NOTE TO READER: THIS BLOG POST HAS BEEN UPDATED SINCE ITS ORIGINAL POSTING IN 2020. WE NOW RECOMMEND ALL MALE PARTNERS TAKE REJOOVA SPERM & REJOOVA REPAIR ALONG WITH A GOOD QUALITY FISH OIL, E3 LIVE AND LIVER PILLS ALL SUPPLEMENTS CAN BE FOUND HERE: AIMEERAUPP.COM/FERTILITYSUPPLEMENTS PLEASE ADD IN VITAMIN D AS WELL IF YOUR PARTNERS D LEVELS ARE LOW (IDEAL RANGE IS BETWEEN 50-70 NG/MML)
Almost every woman we speak to assumes that their fertility struggles are caused by their own body. But did you know that about 1/3 – 1/2 of fertility struggles are caused by male factors?
In this video I’m talk about improving sperm health. I'll give you practical tools you can start using right away- AND I have some tips for same-sex couples on this journey as well.
Get the free Healthy Daddy Lifestyle PDF HERE
My main goal in my life, and my mission, and my purpose, and my platform is to help all of you reawaken to the best version of yourselves, help all of you heal and nourish yourselves on that deep, deep level.
A lot of you know me as a woman who helps other women get pregnant, and sure, that's a big part of what I do, but I do that through helping women heal themselves. Women who heal themselves, heal their children's children. My real mission is to make this world a better place one mama, one baby at a time, and I do that through educating you about nutrition, about lifestyle, about mental, emotional, spiritual health. And yeah, here we are.
So today we're talking about sperm. Yeah. If you want to make a baby, you need sperm. Whatever kind of relationship you're in, you need sperm, so it's an important topic. And it's also an important topic because sperm issues, male factor fertility issues play a role in about 50% of fertility challenges. A lot of the pressure falls on the woman. There's a popular book out there called It Starts with the Egg. The egg is important, but they're leaving out a really important piece there when, and it's putting so much pressure on the women. It is not appropriate to put all of that pressure on just us when male factor issues play a role in about 50, five, zero percent of the cases. So we know for certain one third of fertility challenges are male factor, but then there's about another, I don't know quarter to a third, depends on the research, that are both male and female related. So if you take that and the one third, about 50% of fertility challenges have a male factor issue.
And my approach is no matter what, even if sperm comes out looking great, we could always make it better. Right? And just as I always say, fertility is an extension of health, so that applies to men as well. And we're going to get into it now. I have some details for you and I also have a really nice, we're giving you basically all the bonus content that goes along with my bestselling book, with Yes, You Can Get Pregnant, and in there is the Healthy Daddy Diet, too, that I have. It's a one pager. It's pretty easy, simple to follow, but stick around and I'll give you access to that, or you can just private message me. Facebook, I think, we'll post the link, but Instagram just private message me, and we'll share the link with you. It's a page that's basically bonus content from, again, like I said, Yes, You Can Get Pregnant. It has shopping lists, the Healthy Daddy Diet, my top 10 fertility boosting nutrients, supplement suggestions, bonus suggestions, recipes, all sorts of really useful information for any of you wherever you are on this journey. So just Instagram, just private message us or DM us, and we'll get you the link, and Facebook we'll post the link in a little bit, because I don't want to distract you guys.
But so we're going to talk about sperm and how important it is. But first I want to just share with you a little bit of data from a very recent study, came out in 2019. I think it's in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine. According to a doctor at CCRM Fertility in Massachusetts, a semen analysis, so first actually I want to show this. Approximately 30 to 80% of, their using the I word, you know, I don't like to use the I word, but 30 to 80% of infertility cases are caused by oxidative stress, which basically means untimely aging and decreased level of seminal total antioxidant capacity. So basically means the sperm is oxidized, so it's just poor quality.
So approximately 30 to 80% of infertility cases are caused by oxidative stress and decreased levels of total sperm capacity. So the increased level of these reactive oxidative stress can be resulted from environmental factors, such as high temperatures, electromagnetic waves, that's your cell phone, that's your laptop. That's like a heated blanket with wires running through it. Sitting next to your wifi, all those screens, that's all that stuff. Air pollution, insecticides, alcohol, obesity, poor nutrition. There are evidence that sperm are simply affected by these toxins in our environment, lifestyle, dietary.
