Selenium (AKA Brazil Nuts)

I'm now taking so many supplements that I'm starting to rattle, however the research continues and the latest discovery relates to Selenium. And it appears as though the jury is out.

When i received by sperm analysis results, the doctor suggested i should eat some brazil nuts and drink green tea, at the time i thanked him for his advice but in my head i was thinking 'no way that's going to make any difference'. Regardless, i started eating the brazil nuts, about a handful a day.

Brazil nuts are apparently extremely high in Selenium, which appears to be very important to the formation of sperm;

"..Selenium protects lipid shell encasing each sperm (prevents lipid peroxidation), which is especially important since sperm have a very delicate fatty acid composition."

Essentially it helps protect the sperm from free radicals.

According to the below supplement sheet, 6 large brazil nuts can contain a whole load of useful nutrients including Vitamin E, Zinc & Magnesium, but most importantly, they contain about 800% of the RDA for Selenium;

That's an extremely high dose of selenium for just 6 brazil nuts, so how many should i be eating exactly?

Well, it seems that nobody really knows for sure. Too little and there's no impact, too much and it can have a negative impact;

A study into a dose of just 0.2mg of Selenium combined with n-acetyl-cysteine (another antioxidant i haven't yet looked into) had a good result;

"after 26 weeks of Se supplementation the mean total sperm count, concentration, normal morphology percentage and motility increased from baseline relative to placebo treatment"

Good stuff, so how about a higher dose?

A study into a dose of 0.3mg Selenium alone had this to say;

"higher Se supplementation (300μg/ day orally) increased serum and seminal plasma Se concentrations but did not affect sperm Se, serum androgen concentrations or sperm parameters [22]. The lack of an increase in sperm Se suggests that testicular Se stores are unresponsive to dietary Se concentrations"

...No major impact. Ok so how about even higher?

This study tried a volume greater than 0.4mg and had this result;

"The fraction of motile sperm in the high-selenium group decreased by 32% by week 13 and ended 18% lower than baseline. Selenium concentrations changed in seminal plasma but not in sperm"

So it appears as though a high dose is a no-go. The studies show an increase in Selenium within the seminal plasma, but not the sperm itself... This suggests to me that the spermies just don't require that much selenium.

This summary sheet provides a good overview of the various Selenium studies out there, it essentially concludes that selenium is most effective at a low dose and combined with antioxidants, particularly vitamin E (which is also present in Brazil nuts).

So exactly how many brazil nuts should i be eating? This website suggests 6-8 brazil nuts can contain about 0.5mg of selenium. I need about half of that apparently, so from now on I'm going to eat just 3 brazil nuts a day for my selenium fix.

Vitamin C

Vitamin C (aka Ascorbic acid), i had no idea how important it was.

In my quest to understand the importance of Antioxidants in improving sperm morphology, I've stumbled across a few useful promising studies.

This study is particularly fascinating, 13 patients with low sperm counts (but normal morphology) were given a whopping 2000mg of vitamin C a day for 2 months, and this was the result;

A huge uptick across the board! Importantly for me though Morphology saw a huge increase, and it appears that the lower the starting morphology, the greater the improvement.

This study also suggested lower levels of vitamin C leads to higher rates of DNA damage within the sperm itself;

"When dietary AA was decreased from 250 to 5 mg/day, the seminal fluid AA decreased by half and the level of oxo8dG in sperm DNA increased 91%."

And this study further confirms that low levels of vitamin C appears to correlate with poor sperm morphology;

"Seminal AA in fertile and infertile (smokers or nonsmokers) males correlated significantly with the percentage of spermatozoa with normal morphology (p<0.01). Seminal AA decreased significantly in infertile men. Decrease of seminal plasma AA is a risk factor for low normal morphology of spermatozoa and idiopathic male infertility"

So I've immediately purchased some chewable vitamin C (500mg) tabs for my ever growing collection of supplements, I'm also going to add more citrus fruits to the diet... Aside from the odd glass of orange juice, this is something that admittedly has been almost totally absent for many, many years now.