggest skeptic that JUST women are the problem. I think as society becomes more accepting of fertility issues and the desire to help couples conceive, the medical world is opening up to male related fertility problems.
The old adage “men can have babies til they’re 70” has allowed men and sperm to hold the “get out of jail card”. In this article, I discuss the fact sperm analysis can only visually check sperm for genetic healthiness. A visual check is like buying a used car and never lifting the hood to see how the car is working. The car can look great – no dents, scratches, clean interior and the radio works. Yet, how do you know if the engine is working when you don’t look under the hood?
I have surmised that many couples are not getting pregnant because of the man. Of course, the paradigm is “the sperm are perfectly healthy” so we can rule out the man. Yet, male fertility testing is inadequate and severely faulty. Truly, men are being discriminated against. The medical industry has approached sperm testing from an inadequate perspective.
When sperm are analyzed – there is no way to check the genetic material without destroying the sperm. Thus the genetic viability is only surmised. In fact a study showed, “healthy” male sperm with the potential 73% natural conception rates, dropped to 23% after genetic testing indicating genetic issues which would require medical intervention.
When female clients come to me, I encourage their partner to take on some of the responsibility of the situation. Improving sperm is so easy, compared to changing egg quality. Even if your guy is healthy, supplements and a good clean diet can’t be beat. Who’s to say that your guy isn’t one of the men with healthy 73% conception rates that are truly much lower than that?
What’s a good diet? Veggies, fruit, clean protein with each meal. Low caffeine, alcohol, sugar and carbohydrates. It’s as easy as that. No rocket science involved.
New research is showing how these simple changes in diet can greatly improve sperm quality. Come on guys, help out your lady. It takes two to conceive. Step up and improve your diet. Women take a huge amount of the pressure to “make” a baby, especially when she steps up for acupuncture and/or medical treatment. Just by being proactive in the situation, has the potential to make her feel she’s not alone in the dynamic.
Genetic Test May Help Spot Male Fertility Problems – Though still experimental, it measures key qualities of sperm, researchers say By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter
About 13 percent of couples face problems with infertility, the study authors said in background notes. There are a wide battery of diagnostic tests available to women who are struggling to conceive. But, fertility testing for men currently is limited to a physical examination of their sperm’s movement, volume and concentration, Krawetz said.
“If you think about it, it’s how good do the sperm look. That really doesn’t tell you much about the quality,” Krawetz said. “A sperm may look fantastic, but yet could not be up to the job of fertilization.”
To study sperm quality in more depth, Krawetz and his team first studied couples who had been able to naturally conceive by having sex on days when the woman was most fertile.
Genetic analysis of the men’s sperm revealed a set of 648 RNA elements that are vital to male fertility. Many of these elements correspond to genes involved in sperm development, the ability to move, energy production, fertilization and embryo formation, the researchers said.
Most infertile men did not carry a complete set of sperm RNA elements, the researchers found, and lacking some RNA elements reduced the success rate of natural pregnancy from 73 percent to 27 percent. The greater the number of RNA elements missing from the sperm cell, the lower the likelihood of conception, the researchers said.
Dr. Rebecca Sokol, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, praised the researchers’ efforts to figure out a man’s contribution to conception.
“As a specialist in male reproduction, I think I can say the field of male infertility is in desperate need of a biomarker like this,” said Sokol, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. “As far as the field of infertility is concerned, not enough focus is put on the male.”
Strong adherence to a healthy dietary pattern is associated with better semen quality, especially in men with poor semen quality. Fertility and Sterility April 2017
Elsje C. Oostingh, M.D., Régine P.M. Steegers-Theunissen, M.D., Ph.D., Jeanne H.M. de Vries, M.Sc., Joop S.E. Laven, M.D., Ph.D., Maria P.H. Koster
Result(s)
Men included in our study were on average 35 (±6 standard deviation) years old and had a body mass index of 26.4 ± 4 kg/m2. Two dietary patterns were identified using principle component analysis, which were labeled as “healthy” and “unhealthy.” An increase of one factor score (stated as β) represented an increase of 1 standard deviation. Sperm concentration (β = 0.278; 95% CI, 0.112–0.444), total sperm count (β = 1.369; 95% CI, 0.244–2.495), progressive motility (β = 4.305; 95% CI, 0.675–7.936), and TMSC (β = 0.319; 95% CI, 0.113–0.526) were all positively associated with a strong adherence to the healthy dietary pattern. Subgroup analysis showed that these associations were mainly present in men with a TMSC Conclusion(s)
The positive associations between strong adherence to a healthy dietary pattern and semen parameters in men with poor semen quality support the importance of preconceptional tailored nutritional counseling and coaching of couples who are trying to conceive.
Healthy diets and men’s contribution to fertility; is semen quality good enough? Fertility and Sterility January 2015
Jorge E. Chavarro, M.D., Sc.D. Departments of Nutrition and Epidemiology, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; and Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
In this issue of Fertility and Sterility, Oostingh and colleagues (1) report an association between greater adherence to a data-derived “healthy” dietary pattern, characterized by higher intakes of legumes, vegetables, cereals, fruits, and olive oil, and higher semen quality—particularly sperm concentration and progressive motility—among men from couples planning pregnancy. This article adds to the growing literature relating adherence to healthy diet patterns and greater semen quality including previous work from this group among couples undergoing infertility treatment, as well as work from other groups including studies reporting higher semen quality with greater adherence to healthy diets among men in the United States, Europe and Asia (2, 3).
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