What causes Teratozoospermia (Part 2)

The more I read up about Teratozoospermia (and not just Teratozoospermia, but male infertility in general), the more i am convinced that Oxidative Stress plays a huge role.

The building blocks behind healthy sperm are quite simple; maintain a healthy weight, exercise regularly (but not to excess), avoid stress and eat a healthy diet of protein, fruit and vegetables. This alone should give a man everything they need to create healthy sperm well into their 40's and 50's. Simple.

But for whatever reason, in some males, there appears to be something happening which impedes the healthy formation of sperm. For a healthy man to have 0% morphology at 33 years old is quite unusual, there must be something else at play, something which is constantly nuking the production process.... And almost every study out there seems to think its Oxidative stress.

There are a few things that (i think) I've come to understand over the last few months which could be impacting me;

1) Oxidative Stress on the testicles is something that can build up over time; The major culprits appear to be

• Alcohol 
• Poor diet
• Excessive heat (in fact i read in some cultures people use excessive heat to sterilise themselves!)

These things cause oxidative stress, which leads to poor sperm morphology.

But there's another source of Oxidative stress, and that's;

• Defective Sperm themselves - They essentially fall to pieces and in doing so, actually cause Oxidative Stress to the other healthy sperm.

So......

More Oxidative Stress means more Defective Sperm
More Defective Sperm leads to more Oxidative Stress

Its a vicious cycle which if left unchecked could totally trash the quality of your sperm.

This article provides a good overview of all things that can impact on sperm quality, it summarises;

"Spermatozoa are vulnerable to ROS (oxidative stress) because their plasma membrane and cytoplasm contain large amounts of polyunsaturated fatty acids.5 Excessive generation of ROS in semen by leukocytes as well as by abnormal spermatozoa could be a cause of infertility."

I think its possible my intake of antioxidants has been so low over the last few years that the build up of Oxidative Stress has pushed my sperm into this vicious cycle from which it cannot escape on its own..

2) Each cell in the body is under constant attack from Free radicals;

"Bruce Ames, a well-known scientist in the field of antioxidants, estimates that just one cell in the human body is hit about 10,000 times a day by a free radical. If that’s multiplied by the trillions of cells in the body the magnitude of this activity is tremendous."

10,000 times per day for each cell! That truly is huge, the one glass of orange juice a week i had on my old diet really wasn't enough to fight this barrage, so its no wonder my sperm production process has fallen into this vicious cycle. 

The 'cure' to all of this definitely appears to be a huge and ongoing dose of a variety of antioxidants, this should be enough to pull the sperm production process out of this funk and get things back on track. Time will tell, the next sperm test is only a few months away!