For all men who are worried about their sperm count, here’s a bit of a news that might interest you.
Your underwear choices might also affect the quality of your sperms. Yes, you read that right.
A study, published in the journal Human Reproduction, concluded that men who wore loose fitting underwears or boxers had 25% more concentration of sperms and 17% increase of total sperm count than men who wore tighter pants or briefs.
For the study, scientists at the Harvard T H Chan School of Public Health analysed the the blood and semen samples of over 650 men who were seeking treatment for fertility at Massachusetts General Hospital. This enabled them to study not only the sperm quality and quantity but also analyse the hormone levels and DNA damage, if any.
The men were also made to answer questions regarding their lifestyle, diet and exercise routines along with their underwear preferences. The scientists intended to study the link between all these factors to figure out whether there was a scientific explanation for the correlations.
In addition to the previous findings, the scientists also found that men who wore loose underwear also had 33% more swimming sperms per ejaculation than others who wore tighter ones.
Though there was no difference found between the DNA quality of the sperms between the sets of men who wore different types of underwear.
Surprisingly, the team also found that the men who wore boxers also had 14% lower levels of a sex hormone known as ‘follicle stimulating hormone (FSH)’ which helps in the production of sperms.
The explanation behind this process seems to be that when sperms gets damaged by a tight fitting underwear, the brain responds by producing more FSH to try and rectify the situation. Hence despite having poorer quality of sperms, these men had high levels of FSH.
These results were found to be in sync even after taking note of variables such as BMI, frequency of hot showers, smoking etc.
The study has still not demonstrated a clear correlation between the type of underwear and sperm count/quality and whether all these sperms translate into pregnancy. The authors feel that more research is required in this field covering more aspects like the fabric of the underwear, the different types of pants wore etc.
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