Low sperm count...end of the road?

Factual Questions
1

So the results are in. And the diagnosis is Low Sperm Count. This is like a hard blow to the stomach for me, since I’ve heard that this is the hardest form of infertility to overcome. Before going to the doctor (who isn’t available until the end of June) I’m going to do some research on natural remedies or things that can be done (aside from boxer shorts and no bike rides).

I just wanted to hear from some of the men and/or doctors on the board…is this really the end of the road? Or can one improve one’s sperm count?

2

Well my brother has both low sperm count and low motility. His is caused by having an extremely active lifestyle and riding his bike, surfing, and basically participating in any other extreme sporting thing there is. He developed varicose (sp?) veins. His doc was very optimistic, and told him there are surguries to fix his particular problem, and things that can be done if they still have not conceived in a year. He is 33 years old. There are a variety of things that can be done including invitro fertilization using both mom and dads parts etc…etc… You are not totally out of options, but researching each option is Key.

3

Yeah, he’s been recommended to go to a urologist before a fertility specialist. So we’ll see what he has to say. Although the husband is a firm believer in ‘everything happens for a reason’ and I’m almost positive he’ll see surgery as ‘fiddling with nature’s plan’. I’m hoping things like vitamin supplements and lifestyle changes will help.

4

Folic acid may help apparently.

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/centers/2001news/ctrnews7.htm

5

Does this mean he eats all his food raw? I mean, if God/Nature had meant us to eat cooked food, we’d have had little stoves in our throats, right? If he had a child born with a clubfoot or a cleft palate, or a defective heart valve, would he opt against surgery because after all, that must be nature’s/God’s plan? I guess if conception occurs, birth will be at home, without benefit of any pharmaceuticals, because, after all, that’s Nature’s plan? I could go on, but probably have done so for too long already. Why bother to look at the possible causes, in this case of low sperm count, if nothing’s supposed to be done anyway?

6

No, I didn’t mean it in that way. He’s a reasonable man who’s benefitted from surgery and medication and the like, but if a doctor says he wants to roto root his urethra or something I can see him being a little squeamish and suggesting that perhaps conception wasn’t meant to be.

7

A friend of mine has a very low sperm count and low motility. He and his wife tried artificial insemination for several months with no success. Finally they spend thousands of $ on IVF. Unfortunately, because of the poor sperm, very few embryos were viable. They implanted them all and none took hold.

Finally they gave up on all the procedures, and decided to take a break for a few months. The second month after they quit, she was pregnant. They are due in September.

So don’t give up hope!

8

If the sperm he does have look like good swimmers, he can give several samples that can be washed and doctored, and then you can be artificially inseminated to give you a better chance, without any surgery or much hassle.

If that doesn’t work, a combination of in-vitro along with ICSI (intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection) is something you can look into. With ICSI they take a single sperm cell and inject it directly into an egg cell. Thus, you don’t need many sperm to start with.
But of course, going through in-vitro isn’t an inexpensive or trivial process.

9

Meanwhile, off in sperm La-La land
Japanese find 1st new vitamin in 55 years:

10

Anything that improves your fertility level will also help. My mom being a case in point (or rather, my step-dad). Six years of trying with his first wife (all failed, secondary infertility after one child) led to a divorce for them, after which he met my mom. She has very high fertility (first try kind of fertility, and no-try kind of fertility, as I was conceived with a copper coil IUD in place). Three months of trying (not even doing the ‘wait four days between tries to get the highest sperm count’ thing, either), and she was pregnant.

He later remarried (again, to a younger woman), and still with a ‘too low to have kids’ sperm count, proceeded to have two more kids. The infertile-due-to-low-sperm-count guy then had to get snipped to keep from having more kids.

The first ex was overweight, but otherwise normal (as far as they could tell at the time, this being 30 years ago). My mom doesn’t remember what my step-dad’s count was, but does recall that they did not think it likely that he could have more kids, even with my mom. They went beyond the normal ‘wait’ zone, too, in asking them to abstain for four days at a time instead of three.

