Sleep. It’s the necessity of every living human being out there but not getting enough of it (or even too much of it) could spell trouble for your sperm.
According to science experts, getting between seven and seven and a half hours sleep each night is the perfect catalyst for healthy sperm. There’s a downside though – go over nine hours of sleep a day and the sperm’s health rating drops significantly by 41 percent. At the other end of the spectrum is sleep deprivation. Give yourself six and a half hours or less and your sperm will be 30 percent less healthy.
Researchers say that healthy sperm in men is characterised by the nominal amount of normal DNA and protein in semen samples.
“This is new information, after our previous finding that sleep duration has an inversed association with semen volume and total sperm count,” said the co-author of the study, Dr Jia Cao, said.
“This is new information, after our previous finding that sleep duration has an inversed association with semen volume and total sperm count. In the previous study, we found that these two semen parameters were highest when sleep is seven to seven and a half hours per day.”
“Either longer or shorter sleep was associated with the decrease of the two semen parameters.”
These startling findings are the result of a comprehensive study amongst 2,020 semen samples from 796 men between 2013 and 2015. The researchers here wanted to find out whether daily sleep patterns had any effect on the structural integrity of sperm DNA in the hopes of assisting couples trying to conceive.
If sleep sounds like too much of a hassle then perhaps try these special underpants designed to protect your balls from smartphone radiation.