Up until fairly recently, if a woman couldn’t get pregnant, doctors and specialists concentrated only on her, but now we know that men can affect a couple’s fertility as well. If you’re part of a couple that isn’t getting pregnant, it could be because of your sperm, but there is no need to worry because more often than not, there is something you can do about it. Let’s take a look at some of these issues more closely.

 

What You Need to Know First

According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, when a couple can’t get pregnant, the issue is related to the man’s sperm one-third of the time. Sperm needs to be the right shape, which means long strong tails and rounded heads; be present in the right quantity, which is at least 15 million per milliliter (mL) of semen; and have good movement, which means that you need at least 40% of your sperm to be strong swimmers. A trip to your doctor can help you determine all three of these things.

One of the first things that your doctor may tell you is that the better shape you’re in, the better the chances of achieving a pregnancy. This means the usual recommendations, including eating right, exercising, not smoking, and limiting your intake of alcohol. Eating right is important because there is such a thing as eating the right food for healthy sperm.

Here are a few things you’ll want to make sure that you add to your diet:

• Nuts, especially walnuts, almonds, and hazelnuts. Every time a study is done, it confirms that eating nuts regularly helps with numerous sexual issues. One study confirmed that sperm count can be increased by up to 15% when these nuts are consumed regularly.
• Vitamin B12. Since vitamin B12 prevents damage from free radicals, it can protect your sperm from the stress of those free radicals and also from inflammation. The vitamin is found in fish, meat, and dairy products.
• Vitamin C. Vitamin C can be found in large quantities in food such as potatoes, spinach, berries, and citrus fruit, to name a few. It can increase your sperm count, sometimes even doubling it after around four months.
• Lycopene, which is what gives food such as tomatoes and watermelon their red color. Lycopene reduces reactive oxygen species (ROS) in the body, which harms sperm. If you take in 4 to 8 mg of lycopene per day, it can help with both sperm motility and sperm count.

In addition, you should also make sure you get enough zinc and vitamin D if you’re low in either of them, and consider adding coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) to improve the quality of your semen, as well as Ashwagandha root extract, which does what lycopene does for sperm count and motility. And while CoQ10 is a little on the pricey side depending on where you buy it from, most of these other supplements are inexpensive and easy to find.

 

The Relationship Between Sperm and the Foods That You Eat

When the first doctors claimed there is a relationship between what we eat and our chances of getting cancer, people thought they were crazy, but the truth is, the food we eat can affect a lot of factors regarding our health. If you want to learn about the food good for sperm count or what foods make sperm thicker and stronger, keep reading.

To be sure, what you eat makes a difference when it comes to everything related to your sperm, including the three most-important “musts” listed earlier. Here is a list of foods that are excellent for men who are trying to correct and improve their fertility issues.

• Foods high in zinc. These include lean beef short ribs, pork chops, pumpkin seeds, and -- no surprise here -- raw oysters!
• Foods high in vitamin C. This includes foods such as guava, Brussels sprouts, red bell peppers, and strawberries.
• Foods high in folate and folic acid, including black-eyed peas, spinach, and fortified cereals.
• Foods rich in vitamin E, which include safflower oil, sunflower seeds, beet greens, and almonds.

Each of these foods offers an advantage when you’re trying to build up your sperm, whether you’re trying to make it faster, thicker, or healthier all the way around, and most of them are also tasty and good for you in many other ways as well. When wondering what foods produce sperm fast or what foods improve the motility of your sperm, keep one thing in mind: you should always choose fresh and healthy foods chock full of various vitamins and minerals.

To be sure, learning more about how to increase penile health or even learning whether eating berries and grapes in pregnancy is the right thing to do, is indeed very simple. Also remember that with any of these or any other fertility issues, it’s best if you rely on your fertility doctor instead of trying to go online and be an armchair physician. Fertility issues can be simple or complex to remedy, but you’ll never know for sure until you visit the right type of doctor for assistance.

 

Conclusion

If you’re a man with fertility issues, taking good care of yourself can help. Numerous things can affect the sperm, especially as you get older, but eating right, keeping yourself at a healthy weight, not smoking, and limiting your intake of alcohol can all help. Foods rich in vitamins E, C, and B12, as well as zinc and folic acid, can help with the health of your sperm, as well as its motility and the amount of sperm in your semen. It’s not as difficult as you think.