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 The American Heart Association recommends the Dietary Approaches to
Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet or a Mediterranean-style diet to help
prevent cardiovascular disease. Both diets emphasize cooking with
vegetable oils, eating nuts, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy
products, whole grains, fish and poultry, and limiting red meat and
added sugars and salt.
In the study of 209 male college students, ages 18 to 23, the young
men who most closely followed a DASH diet had total sperm counts 65%
higher than those whose eating habits bore little resemblance to a
DASH diet.
Eating patterns that stuck more closely to a DASH diet were also
associated with a 74% higher total motile sperm count, a measure of
the amount of moving sperm, and 31% more sperm with a normal size
and shape, which are the sperm most likely to fertilize an egg.
"Even in young, healthy men with overall good semen quality, we
still see an association between a healthier diet and better semen
quality," said Audrey Gaskins, a researcher at the Rollins School of
Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta.
"Young men are not invincible to the consequences of a poor diet,"
Gaskins, who wasn't involved in the study, said by email.
For the study, Ana Cutillas-Tolin of the University of Murcia School
of Medicine in Spain and her colleagues used food questionnaires to
see how much the participants consumed of the main foods that make
up heart-healthy diets like the Mediterranean diet and the DASH
diet. They also examined how often the students ate foods that are
known to help minimize the risk of common chronic diseases.
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Men who most closely followed a DASH diet consumed more total
calories and alcohol and got more exercise than men who didn't
follow this diet.
Eating habits didn't appear to impact reproductive hormone levels,
however, the researchers note in the journal Human Reproduction.
The study can't prove whether or how diet impacts semen quality in
young men.
Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that
researchers relied on men to accurately report their eating habits.
"The findings of this study cannot be generalized due to various
limitations such as small sample size, and healthy volunteers, and
the study should be extended to other populations," said Dr.
Muhammad Imran Omar, a researcher at the University of Aberdeen in
the UK who wasn't involved in the study.
"However, there is enough scientific evidence to suggest that
fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy foods are important for a
healthy lifestyle and reproductive health," Omar said by email. "In
addition, people should be encouraged (to get) regular exercise and
avoid smoking and excessive drinking."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/32Gw2pU Human Reproduction, online September
27, 2019.
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