Exercise: Could Bicycling Actually Lower Sperm Count in Men?

Researchers have found that regular exercise no only improves overall physical health and appearance, but it can actually increase sperm count in men. Yet not all exercises showed the same response. 

According to researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center, seeking treatment in order to improve conception rates worked with a little help from physical fitness. The participants included male partners of couples that had entered the study between 2006 and 2012, totaling 137 men who were provided with sperm samples and required to report their daily levels of physical activity.

"Men engaging in exercise for seven hours or more per week, essentially one hour a day, had 48 percent higher concentrations than men who were engaging in less than one hour per week," co-author of the study, Audrey Gaskins said, according to Medical Xpress. Gaskins is a doctoral student at the Harvard School of Public Health. "When we looked overall, we found that men who engaged in levels of moderate to vigorous activity had higher levels of sperm concentration."

Researchers found that in general, performing more physical activity could lead to higher sperm counts. However, they also discovered that specific exercises in general could help increase those numbers. The team reported that outdoor activities and weightlifting appeared to have the most effect on sperm count. For instance, those that worked outdoors for more than an hour-and-a-half every week showed 42 percent higher sperm concentration than those who did not exercise outdoors at all. Men who weightlifted two or more hours a week also showed a greater sperm concentration by up to 25 percent than those that did not.

However, despite these findings in general, researchers found that bicycling actually reduced sperm count. For instance, the study states that men who biked over an hour and a half each week had a sperm count that was 34 percent lower than men who did not bike. Researchers believe that this reduction may be due to the fact that biking can put pressure on the scrotum and increase the termperature in that area. Yet the quality of the sperm was not determined for the bicyclists.

More information regarding the study will be presented at the joint meeting of the International Federation of Fertility Societies and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Boston, MA.