Adrienne, of the Russian Adoptionblog suggested a drill as the Male Fertility icon, and at least for now, it’s the perfect illustration for our first in a series on Male Fertility.
CNN.com has an excellent overview article on male fertility, and there are things you can actually do to promote male fertility. Before we get into that, however, we need to start back at the basics. I know women who can go on and on about luteinizing hormone, the role of the pituitary glands, they can read blood-test betas better than the lab techs, etc., but if you mention “sperm motility,” they say, “huh?”
My own vague thoughts about sperm are from seventh grade bio movies: the gigantic female egg lolling along surrounded by zillions of desperate sperm, and making you think, “Bang! They’re off! First one to the egg is a Fertilizer!” Sort of like the New York Marathon, the zillions and zillions of runners taking off, vying for the prize.
But no, interestingly, it’s actually a little bit more like the Allies trying to storm Normandy. Check it out:
Men’s part in fertilization is quite amazing. About 200 million sperm are mixed with semen to form ejaculate. In most men, 15 to 45 million of these sperm are healthy enough to fertilize an egg, although only 400 survive after a man ejaculates. Only 40 of those 400 reach the vicinity of the egg, surviving the toxic environment of the semen and the hostile environment of the vagina. After another process called capacitation (an explosion that allows the remaining sperm to DRILL a hole through the tough outer layer of the egg), only one lone sperm reaches the egg for fertilization and conception.
So those few straggly sperm that have managed to survive the barrage make it to the egg, and you have to hope that their “drills” work. This is where things like motility (movement) and morphology (shape) become important; i.e., you can’t drill if the drill-bit is bent or otherwise messed up.
There are two ways of looking at this, depending (as in a previous post) you are the worrier type or the happy-go-lucky type, so I’ll phrase it here for both personality types.
The GOOD NEWS (for happy types): there are many simple lifestyle changes you can do to enhance male fertility.
The BAD NEWS (for worriers like me): there may be a bunch of things you are doing unknowingly that are seriously decreasing your chance for conception.
Stay tuned!
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