What causes Teratozoospermia?

I've obviously been doing a lot of research into this recently, while I'm now convinced there appears to be a link between a lack of antioxidants and Teratozoospermia (see previous post), it doesn't explain everything away.

I know people who are a lot older than me, people who drink excessively, smoke, don't exercise and are generally unhealthy who have all managed to have kids.

It doesn't make sense, people have been having kids since the dawn of time without requiring huge amount of antioxidants, there must be more to it, so i did some more digging and here's what i found;

1. Nobody really knows what causes it

That's it!

Hodgkin's disease, coeliac disease, Crohn's disease, smoking, Varicocele, drugs, STD's, poor diet, pesticides, infections, excessive heat, diabetes, age, chemotherapy, excessive trauma, pollution, lifestyle.

All of these things could contribute to poor sperm morphology and lead to Teratozoospermia. But this is largely theoretical or based on limited evidence. And none of them truly impact me.

The only things i can think of which may apply to me could be Alcohol and genetics;

Alcohol; Yes, it appears as though Alcohol can really mess things up;

-  Alcohol can have profound deleterious effects at all levels of the male reproductive system.

- 'It causes impaired testosterone production, enormous testicular oxidative stress and testicular atrophy.'

ENORMOUS Oxidative stress! Time and time again it appears as a cause of poor sperm morphology, however I don't think i drink enough Alcohol to cause catastrophic damage to my sperm production, i probably only drink about 7 beers a week on average (but that's usually in one evening). That might cause some damage, but wouldn't be enough to render me totally infertile surely?

There's another study about the link between Oxidative Stress and Sperm which included some interesting figures about alcohol (see below) - people who had consumed alcohol in the last 3 months had a significantly lower sperm count, but they actually had slightly higher motility and concentration;

There are a lot more factors in play here which I'm breezing over, but essentially I'm just going to cut back on Alcohol. No more than 2 beers in any one evening should be fine, I'm not going to cut it out completely (that would be just too depressing!)

Genetics; A few websites touch upon this. They essentially suggest that the factory which produces the sperm is defective due to my genetics. Therefore the factory produces defective sperm with fragmented DNA. If this is the case then there is truly nothing that can be done for me, its simply the way I've been built, i cant change that any more than i can change the colour of my eyes... This study talks a little bit more about missing DNA sequences which could cause sperm to be defective, but it doesn't really mean much to me.

Perhaps my Dad has Teratozoospermia and its been passed on to me & amplified? Who knows (I'm hoping its not that).

Day 0 - The test results

So today, after 18 months of trying to conceive, I picked up the results of my sperm test.

They're not great;

0% Normal morphology. Zero. The doctor said he's only ever seen one other case like it.

Diagnosis; Severe Teratozoospermia, technically I'm totally infertile.

The doctor informs me Teratozoospermia (aka Teratospermia) is a condition whereby the sperm are simply unable to penetrate the egg due to their shape. In my case the heads are either too big, too small, too long or too short, and the egg just wont allow it. Theres a video on this website which better explains things, anything below 4% morphology and you are classed as having Teratozoospermia.

As things currently stand, 0% morphology suggests i have literally zero chance of getting my wife pregnant, and this thought genuinely saddens me to my very core.

But I've decided I'm not going to sit here and cry about it, I'm going to research the hell out of this condition and I'm going to try and fix it.

I've searched around the internet and cant find much about Teratozoospermia, there're a few websites that provide more information on the condition, but not much support out there from the male perspective (as far as i can see so far anyway). So i figure I'd start a blog to detail my journey. If i happen to stumble across a regime or 'cure' which significantly improves my morphology i figure its best to share it with the world.

The doctor has given me some advice on improving my sperm morphology, and wants to see me again in 3 months for a retest. He said there are a few ray's of hope on my results; The motility (51%) and the volume (437 million) is quite good. Theres a chance a few of my guys are making it to the egg on a regular basis, they just cant crack it.

But If i can get the morphology up to just 1%, that equates to a whopping 4.37 million normal sperm, and our chances of successfully conceiving go up dramatically.

So that's my target, 1%.