14 DAY TRIAL // Sex works on the principle of positive feed back: more sex just improves our 'performance'. A team from Sydney University says that men with damaged sperm should have sex daily to increase the chances of getting their partner pregnant. In many cases, couples with fertility issues abstain from sex for several days to boost sperm numbers before trying to conceive.
But the new research claims that this could mean lower-quality sperm. The Australian team investigated 42 men whose sperm had been discovered to have an abnormal shape after microscopical investigations. The subjects were required to ejaculate each day for seven days, and these sperms were compared with those collected from them after three days of abstinence.
Except for five cases, all the subjects presented less sperm damage in their samples coming after daily ejaculation, compared to the post-abstention samples. Dr Allan Pacey, the secretary of the British Fertility Society, agrees that daily sex could improve sperm quality in men with sperm issues.
"While not having sex allowed the numbers of sperm to build up, there was a "trade-off" between quality and quantity. This research shows that when you put people on a daily ejaculation regime, it reduces the figure for DNA damage. If you can go from 30% to 20% that is quite a big shift and that should have some implications for fertility. There are men out there who think, or whose partners think, that limiting ejaculation will make them more fertile.", said Pacey.
"I remember one couple in which the woman would only let the man ejaculate when she was in her fertile period, so the poor chap was going without for almost a month at a time. If a couple was initially trying to get pregnant, an interval of two to three days was probably advisable - whereas a man with high DNA damage and a "decent" sperm count should try more often.", he added.