What Can I Do To Help Myself?

Keeping a healthy active lifestyle is of benefit to you and can aid fertility.

Stay physically fit and eat good quality food.   Don’t just rely on magic bullet nutritional supplements that you will read about.  A better diet is a better life style choice rather than using supplements to prop up eating rubbish.   Your chances of conceiving decrease with stress, not least as you will be less likely to try for a baby if you are stressed out or tired but also because severe stress can potentially alter your sex hormones.   A recent article in Men’s Health magazine summarised a number of key facts on this very subject.

There is some evidence that smoking and alcohol affect fertility; not massive evidence, but enough to support changes to your smoking and alcohol habits so as to improve your chance of success. There are a number of reasons why smoking may harm your fertility : smoking may change some of the hormones made by the brain that regulate sperm production and in laboratory-based tests smoking was found to affect the concentration of sperm, the way they swam and even their shape or even DNA make-up. Smoking will, over time, ruin your erections.  A brand new study in the British Journal of Urology has further highlighted the adverse effects of smoking on sperm quality.  

Drinking lots of alcohol will reduce your chances of success. It alters your hormones at both the brain and testicular level and in large quantities can also affect how the liver works.

Recreational drugs are increasingly used by men of fertile age.  Frequent Marijuana use can lower the production of reproductive hormones and also sperm quality.  Cocaine seems to affect ejaculation and also, to a degree, sex drive and maybe even sperm production.  Long term use of anabolic steroids (used for body building) can affect your reproductive hormones leading to smaller testicular size and lowered (or absent) sperm production.  Currently the effects of the newer ‘legal highs’ and designer drugs are not clearly understood but their effects will do doubt become more obvious over the next few years.

Not found what you are looking for?   If you haven’t found what you are looking for then have a look at our Q&As / blog as we regularly update with specific tips and advice that may help!