And so, I want to go over what a sperm analysis tells us and what the numbers should be so you guys have an idea. Okay? So the sperm analysis has three basic portions. It includes concentration, that's the total number of sperm per volume produced, motility, the number of sperm that swim in a sample, and morphology, the percentage of all sperm that have a normal shape. Now, a lot of sperm, men make millions of sperm, a lot of them are abnormally shaped, so morphology sounds like it's lower than it should be, but that's normal. Normal values include a concentration of 15 million per milliliter or greater, a total motility of 15 to 20 million per sample, and 4%, so that's all you need is just 4% normal looking sperm. Isn't that amazing? 4% or more normal morphology. If any of the semen analysis parameters are less than the above values, then further evaluation is recommended by your healthcare provider.
Typically what I do is, listen sperm can always be better. That's how I look at it. But if these numbers are off, we have the Healthy Daddy Diet that we're going to share with you guys. You guys can Instagram again, you can DM us for it; Facebook, we'll share the link. We have our dudes get on the Healthy Daddy Diet. And so even for same sex couples, obviously, you still need sperm, so depending on which same sex couple you're in, but if you're a female same sex couple, you're going to need a sperm donation, and so typically those sperm are checked, but if you're working with a donor that you know, we want them following this Healthy Daddy Diet. Right? Again, sperm quality plays a significant role in fertility and in pregnancy outcomes.
So I think there was a question here, when should you consider sperm donation? Gosh, if you've had several failed attempts and what you're doing isn't working, or I've only seen sperm donation necessary when the man isn't producing sperm, or that they actually have to go in and get the sperm out and it's just poor quality, so there's either a structural damage that's causing the quality to be poor, varicose seals, or just extremely low testosterone. That's the cases where I've seen sperm donation, and it's successful. So it's really up to you as the couple. I do think, similar to women how we can improve egg quality, we can improve our hormone levels, we can improve our uterine lining, men too can improve their sperm. So it depends. Have you tried everything? I think that's number one. And at what point are you at emotionally? Are you just ready to move on? Then it might be time to consider that.
So I do think that's a very emotional question, and I do think that is one for the couple to decide, not one that can be determined from … from my personal perspective, I've seen sperm improve many, many times. I've only had I think two cases that I can think of where there were sperm donation, and one was the husband had to undergo chemotherapy, so it was just really no coming back from that, so we use sperm donation. We tried with his sperm first. It wasn't successful. And then the other one was he didn't have any testosterone. He wasn't making sperm. And they tried to go in, they tried to give him Clomid. They tried to go in and get sperm to be regenerated, and they even injected his testicles and remove sperm, and it just didn't work. And so we tried, and the couple felt really good about their decision, and they're very happy with their children. So it, it worked out.
> Get the BEST SPERM SUPPLEMENTS HERE>> GetRejoova.com
These supplements are formulated by three fertility experts (including myself) and will help improve sperm motility, morphology and count.
But otherwise, I've seen very poor motility, poor morphology, poor count all improve, and I'm going to run through with you guys what I do clinically, what I've seen work, and then we also, like I said, have information for you guys, so just private message us for those resources.
“Does drink lemon water affect fertility?” I'm drinking mine right now. I don't think in a negative way. Lemon or citrus can alkalinize the body, and also helps, we say from a Chinese medicine perspective, detox the liver. So I think it's a positive thing for fertility, not a negative. Okay. So let me just make sure I'm not missing any other questions. “Husband and not fully on board for doing the diet work. My husband had normal analysis four years back. Do you think it might have changed now?” If you're not getting pregnant, I would definitely get a sperm analysis. I think people wait too long to get a sperm analysis. That's another thing I usually push for pretty quickly in my clinic is getting a sperm analysis.
So I'm going to go to my notes, because I got lots of notes for you guys.
So big things that impact sperm. So three major things, really four major things: diet, lifestyle, and mindset. So really three major things. And then there's five major things we can do to support.
So when it comes to diet, I really recommend that your men are eating the way you eat. If this is the book you have, and you've read it, and you're following it, the most important things is avoiding these six big nos, no gluten, no genetically modified foods.
