Stress impacts a man’s Fertility

By Team Home Health Beauty Tips on November 13, 2014

BODY:
Constantly being stressed out makes your chances of becoming a father bleak, a new study claims. We all know the unhealthy effects of stress on our body. But now a new report shows that it can even impact a man’s fertility by hurting the quality and composition of semen.

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That’s the finding of researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Rutgers School of Public Health, who claims stress, affects semen quality, concentration and appearance. This report was published in a detail manner online in the popular journal Fertility and Sterility. According to those researchers, high levels of stress can take a toll on the semen quality making a male unable to impregnate a woman.

“Men who feel stressed are more likely to have lower concentrations of sperm in their ejaculate, and the sperm they have are more likely to be misshapen or have impaired motility,” says Dr Pam Factor-Litvak, from Mailman School of Public Health in a press release. These deficits could be associated with fertility problems.
The study was done on 193 men, aged between 38 and 49. The participants were enrolled in the Study of the Environment and Reproduction at the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan in Oakland, California, between 2005 and 2008. The researchers conducted various tests to determine work and life stress, on both subjective and objective scales. The participants also provided semen samples. Later, the technicians at University of California, Davis, evaluated the semen samples to determine the effects of stress on the sperm including motility, concentration and appearance.

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The final results of the study turned out to show a good impact of stress on the sperm quality. Even though researchers failed to fully understand how stress can affect the semen quality, they observed decreased testosterone levels with high levels of stress. Surprisingly, sperm quality of unemployed men is lower than the employed men.

Researchers assume that this occurrence is based on two main factors. One is that when a person is stressed out, hormones called glucocorticoids are released into the bloodstream that affects the testosterone level and sperm production. The second factor is oxidative stress that has been known to alter the sperm quality and fertility. Dr Teresa Janevic, the study’s first author, opines that earlier stress was shown to cause negative impact on our health but their new study sheds enough light on its effect on the male reproductive system too.

What is male infertility and what causes it?

Infertility is a rising epidemic in India, affecting both men and women equally. Male infertility is a term used to refer a male’s inability to impregnate a fertile woman even after regular coitus for a whole year totally unprotected (without using any contraception).

A variety of factors can cause male infertility ranging from sperm disorders, varicocele, smoking, alcohol abuse, STDs, hormonal disturbances, steroid use, cancer treatments, excessive stress, obesity, and even some medications.