The only thing remarkable and similar between my mom and now-ex-wife-number-three (with whom he had the two other kids) is that they both have strong reactions to hormones - preovulatory interest increase is high. So they time things really well (or poorly, depending on whether they were actively ttc) just by their degree of interest and reactions. No idea if either of them have particularly favorable CM/CF, though. (Just that much info was TMI for me, I really don’t want to ask for more…)

But my lesson learned: Anything that gets more swimmers to the goal on time is of benefit. So you can ‘help’ along with him by doing things that generally improve female fertility, if you want to make it feel more like a paired burden than his alone. Taking Charge of Your Fertility would be my resource on that.

I also know one other guy who had his ‘bag of worms’ repaired (large varicosity problem in the scrotum). He had a reasonably normal ‘trying’ span post-repair, and now has a nearly-1-yr old. No idea what his sperm count was, before, only know that he was told he might have trouble due to the varicosity, and had it repaired.

Hope the urologist finds something easy to fix, like varicosity. The bounce-back count on that one is pretty fast, IIRC.

Best of luck!

11

Jar, I know it’s been a tough time for you, but at least you now have an idea of where the problem lies…and you can start tackling it together, which is not great comfort, but the best I can offer.

If Mr Jar is a smoker or drinker, he should give up. Try to eat as much zinc as possible…shellfish is good, or a supplement if he has an allergy.

I really want to wish you both well, and to send you good thoughts.

12

Jarbaby,

Sorry to hear that. Please know there are lots of couples who have conceived children with low sperm counts.

There is so much medicine available out there…it all is hard to grasp, at first, while you’re going through IF.

Good luck…Please keep us posted…(been wondering how you were doing!)

13

I hope this doesn’t sound callous, but as soon as I read the OP, I thought to myself “Well of course jarbabyj has low sperm count! If she doesn’t, then she’s been doing a pretty good job of fooling folks on the message board!”.

14

Jarby,

As mentioned before doctors can harves good swimmers from a sample and you can go AI or the ICSI route, in a worst case there’s always donor.

15

My wife and I have been seeing a fertility specialist for over a year. We just got official word (blood test results) that she is pregnant yesterday.

My wife has had problems with ovarian cysts, but the doctor checked my sperm count, also. It was borderline low. The doctor didn’t put me on any medicine, but said if he had needed to, he could have had me take Clomid to increase my sperm count. Like has been mentioned, several “collections” can be washed, frozen, and stored to be used in a single insemination.

My wife read all the stories about switching to boxers and taking vitamins (vitamin B and zinc are what she had me taking) and such. None of it had any real effect. We were doing artifical inseminations, so I was getting my count every month.

Funny thing is, we were doing the wait three days before the insemination stuff until last month. The doctor told us this month to have sex on the night two days before the insemination. We did the insemination with a day and a half of absitinence, and my overall sperm count was lower than usual, but my motile sperm count was about 3x what it usually was. Then we threw in more sex that night just for good measure. :slight_smile:
The whole time we’ve been trying (and I won’t feel like we’re out of the woods until the baby is actually born), we’ve had a lot of well-meaning people tell us to stop trying so hard, or some other such thing, to try to comfort us. So, I’m trying to not sound like that. Low sperm count doesn’t mean you can’t have a baby. Send him to the urologist. Both of you should see the fertility doctor. There are still options.

16

Eat raw, not cooked, garlic plus lots of water. (Cooking the garlic destroys the effective chemical compounds.)

Chew completely and swallow a clove or two with breakfast or dinner EVERY day. Honey, syrup, or sugar help reduce some of the heat. Co-workers or family may make snide remarks after about three days because of his bodily “scent”, but tell them to shut up and mind their own business. Semen volume and sex drive should begin to noticably increase by day four.

Garlic’s cheap and the only side effects are body & breath odor (which really isn’t so bad if he keeps clean and brushes) and possibly indigestion or heartburn when combined with certain foods, e.g. highly acidic tomato-based sauces.