Dear Healthy Men: My wife and I are planning to start a family and her doctor suggested that she start taking prenatal vitamins to prepare her body for pregnancy. When I asked the doctor whether there was anything I should be doing to increase the chances of a healthy pregnancy and baby, she just laughed — which I thought was really insulting. I find it hard to believe that as someone who’s going to be contributing 50% of the genes to our new baby, what I eat and do before the pregnancy is irrelevant. Am I wrong?
A: You’re right — on several counts. First, it sounds like your wife’s doctor was channeling Homer Simpson, who once said, “I never thought of fatherhood as something that could affect a kid.” Both Homer and the doctor are very much mistaken (although Homer has a better excuse). Second, what you eat and do before your wife gets pregnant can be very important.
To start with, your ability to impregnate your wife depends largely on your ability to produce healthy sperm, in terms of quantity, movement (their ability to reach the egg), and morphology (the sperms’ shape and amount of DNA damage). Numerous studies have shown that a variety of lifestyle factors can have a dramatic effect on your ability to become a father. For example, obesity is linked with lower sperm counts and less sperm movement; alcohol consumption can reduce sperm counts and cause impotence; the same goes for prolonged stress. Smoking (or vaping) tobacco or marijuana can increase the number of abnormal sperm you produce; and getting plenty of exercise can have the opposite effect. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health recently found that men who watched more than 20 hours of TV per week had a “44% lower sperm count than those who watched almost no TV,” and men who did 15 or more hours of moderate to vigorous exercise per week “had a 73% higher sperm count than those who exercised less than 5 hours per week.”
