Do we need more sperm?

“…Condom is the glass slipper of our generation. You slip one on when you meet a stranger. You dance all night… then you throw it away. The condom, I mean, not the stranger”.
– Fight Club.

Genetic recombination is a process by which the chromosomal pairs of sexual gametic cells transmit their information to a daughter cell, in other words: when we are conceived, two cells combine, donating half of their information contained in that wonderful molecule called DNA.

That is why it is a milestone of nature that an ovum together with a spermatozoon are the initial causes of forming a machine as complex as the human body. In an exercise of imagination, let’s see the fertility process as a race with multiple obstacles where the goal is the egg; In this race of millions of participants (spermatozoids), according to the canons of physiology, only one (like everything, there are always exceptions) can have the right to enter the temple of life.

With this in mind, by mere probability, under optimal conditions, fertilization is a matter of biological synchrony: in just one ejaculation there are between 400 and 1,200 million sperm (the entire population of China) and therefore it seems simple that in In this race for life, one manages to enter the ovum, however, this is not always the case. Not all spermatozoa have the necessary conditions to develop the phenomenon of fertilization, there are multiple cells that are immobile, others that have short tails, others with double heads, and it is in this biological discard that the race becomes more interesting.

That explains part of the need for such a vast number of sperm cells, but then what would happen if we started to decrease the amount of sperm that we produce? The answer sounds simple, simply the fertilization process would start to collapse. A recently published study at the end of last month indicates that in at least the last 40 years a good part of what we know as the West shows a 50% decrease in their sperm count, that is to say that we men on this side of the world have started planet to produce much less sperm and this translates into a higher rate of problems having children.

Although the study itself only focuses on analyzing sperm counts and not the causes of this clear decrease, there are some indications that this is due to increased pollution, much more stressful lifestyles, excessive work hours, lack of of exercise and an increasingly poor diet: ergo, you have to eat better, sleep more and in itself seek to have a more comfortable life.

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“The vision in fertility treatments must be comprehensive and not only focus on women, because ultimately fertility is a joint work of two cells with the firm purpose of forming one of the most detailed mosaics that we have on record in the Universe.”

Dr. Otto Paredes
Dr. Otto Paredes
Fertility Expert

Reproductive medicine and gynecological endocrinology
Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad, Spain.

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