how to improve male fertility

kjplaza

Hi so my husband has an extremely low sperm count and although we have already undergone our first round of IVF and had
6 frozen embryos we have already miscarried 2. we never did any PGS testing, My RE never brought it up and we are OOP so if he wasnt going to recommend it we wanted to save money. We meet with our RE in a couple weeks and i will ask if we can still have
our remaining 4 embryos tested before going through another transfer and depending on how that pans out we may undergo another full round of IVF. in preparation for that i want to get my husband and me started on some vitamins to improve egg and sperm quality and i was just wondering what any of you have tried and found to help!

APM_SLP

Idk about vitamins, but I have heard that decreasing caffeine intake can help!

Kp214

Coq10 is supposed to help egg quality. Dhea is said to as well. I stopped that one, though, due to extreme irritability. You might read "It Starts with The Egg."  I haven't but many in here have recommended it. I have also heard that about the caffeine for sperm count. However, it didn't have much affect on DH's numbers. 

kangastein

We have bad sperm quality too. My husband stopped drinking booze and caffeine and it doubled the counts, but that's about it. Have him take a multi vitamin, and maybe see an acupuncturist who will prescribe hardcore herbs for it. I've read a bunch of different things, zinc, selenium, but all those are in a multi. Our acupuncturist said any male multivitamin except those for seniors is meant to help sperm health too. You may want to consider  PICSI next round. Also you may have just had a bad two eggs, the rest may be okay. 

wifeinraleigh28

Is your DH seeing a urologist that specializes in male infertility? My DH also had really low sperm count and was put on Clomid. It tripled his counts. There are also supplements that can help with sperm quality but the names are escaping me right now.

bobby2016

hey @kjplaza  - my DH also has/had super low count/motility/morph and he's has really amazing results with this: 

 - A daily vitamin called Fertil ProMen (https://www.yadtech.com/product/fertil-promd-pour-hommes-l-carnitine-2/) 
 - 'Releasing' at least every 48-72 hours (i think this was the key)
 - A few smaller lifestyle changes, more exercise, less alcohol
 - No more car seat heaters, saunas, etc.  (also important)

His count's improved from 15M to over 100M in the most recent sample!  

Best of luck! 

Marley629

Coq10 was recommended for our MFI and for my egg quality. I take 600mg daily and OH takes 400mg

latershrader

@bobby2016 ignore my question in the other thread. I just read it above.

kjplaza

@bobby2016

awesome thanks i will look into that supplement, my DH count was only 2,000 and improved just between tests with no change except removing one of his BP medications. he has never been one to drink much caffeine or alcohol so thats not much of a lifestyle change for him. i am hoping we dont have to do another round of IVF i would hope of my 4 frosties that they will all be viable if we do get them tested. however on the off chance they dont come back normal i want to already have him on something since i know a full cycle for sperm according to our acupuncturist is 3 months. 

bobby2016

@kjplaza I've heard that sometimes it's simply a bad test day, we never had my DH retested, so planning on doing that if this IUI is unsuccessful. 

I'm personally convinced that keeping him on a 'regular release' schedule was probably what helped for us. It's what our doctor stressed was the most important. 

Now his count/motility is improving, but I'm not sure the effect on morphology which was the biggest issue (he was at 1%). 

Question, did you do ICSI with your IVF round? 

Isthisthereallife

wifeinraleigh28. That was the course that we took and the Clomid along with the vitamins increased his counts dramatically. He went from 900 total on his first SA to over 37mil on his last one. No baths/saunas/car seat warmers. 

kangastein

Did you see a special fertility urologist to prescribe clomid? I'm surprised because no one has suggested it in our career of trying

KristoKekerooni

I mostly lurk 'round these parts, but just to throw this out there, my H is on Clomid too. He had his first SA back in January, with levels just below normal (~18mill). Doc wasn't concerned, had us retest in March. levels dropped to about 8 mill. He stopped caffeine, and made all the lifestyle changes recommended. Saw a urologist and did another SA. urologist said he had multiple tiny varicoceles on both sides, but that they were teeny tiny and probably not enough to cause such a dramatic decrease. SA came back at less than 1 mill. Urologist prescribed Clomid- 1/4 of a pill (12.5mg) a day, everyday. 1 month after being on the Clomid, his results more than doubled to 5 mill. another two more months, and we are up to 9 mill. We haven't tested again yet, but here is to hoping our IUI in January either becomes unnecessary or shows a higher count. 

Has anyone had issues with the count lowering though? I have been told it can have the opposite effect after a while and decrease counts. 

Isthisthereallife

kangastein Yes. We had to get it from the Urologist. 

kangastein

@Isthisthereallife thanks, I'm pissed no one has mentioned this to me before! Not even my acupuncturists! Thanks for the info about clomid ladies 

kjplaza

Yes thanks everyone, my RE never said anything to us when we started with him a year ago he said there was nothing we could do to change his levels and said our only option was IVF due to such low numbers we wouldn't be able to try IUI first. I am the only one in my circle of friends or family that's ever had any issues with infertility so I had no knowledge to even know what questions to ask or what options there are. 

Isthisthereallife

@kjpaza That makes sense to me. I wish someone had told us that when we started. Our first clinic gave us hope that an IUI could be successful. So we tried 3 of them. It wasn't until we switched clinics and I learned more about it that IUI only really had a max 10% chance of working for us...if that. We wasted a lot of time, money, and emotions on that process. 

wifeinraleigh28

@kangastein My RE referred my husband to a urologist at our initial consultation with him, and the urologist prescribed clomid.

My DH started taking clomid in December 2015. In November 2015 his SA showed a count of 10 million total. In July 2016 (for our IVF cycle), his count was 87 million. I misspoke earlier when I said that the clomid tripled his counts since it was actually way more than that!

Also want to mention that prior to clomid was DH was taking androgel for low T, which can also make sperm count lower. When he stopped the androgel his count did improve a little bit... from 10 million to about 18 million. But clomid is what really did the trick. Unfortunately the clomid didn't help with motility, which is why we still ended up doing IVF.

OGreat

My DH was also prescribe clomid by a urologist.... although he had no success with it. It made his counts worse. He went from about 7mil to 3mil. After being off for a few months, his count went up to 12mil. I don't know what that's all about. We had high hopes for the clomid, but ended up wasting a lot of time with that. 

liljoy-2

The first RE I talked to was very much into nutrition/supplements being very important. He said coQ10, fish oil, multi-vitamins (with Zn), vitamin D and acai berry powder for both of us. There was some small improvement in count (DH only takes them once in a while though).