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When sperm from a man's body unites with a woman's egg it creates a completely unique and genetically irreplaceable human life. It happens thousands of times each day, but it’s miraculous in its timing and complexity.
Most men are clueless about what enhances reproductive health - or what undermines it. We seldom think about our fertility or the health of our sperm, except perhaps during lovemaking.
If you’re tempted to write off matters of fertility to heredity, don’t. There’s a lot you can do to safeguard your reproductive health and the health of your future children. It starts with learning more about your general health, as well as behavioral choices and environmental hazards that can affect your reproductive wellness. Here are a few points you need to know.
Infertility - it’s not just “the woman's problem” anymore: Until recently if a couple was unable to conceive, the woman was “the infertile one.” Now it’s generally recognized within medical circles that the problem lies with the man as much as 50% of the time.
This is startling when you consider that the average, healthy male releases around 600 million sperm each time he ejaculates, and manufactures an estimated 400 000 000 000 sperm in his lifetime. You’d think we’d be fecundity personified. Not so.
The most common reason for male infertility is the inability to produce adequate numbers of healthy sperm. Infertility in men may also be the result of difficulty in delivering sperm into the vagina. This can be the result of disorders affecting ejaculation, including inhibited ejaculation and retrograde ejaculation (when ejaculate is forced backward into the bladder, rather like Michael Jackson and his rocket pack).
It may also result from the failure of the testes to descend into the scrotum, by diseases or severe physical injuries that damage the sperm-producing structures, or by antibodies to the sperm found in either the male or the female.
(Liesel Powell, Health24)
