Guys: get off reddit. Seriously. And stop watching House of Cards. I know it’s all there at once – all 13 episodes! But go take the dog for a walk. For the love of your sperm.
We all know by now that research has linked sedentary lifestyles to not living very long. Seriously, the more you sit on your ass, the likelier you are to develop a host of illnesses and eventually die. Naturally, that’s bad news for millions of people whose jobs involve sitting in front of a computer all day.
Now, according to new research, it looks like your internet-browsing, tv-watching overindulgence may also be hurting your chances of reproducing.
The study, recently published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, involved 189 men, various level of inactivity, and sperm samples. What the researchers found was that sedentary lifestyles were associated with lower sperm counts.
“The objective of this study was to evaluate the relationships between semen quality and both physical activity and TV watching among young, healthy men. We hypothesised that increased physical activity was associated with higher sperm count, concentration and motility, and a lower proportion of morphologically abnormal sperm. Furthermore, we hypothesised that increased TV watching time was associated with decreased semen quality parameters,” said the study’s authors.
And they were right. Young me who spent over 20 hours a week watching television had a 44% lower sperm count that those men who watched the least amount of TV (4 hours). Although the researchers say that lower sperm count doesn’t necessarily affect reproductive chances – the fact is that sitting on the couch is reducing your swimmers.
There is some hope, if you’re willing to turn off Netflix and stay off reddit for a little bit. The study also concluded that exercise helped overall sperm count. In fact, men who logged at least 15 hours of moderate exercise a week had 73% higher sperm counts as compared to men who didn’t log any physical activity.
Light physical activity, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have an impact on sperm count.
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