If you do need to eat gluten, if your husband eats gluten, my husband eats gluten and he doesn't feel bad from it, it just has to be organic. He is not allowed to have non-organic gluten in this house. I control it as much as I can. That way when we do eat out, or he works from home, so I can control that a little bit better than, I mean, we're all working from home right now, so I guess we could all control that a little bit better. I had a meltdown the other day, because he bought non-organic bagels and he just assumed because he bought them at Trader Joe's they were organic, and I lost my mind for a little bit, because I'm so crazy about organic gluten if you're going to have it, because the pesticide load is just tremendous, and I don't want my little guy eating it, so I am a little insane about the gluten thing. I will admit it. And it's not about gluten per se. It's about the pesticide load on wheat, and especially in this country. So if your husband eats gluten, you've got to do your best to make sure they're doing organic wheat. Okay?
So let me go back to my six big nos, gluten. Okay, you guys got that on there. Genetically modified foods. So again, if you're eating organic, you're getting non-GMO. No soy. Soy is the worst for testosterone, so you got to be reading labels, because soy oil and soy protein is hidden in so many things. So if your husband is like an exercise guy and he likes those protein bars, you got to make sure there's no soy protein in any of those things. You don't have tofu. It's terrible for sperm. No pesticides, no artificial sweeteners. Okay. So, those are the big nos.
And now for men, I also think we spend some time talking about alcohol. Men tend to drink more than women. Men like beer. Beer tends to have gluten and it tends to not be organic. So again, a bad exposure there.
Yes. Soy is in everything, right? It's in everything. I had a man once coming to me for erectile dysfunction. He was coming to me for acupuncture for erectile dysfunction. Turns out, guess what? Vegetarian, eating like eight ounces of soy products a day. I was like, “You don't have erectile dysfunction, buddy. You don't have any testosterone, because you're eating so much goddamn soy. So remove the soy.” Boom. erectile dysfunction went away. Yeah. Soy. That was all it was. He couldn't believe it. He had gone vegetarian. He was feeling all healthy and fit. And he was. He was very healthy fit guy, very educated man. Like the whole thing. I mean, not that that differentiates. It was all his diet. It was all the soy in his diet. And they already had their children, so that wasn't a thing. He just wasn't, he couldn't get it up anymore. And it was the soy.
So look at ingredients. Your husband has a protein powder he likes, or protein bars he likes, you got to check those ingredients. And then I just make switches, and I actually educate my husband about it. I talked to him about it. I say, “Here's the research. Here's the damage that's being done. This is what you can do.” And he's on board when I show him that, because that's what he likes. He likes to see the data. I show him the data. And if you need the data, you can go to my book. I have a lot of research in all of my books on these topics.
And so the three big yeses. So for diet, they need to be eating good quality animal protein. You'll see when we go through the really important supplements for sperm health, like vitamin E, and vitamin C, and vitamin A, and zinc, and selenium, and the amino acids like L-carnitine and aspartic acid. Guess what? Eggs, animal protein, that's where you're finding it. So good quality protein, a ton of vegetables, and good quality fat. Those are the three big yeses that you need. Of course, some fruit for the antioxidants, and the vitamin C, and all this.
So the diet is so important. So basically I would love your partner eating the way you eat. I know that we can't control all of it, so even if it's an 80-20 rule where we just do our best. If your partner, when and if everybody goes back to work, and they're ordering from their places, or they do takeout, just start to help them find healthier options. We're New York City people. Well, we were when we first met, and I lined up some healthy options that he could order from, and he just generally felt better, because he wasn't eating like kind of this food that he didn't digest well. And so I made the changes from that direction and it really helped.
So diet, super important. Alcohol, if he's going to drink, if you can get him to drink a cleaner alcohol, something like vodka, or tequila, or a top shelf scotch that's, what's the word? Distilled, highly distilled, so a lot of the toxins are out, there's no added sugar, or a good quality wine. If you go to AimeeRaupp.com/wine, that is my Aimee approved wine. It's by Scout & Cellar. They're the only wine company out there that is testing for over 200 pesticides, and that includes their testing for the glyphosate, which is the worst pesticide for everybody on the planet. That's what we have in the house. We're not big drinkers, but that's what we have. If there was alcohol to be shared with others, and there's no beer. The gluten in the beer and the pesticide load, et cetera, et cetera. So if your husband's a big beer drinker, see if you can find some organic, small batch, ideally gluten-free beers. But if you can move him to wine, or vodka, or tequila, or scotch much better, and not mix with like Coca Cola. Seltzer water, lime, that kind of thing, no sugar added.
