Last week, we looked at how women can get pregnant easily. There were several questions asked and Dr Abayomi Ajayi, the MD of Nordica Fertility Center answered them all. Today, we shall continue with the questions. This time around, it focuses on the men folks and what they can do to be able to overcome infertility.
City People’s Brands Editor, DAMILARE SALAMI, 08155134152 brings you the excerpts, read on.
I’ll like you to also talk about the role of men in all these. What should we know sir?
This is actually a million-dollar question because day-in-day-out, this is what we are asked. Men contribute equally to infertility as women, but when you are doing IVF, the concentration is on the women even when you are treating low sperm count, the woman will get the treatment most of the times in other for her to be able to carry your baby. That is one part, the man is ignored. But another part where I get very worried most of the time is the psychological impacts on the man most of the time is also ignored. Men don’t help matters by trying to be macho sometimes, but the truth is that they feel the pain as much as the women too. That is one of the things I try to discuss with some of my patients when they come to complain that their husbands are not so supportive. I try to let them understand that majority of men support, but the way they do this is different from the way the women do theirs. And sometimes they cannot communicate well because the reaction of a man to stress is different from the reaction of a woman to stress especially when the cycle fails. The woman cries and cries which is better, but the man tries to console her; which is good, but he represses most of his feelings and nobody is concerned about that. I am trying to work on it now. In the first place, we need to get the men to talk about how we can help them. You hear how some men misbehave at “open and close” but it’s not as if they want to misbehave, it is because they don’t know how to deal with this stress. Infertility is one of the most stressful cases you will ever encounter as a couple. And women get more support than the men. So, men really need to talk more so that we can be able to help them. I think we also need to lower this macho life, so that they can get the appropriate help.
What can a man with a low sperm count do? He has undergone treatments both medical and traditional, he doesn’t have problems with erection, he makes love regularly and very well.
Fertility is different from lovemaking so your ability to make love is different from your ability to get your partner pregnant. Unfortunately, right now, there is no drug you can use to increase sperm count. Of course, there are some things you can do, majorly lifestyle changes; you can lose weight if you are obese, using recreational drugs, weeds, Indian hemp, whatever they call it, please stop it. If you’re smoking and drinking heavily, please stop. And try to reduce the temperature around your testes by wearing good sporting boxers and don’t take anything heat around it. Really and truly, the treatment for low sperm count is still IVF. So, If all those things don’t work, you have to do IVF.
Please sir, there’s a semen analysis that shows 50 percent agglutination please what can be done?
Well this is very conflicting right now because I don’t know why someone is doing an agglutination test; it is not part of the routine semen analysis. The World Health Organisation WHO has given us some parameters to look for a good sperm. The first thing is that what kind of lab has this been done? You said your count is 80 million, I guess that is very good. Usually, agglutination is a sign of something chronological going on but does it affect your ability to impregnate your partner? Nobody can say that because we have done studies using some sperms that have some agglutination on IUI and we have seen that it doesn’t affect the pregnancy rate. I don’t know where this was done so, I would implore you to do this in a more standardized laboratory. This looks a kind of contradictory to me; we just need to be careful of who we are talking to which lab you are using and why you are doing what you are doing.
Sir, is there a treatment for no sperm count?
The answer is yes, but it depends on what you are talking about. If you want to father a child, we can just go to your testes and bring out sperm to be used for IVF. Actually, if there’s no sperm count, the treatment is IVF, there are a variety of IVF but of course, it is still IVF.
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