Male Fertility
Male fertility has declined in general throughout the UK in the last 40 years, with increasingly sedentary lifestyles and environmental toxins thought to be contributing factors. Since natural fertility is all about increasing the ‘odds’ each month, our aim at NNFP is simply to increase the number of healthy sperm surrounding the egg every ovulatory cycle. It is estimated that anywhere between 0 – 100 sperm can make it up into the right tube depending on the quality and quantity of the sperm in your ejaculate, and we want to make sure that you are hitting the 100 mark every month!
Male fertility also begins to decline with age – similar to women, at around 35 years of age. Lifestyle factors such as poor diet, fitness levels, smoking and drinking have an accumulative effect. A 36 year old man drinking alcohol every day will suffer the negative effects of alcohol much more than his 20 year old counterpart.
The pressure to ‘perform’ each month for your partner also has an accumulative effect – often leading to performance anxiety around ovulation and difficulties surrounding sex. Struggling with fertility problems can put a huge strain on the best of relationships, with men often feeling overwhelmed and unsupported. At NNFP we see that the couples who support each other overall do much better in the programme, which is why we place so much emphasis on attending the initial consultation together. Unlike conventional fertility medicine which is female focussed, we treat you as a couple, regardless of any infertility diagnosis of either partner.
At least 40% of our couples on our fertility programme include men with fertility problems. Male fertility problems will show up often as a problem with the number, quality or movement of the sperm, and sometimes with the seminal fluid itself. The most common issue we see is with morphology of the sperm in the semen analysis. Frustratingly there is very little general advice given to men who want to improve the quality of their sperm and seminal fluid – except to stop smoking and drinking alcohol. We have found that combining herbal medicine with tailored dietary, supplement advice repeatedly improves the results in follow up semen analyses.
Conditions that we have successfully worked with previously include;
Low morphology
Low sperm count
Poor motility
Performance anxiety
Irregularities with semen quality – agglunation and excessive aggregation.