WASHINGTON, DC — David Greening, researcher leader of Sydney, Australia’s Sydney IVF — the nation’s leading fertility clinic — presented his recent study’s results at the American Science For Reproductive Medicine conference earlier this month. Greening found that more boinking means better overall sperm quality.Men who suffer fertility problems because of low sperm quality may be able to improve their chances of fatherhood by having sex every day, his research has suggests.
While those trying for a baby are often told to refrain from ejaculating too often to protect their sperm count, Australian scientists have shown that this can be counterproductive and may actually lower male fertility.
Among men whose fertility problems stem from genetic damage to their sperm rather than a low sperm count, abstaining from sex can make their difficulties worse, Greening’s research shows.
The study of 42 men whose sperm showed significant DNA damage found that daily ejaculation reduced sperm problems by 12-percent. While the results are preliminary and no direct effect on fertility has yet been fully measured, the study suggests that certain men could benefit from having sex more often, or from abstaining less before providing semen for use in in-vitro fertilization.
Abstaining from sex does increase the number of sperm that are ejaculated, and this has led to advice that couples trying for a baby should have intercourse every two to three days.
Longer periods of abstinence, however, achieve little on the fertility front because while the quantity of sperm might increase, quality declines.
Allan Pacey, a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield, said that clearing the reservoir was even more important when sperm had high levels of genetic damage. “If you get above 30 to 40-percent damaged DNA, a man is highly likely to be infertile,” he said to the press. “When you put people on a daily ejaculation regime, it reduces that figure for DNA damage. If you can go from 30-percent down to 20-percent that is quite a big shift, that should have implications for fertility… “I remember one couple in which the woman would only let the man ejaculate when she was in her fertile period, so the poor chap was going without for almost a month at a time. Even leaving aside the frustration that must have caused, it would have had no benefits.”