So as far as organic beers, I would just do a Google search. There's definitely a lot out there now. There's more and more. I look at Whole Foods. They tend to have some good organic beer selections. And then ideally, if you can find some gluten free ones, too, but even if you just went organic, that's a better switch, because you lower the pesticide load.
So let's get into what I think is the, so diet is huge. Lifestyle. So again, the study I read to you from approximately 30 to 80% of infertility cases are caused by oxidative stress. What that means is as I kind of break it down in my books is basically untimely aging. So it's compromising quality, whether that's motility, morphology, count, it doesn't matter. It's compromise quality of sperm, and this is coming from environmental toxins, so that's the pesticide in our foods, that's the genetically modified foods, that's the pesticides in our bath and beauty products. So the same thing. You're going clean with bath and beauty, he should, too. We do an overhaul. He's allowed to … He's allowed. I feel bad saying that, but that is kind of how it is in this house when it comes to this stuff, because I just know too much. He can use the shaving cream that he always likes, because he can't find anything that works for him otherwise. Otherwise he doesn't use anything toxic. Sometimes he sneaks in his Head & Shoulders shampoo. I usually make it disappear.
But, we keep it as clean as possible. All of our cleaning supplies, all of our laundry detergent, all of our sheets, like anything is as clean and chemical-free as it possibly can be, because that's the whole household. We drink filtered water. He drinks plenty of filtered water. Right? So you have to reduce these exposures as much as you possibly can. Of course, they are separate humans than us. We can do the best we can do, but you have to.
And then electromagnetic waves. We have those pillows. They're, what are they called? I'm totally blanking. I'm so sorry. I swear I will get the link for you guys, but they reduce the radiation. So they separate. So even for James, when he watches, he watches on a Kindle, not an iPad, and there's like the 3G or whatever. My husband did all this research. So, and there's a screen for James, so he doesn't get all that blue light exposure, but also I make him use it on a pillow so it can't sit on his lap directly. Same thing with my husband. We have these pillows that separate. He does not put his laptop directly on his lap. Super important. Our wifi is in one area of the house and not anywhere near the bedrooms. There's no wifi or extra electricity in our bedrooms. Everything is, we have one alarm clock that runs on a battery, and that's it basically in the bedroom. There's no TV. So we really try to minimize our exposure that way to the electromagnetic waves.
Air pollution. We also do have the Molekule air purifiers in all of the bedrooms, which gets rid of a lot of the toxins. It's M-O-L-E-K-U-L-E. Insecticides. Of course, my husband loves to do stuff in the yard, and we try to do as clean as we can. He wears a mask if he needs to that type of thing. Alcohol consumption.
I already went over obesity. If the testicles get too hot, it's going to affect quality, and so he can come from being overweight, he can come from too tight underpants, he can come from saunas, hot showers, hot tubs. All of these things really need to be, of course, everything in moderation. My husband loves to cycle, and he wears his cycling pants that have the extra guard around his testicles, and that's fine. Yeah. His extra exercise is really important for his mental health and for his overall health, so we pick and choose our battles, and he sits in the sauna once in a while, but not that much. So again, we pick and choose our battles, but the overheating is really important. So them sleeping in super tight underwear, not a good idea. If there really is a sperm issue, sleeping naked is probably the best thing you can do for sperm. And then there's also, I saw Marc Sklar talking about, I'm going to forget the name of it, but it's a thing that you can use to cool down the testicles. It's basically like an ice pack that you sit on and it cools the testicles, and it has been shown, there's some scientific evidence showing to improve overall quality of sperm. That's motility, morphology, and count by just cooling down the testicles. So to keep all of that in mind.
