Over millions of years, evolution by natural selection has produced adaptations in humans: biological and psychological traits that improved human survival and reproduction in ancestral environments. For example, ripe fruit was an infrequent but calorically rich part of the human ancestral diet. We therefore have a sweet tooth that rewards us when we eat ripe fruit.
Tag: diet
ASRM: Dietary Glycemic Load Linked to Sperm Concentration
(HealthDay News) Increased carbohydrate intake and dietary glycemic load and increased intake of full-fat dairy products are associated with worse semen quality, according to two studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, held from Oct. 20 to 24 in San Diego.
Jorge E. Chavarro, M.D., Sc.D., from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues examined the association between carbohydrate intake and semen quality using data from 189 men, aged 18 to 22 years, recruited for the Rochester Young Men’s Study in 2009 to 2010. The researchers found that there was a suggestion of an inverse association for total carbohydrate intake with sperm concentration (P = 0.08 for trend). Dietary glycemic load correlated with lower sperm concentration (P for trend = 0.04). Sperm motility and morphology were unrelated to carbohydrate intake or glycemic load. Read full article.
Can Cheese Harm a Man’s Fertility?
Young men who eat more than three slices of cheese a day may be risking their chances of becoming fathers, according to research. Even small amounts of full-fat dairy food have been shown to dramatically impair their fertility.
Harvard academics have discovered that men who eat just three portions a day had poorer quality sperm compared to others. A portion included an ounce of cheese (28g), a teaspoon of cream, a scoop of ice cream or glass of full-fat milk.
The researchers believe that female hormones that occur naturally in milk may be interfering with men’s ability to reproduce. Read full article.
Weight Loss Does Not Improve Fertility
HERSHEY, Pa. — Losing weight does not lead to improved fertility in women, but does improve sexual function, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers.
“Obesity in women has been linked to lack of ovulation and thus infertility,” said Richard Legro, M.D., professor of obstetrics and gynecology. “Obesity, especially centered in the abdomen, among infertile women seeking pregnancy is also associated with poor response to ovulation induction and with decreased pregnancy rates.”
Obese women are often told to lose weight prior to conception, so researchers looked at changes in reproductive function after gastric bypass surgery. One way to learn more about the effects of obesity on reproduction is to study women after bariatric surgery, since a large amount of weight is lost in a relatively short period of time. Each person can be studied while obese and after surgery to detect changes. Researchers report their findings in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Researchers followed 29 morbidly obese women — women whose body fat accumulated to the extent that it may have an adverse effect on health — of reproductive age for up to two years after Roux en Y gastric bariatric bypass surgery. Roux en Y is a procedure that creates a small pouch in the stomach that is directly connected to the midsection of the small intestine, bypassing the rest of the stomach and the upper portion of the small intestine. Read full article.
Healthy Diet Makes Better Sperm
Tuesday Oct 9, 2012 (foodconsumer.org) — Eating a healthy diet improves the mobility of sperm in young men, according to a study recently released in Human Reproduction.
A.J. Gaskins at Department of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, MA and colleagues conducted the study and found men in the highest quartile of intake of a Prudent diet had 11.3 percent higher percentage of progressively motile sperm, compared with men in the lowest quartile. Read full article.
Orange City Mother Beats Infertility With Weight Loss
ORANGE CITY— When it came to having a baby, Holly Hancock wasn’t having the same success as her family and friends.
Hancock, 33, had struggled with weight her entire life, and by her early 30s she reached 257 pounds. After several failed attempts to conceive, Hancock learned that she had polycystic ovary syndrome, a condition that affects a woman’s fertility and hormones. Many women who have weight issues struggle with PCOS, which causes a hormone imbalance that can make it difficult to lose weight. Read full article.
Infertility in Obese Women May be Due to Damaged Egg, Brigham Study Finds
Obesity has long been associated with infertility as well as lower success rates with in vitro fertilization, and now researchers think they understand why: Obese women are more likely to have abnormalities in their eggs that make them impossible to fertilize.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital infertility researchers examined nearly 300 eggs that failed to fertilize during IVF in both severely obese women and those with a normal body weight. They found that severely obese women were far more likely to have abnormally arranged chromosomes within their eggs compared with women who weren’t overweight, according to the study published Wednesday in the journal Human Reproduction. Read full article.
Excess Weight Can Lead to Weighty Sexual Issues
Obesity can negatively affect a person’s sexual enjoyment, and sadly, it can also make people less likely to practice safer sex. Some research even shows that obesity can prevent open communication between doctors and patients when it comes to issues of sexual concern.
A recent study from Duke University Medical Center found that obese people are likely to suffer from a number of sexual difficulties, including lack of sexual enjoyment, performance difficulty, and sexual avoidance. The research found that obese individuals are likely to suffer from these symptoms up to 25 times more than peers of a healthy weight. Read full article.
Dads Should Get Fit Before Reproducing to Assist with Fetal Development
A father’s obesity negatively impacts sperm, which results in smaller fetuses, poor pregnancy success and decreased placental development, according to a team of experts at the University of Melbourne’s Department of Zoology.
The study urges men to get ‘match fit’ before getting their women pregnant to help with fetal development. Scientists are now encouraging men to shape up, even though health risks of obesity and pregnancy are usually focused on overweight moms.
According to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO), 75% of Australian adult males are overweight or obese, which significantly exceeds the global average rate of 48%.
The research, led by Professor David Gardner, Dr. Natalie Hannan and Ph.D. student Natalie Binder, will be presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Endocrine Society of Australia and the Society for Reproductive Biology 2012, starting August 26 to 29 on the Gold Coast. Read full article.
A Pack of Walnuts a Day Keeps the Fertility Specialist Away?
Aug. 15 in Biology of Reproduction‘s Papers-in-Press reveals that eating 75 grams of walnuts a day improves the vitality, motility, and morphology of sperm in healthy men aged 21 to 35.
Approximately 70 million couples experience subfertility or infertility worldwide, with 30 to 50 percent of these cases attributable to the male partner. Some studies have suggested that human semen quality has declined in industrialized nations, possibly due to pollution, poor lifestyle habits, and/or an increasingly Western-style diet.
Dr. Wendie Robbins and her colleagues at the University of California, Los Angeles decided to investigate whether increasing polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), which are critical for sperm maturation and membrane function, would increase sperm quality in men consuming a Western-style diet.
The best sources of dietary PUFAs in a Western-style diet include fish and fish oil supplements, flax seed, and walnuts, the latter of which are rich sources of α-linolenic acid (ALA), a natural plant source of omega-3. Read full article.