A new study has revealed that when men refrain from ejaculating, their sperm health drops significantly. Sperm motility (their ability to swim) and viability decrease.
Women are born with most of their lifetime supply of eggs, which means a woman’s age is typically the same as the age of her eggs.
Male reproduction works differently. Sperm are produced continuously from puberty onwards and can be stored in the reproductive tract before ejaculation. This means that a man’s age is not necessarily the same as the age of his sperm. Then, What happens to sperm while you wait?
Men trying to conceive are often advised to remain sexually abstinent for several days to allow their sperm count to increase. It’s true that abstinence increases sperm count. But ejaculate size is not the only factor that determines fertility. Our new study shows that in men (and other male animals), sperm stored during sexual abstinence “ages” and deteriorates in quality.
We already know that the male fertility declines with age. What has remained unclear is whether the time sperm spend in storage contributes to this decline.
Answering this question is particularly timely. A. Combined with the global trend toward late parenthood, this could further exacerbate global fertility declines.
Now, a new study, recently on bioRxiv, has revealed that Frequent ejaculation can improve sperm quality.
The analysis collected semen data from 115 published studies involving nearly 55,000 men.
It was discovered that when men abstained from ejaculating, their sperm health dropped significantly. THE sperm motility (its ability to swim) and viability decreased.
Furthermore, the Sperm DNA became more damaged.
Two probable causes identified
The first is the oxidative stress – a form of biological “rust” that accumulates in sperm and can physically damage it.
The second is the energy depletion. Unlike most cells, sperm are highly active and have only a limited ability to replenish their energy reserves. When stored for prolonged periods, they simply run out of fuel.
The World Health Organization advises against ejaculating between two and seven days before providing a sperm sample for analysis, fertility treatments or procedures such as IVF.
However, the new results suggest that even shorter periods may be better, if the quality of sperm in the sample is to be improved.
This supports a recent finding that ejaculating within 48 hours before giving a sample improves IVF treatment results compared to longer durations of abstinence. It is also in line with a hypothesis in evolutionary biology.
It is known that, in primates, frequent ejaculation through masturbation improves the quality of ejaculates. Combined with our results, this suggests that the Male masturbation may have an adaptive benefit: it eliminates damaged and stored sperm.
Sperm doesn’t just deteriorate inside males. It can also deteriorate after mating, when it is stored inside females.
Sperm, much like eggs, has a “use by date” after it is produced. When sperm is stored for a long time before fertilization, deteriorates in quality.