“What about if he sits all day at the desk?” Yes. So they say on average men sit for 12 hours a day and that can really impact sperm. You can get like a stand sit desk. I think that's a really smart way to go. The stand sit desks can have such a big impact and improve things. Have him set an alarm on his phone that every 20 minutes he's up and moving around. You could get those sperm ice packs that I was talking about. It's, oh my gosh. I cannot remember the name, but I'll get it for you guys. But it's basically, or just have him sit on an ice pack. Like every hour can he go get some, does he have a mini fridge if he's at the office or is he working from home? Can he sit on an ice pack? It'll help cool things down. Fans, loose fitting clothing, all of that will help, but getting up and moving around is really important, because like I said, we're sitting a lot more now than ever before and it's definitely impacting sperm quality.
I think it impacts women, too, in ovulation. It's just we're not moving as much as we need to, and our hips are tighter, and everything's just tighter in there.
“Does NSAIDs affect sperm?” I don't know if I've seen that in the research, but I would think at some point it could impact overall health, which again, fertility is an extension of health. So why are they taking the NSAIDs? Is there something else we need to get to the root of? Is there inflammation in the body? Because inflammation for certain is going to impact sperm health.
“How long do you think it takes to detox from years of environmental toxins?” I would say at least three months, probably six, nine months. My husband was on antibiotics for a week, and that impacts sperm quality. Short term, sperm regenerates every 72 hours. It has a faster turnover than eggs, so short term, that stuff shouldn't do damage. If someone was on like courses and courses of antibiotics, yeah, absolutely that could impact sperm health.
So let's get back to the important information for you guys, because I want to really cover everything that I have in my notes. So we went over diet, we went over lifestyle factors. So let's talk about things that we can do right now to get the sperm jamming, to get it better. You want to go for, so again, just Instagram private message me for the link, because I have the Healthy Daddy Diet and I have all of this laid out in there, and then Facebook, we're going to post it for you guys.
Basically your guy needs to, I'm just going to read from my Healthy Daddy Diet that you guys, avoid the big nos, like we went over in the diet, go organic, take a fish oil supplement every day. Omega-3s or healthy quality fats, extremely important to sperm quality, to overall health, to reducing inflammation in your husband's body, which would impact sperm, so I say about two grams of a good quality fish oil supplement every day. We take cod liver oil in this house, because it naturally has vitamin A and D, which are great for our immune system, great for our overall health, fat soluble vitamins. Also, guess what? Great for sperm quality. So we take about two to three grams of a good quality fish oil, cod liver oil, every single day. All of the supplements I recommend are on my website, AimeeRaupp.com. Right under Shop you'll see Aimee's Recommended Products. You can go there.
Another thing that is really important for sperm quality is a greens superfood supplement every single day. We tend to take E3Live in this house. We take the RenewMe! The E3Live also has the liquid us green juices that it's like a green superfood drink. Sorry, their shots. It's not cheap, but if I need to majorly impact sperm, that's what I do, and it works every time. I get a guy to do a month's supply of the liquid E3Live, do one shot a day, sperm quality improves across the board.
So two really important things, get him on the liver supplements. So you guys know I recommend the grass fed beef liver supplements in all of my books, but really important for female fertility. Also, really important for male fertility, because liver has zinc, and selenium, and vitamin A all naturally occurring. Guess what? The supplements that are so important for sperm are zinc, selenium, oh, and liver has folate. Folate, vitamin A, B12, liver has B12, and vitamin C.
And then there's a couple of amino acids, like D-aspartic acid and L-carnitine. No not L-carnitine. L-arginine, sorry. I always confuse them. L-arginine super important for sperm health, as well, which those are amino acids, so they're found in good quality animal products, things like eggs, things like grass fed beef. If you could get the bone broth into your husband.
> Get the BEST SPERM SUPPLEMENTS HERE>> GetRejoova.com
These supplements are formulated by three fertility experts (including myself) and will help improve sperm motility, morphology and count.
So my husband'll eat my bone broth egg drop soup. He enjoys it. Otherwise, I just cook with it. Like last night I made this nice chicken dish. It was like a saucy chicken dish. Guess what the sauce was. Bone broth. He's like slapping it up. Other really good quality foods. Again, this list is going to be in what we share with you guys, so you don't have to write this all down. You're going to have it. Just message us for the link, and Facebook, we're going to post the link very soon. Things like oysters, liver, pastured butter, asparagus, Brazil nuts, salmon, walnuts, pumpkin seeds, blueberry, kale, grapefruit, amazing for sperm quality.
