CoQ10

I'm buying tome CoQ10.

While trawling the internet for more information on antioxidants, I found a useful summary which provided collection of studies on the effects of anti oxidants on sperm. Most interesting of this was this table, which provides an overview of all the studies, the anti-oxidants, and the results.

This study immediately caught my eye;

"RESULTS:

Mean sperm concentration, sperm progressive motility, and sperm with normal morphology improved significantly after 12-month CoQ(10) therapy by 113.7, 104.8, and 78.9%, respectively (all Ps < 0.05). The overall pregnancy rate was 34.1% within a mean of 8.4 ± 4.7 months.

CONCLUSIONS:

CoQ(10) supplementation improves semen quality with beneficial effect on pregnancy rate."

WOW! CoQ10 can improve sperm morphology by nearly 80%? 34% of participants had a spontaneous pregnancy during the study?! These are incredible figures!

This study was apparently a year long and involved 287 people taking 300mg of CoQ10 twice a day, so this isn't an overnight cure, but its a solid study and a promising start.

I've no idea if my poor sperm morphology is caused by oxidative stress or not, but even if its not, some CoQ10 apparently wont hurt my overall health, all of the CoQ10 studies appeared to have some sort of positive impact on sperm, with the higher doses having the greatest impact, so I'm heading over to Amazon now to do some shopping.

Lycopene (the tomato antioxidant)

I'm going to eat a lot more Tomatoes.

So, at the moment Antioxidants appears to be the way forward for improving Sperm morphology. And it turns out, there are loads of different types of Antioxidants.

In conducting my research I've come across another promising antioxidant called Lycopene. Lycopene is commonly found in tomatoes and other red vegetables. Something that my diet currently lacks.

There are a few promising articles about Lycopene and the effects on sperm (here, here, and here), the key headline appears to be 'New 'tomato pill' could SUPERCHARGE sperm by 70 per cent'

There is one old study here which suggests 4mg of Lycopene a day for 3 months had this result;

"Twenty patients (66%) showed an improvement in sperm concentration, sixteen (53%) had improved motility and fourteen (46%) showed improvement in sperm morphology."

There are clinical trials underway right now to prove whether 7mg can lead to further improvements, the supplement being tested has been developed by the university of Cambridge and can be found here.

While the previous studies appear promising, I'm reluctant to shell out cash for a somewhat unproven supplement, instead I've researched how many tomatoes I'll need to eat to get a daily dose of Lycopene.

This website suggests a simple tin of tomato soup will give me a whopping 13mg of Lycopene! so I'm going to adjust my diet accordingly to try and consume at least a tin of tomato soup a day.

UPDATE: This article reports on the effects a tin of tomato soup has on Lycopene levels in the testies (the antioxidant was detected but they didn't do any analysis into the impact on sperm).

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%.