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!

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.

Antioxidants; Teratozoospermia cure?

The doctor suggested increasing my intake of antioxidants may help improve my sperm. I didn't believe him at first, how can a simple cup of green tea make me fertile? It seemed like a stretch.

So i started the same place everyone does, Google.

Turns out 'oxidative stress' appears to be a major cause of infertility among men. So i started reading up about it;

"Like an apple turns brown when exposed to air, our cells can “rust” when we breathe due to oxidative stress, a process caused by free radicals. Free radicals are unstable molecules that damage or “oxidize” cells throughout the body in a process called oxidative stress."

Basically something as essential as breathing appears to cause free radicals, which can then go on to cause oxidative stress to sperm production, who knew?!

Free radicals can also be caused by alcohol, smoking, air pollution, or eating processed foods among other things... If you don't consume enough anti-oxidants, these free radicals can build up over time and apparently cause some real damage.

Now, I've never smoked, but I'm not exactly a fan of my fruits, and I've been known to drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of crap over the years. Perhaps its all finally caught up with me? Although I feel I've always been moderately healthy (If sperm morphology was determined by health alone, I'd expect my morphology to be in the 60% - 65% range), perhaps I've neglected anti-oxidants without even realising?

This study is particularly interesting, if I've understood it correctly, this graph essentially compares oxidant levels (LP, the left bar) and antioxidant levels (SOD, the right bar) in the testies of Teratozoospermic men;

You can see in Teratozoospermic men, the oxidant levels are almost off the charts.

There are a few more studies that support the theory, including this one which concluded ROS (Oxidative Stress) was much higher in Teratozoospermic men;

"RESULTS Sperm morphology was significantly poor in the Teratozoospermic Group compared with the 3 Donor Groups (P < 0.05). Significantly higher levels of ROS (RLU/sec/10⁶ sperm) were seen in the Teratozoospermic group (145.4 (41.5; 555.4) compared to the Donor Groups"

The below table compares the figures, in Teratozoospermic men Oxidative stress was 2.5 times higher than the 'proven donors' group;

So there appears to be a scientific consensus that there is a strong link between Oxidative Stress and poor sperm morphology. It is also accepted that antioxidants can help reduce oxidative stress.

Since 'Teratozoospermia' is essentially the term used to categorise men with seriously low morphology levels (0-4% according to the world Health Organisation), I'm led to believe that an enormous and ongoing dose of various antioxidants will improve my sperm morphology, and potentially move me out of the 'Teratozoospermia' bracket.

So the next step is to research antioxidants!