So I have my husband take the liver pills every day. Like I said, he does the E3Live, too. We cook with butter. He loves asparagus. He eats salmon, blueberries. We can get in him pumpkin seeds. Eh, sometimes I can get them to do some seeds, but so I pick and choose what I can do.
Minerals, minerals are really important to overall health, but to also to sperm quality. We drink filtered water. We drink a lot of filtered water. We have very little alcohol and caffeine. We do each have a cup of organic coffee a day. We have it with protein and some fat, add a scoop of vital proteins, collagen peptides to that. That also gives you the amino acids, which is really good for sperm health.
> Get the BEST SPERM SUPPLEMENTS HERE>> GetRejoova.com
These supplements are formulated by three fertility experts (including myself) and will help improve sperm motility, morphology and count.
“My husband likes to eat dessert after almost every meal. How much …” Sugar is very inflammatory and it will definitely impact sperm quality across the board and just general health, so I really encourage, again, following what I have laid out in here, which is no more than 10 to 15 grams of added sugar a day, which happens fast. So start making the desserts for him. There's so many ways you can get sweet stuff without added sugar. We use dates. We use molasses. We use some honey or maple syrup, which also still have sugar, and sugar is sugar is sugar, but processed sugars are just a lot worse for us, so I would start baking for your husband and find ways to get creative and make things sweet that aren't as inflammatory and potentially toxic.
“What do you know about Pycnogenol maritime pine bark morphology? Does it improve?” It can. Those are all powerful antioxidants. Dr. Braverman, the doctor I was talking about, he used those in his sperm DNA fragmentation supplement and absolutely. Really any powerful antioxidant is going to help. Pycogenol is found in my latest supplement line, Rejoova Sperm. Get yours HERE!
And if there's resistance, that's where the emotional mindset piece comes in. Why are you resistant to making these changes so we can have a healthy child? That is, and I love all you guys and I say this from a very loving place and I've gone through challenges in my marriage, but that is a challenge in a marriage, and you deserve the support that you want and need. And you guys got to break that down. You got to work that shit out. It might be one or two couples therapy sessions where you work that shit out, because why is he not on board? Why is he not supporting? Why is he not willing to make those changes or at least come up with a game plan? What are you willing to do? Can you give me this for one solid month? Can we give it a shot? And just see, and I've seen, too, where men get wrecked emotionally when their sperm is poor quality, and they are so psyched when they turn it around.
I can think of a couple couples where it was more male factor, and I worked with the husbands and I did all the things I'm talking about here, but then we got to that mindset piece, too, of like really stepping into his male power, if you will, his ability to provide, his ability to be there and take charge of his life, and that meant his health. And that meant, like the one guy I'm thinking of, we just instigated date night again, like once a week, and it was it all on him. He had to surprise her. It wasn't once a week, sorry. Once a month, and it was a surprise date night, and they got back to having fun again. That changed a lot of things for him.
Another thing that I do clinically, and I can't really prescribe via social media, unfortunately, is Chinese herbs. There are a couple that have been shown to be very promising for male sperm issues, fenugreek, tribulus, and epimedium. And so I'll mix those into a formula that really supports the presentation, and then acupuncture, of course. Acupuncture is so pertinent to improving healthy blood flow and circulation, and it will help with sperm quality, and count, and motility, and morphology, but when used in conjunction with all of these other things that we're discussing today.
Sleep naked. I said that, right? Obesity, make sure the sit stand desk, environmental toxins. There's a lot you can manage for in the house, and then what they do outside of the house, we do the best we can do. That's it. We do the best we can do, right? So, there you have it.
There's a couple of things that are not listed on the Healthy Daddy Diet sheet: Rejoova Sperm and Rejoova Repair. I think these two in combo with a good quality fish oil, liver pills and the E3 live will be AMAZING for Sperm.
And the one thing I would make sure is the men's multi does not have folic acid and any other fillers, like gluten, soy, corn, that kind of thing. Make sure it's a good quality men's multi.
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