Attention All Gym Hardos: Your Sperm Count Probably Sucks And So Do Your Calves
Smithsonian – For many species, love is truly a battlefield. While the animal kingdom is full of diverse social structures, a pretty common one involves males tussling for access to females. For these males, being—or at least looking—physically powerful tends to be a perk: Rippling muscles can be an advertisement for future security, and a promise of robust, sexually successful offspring.
But pretty packages don’t always have the best gifts inside. Many members of the animal kingdom show an inverse relationship between brawn and sperm quality. Now, scientists report that humans might experience the same evolutionary tradeoffs: The guys that exhibit the most gym gains also seem to have lower sperm counts.
If any of you ever needed further motivation to bail on your personal fitness goals in pursuit of other things that make you feel good, boy do I have some news for you…
Two groups of 12 heterosexual women then rated the men’s photos on attractiveness and masculinity. Finally, another group of 91 people rated the photos on how “strong” their subjects appeared to be. This last group included both men and women, acknowledging the idea that looking strong has an effect on both sexes—perhaps by intimidating other males they hope to oust, as well as charming the females they court.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strongest-looking men were also the ones rated as most attractive and masculine. In other animals, these guys are the ones that are best equipped to protect their mates and offspring, and pass on high-quality genes. But when the researchers inspected their subjects’ sperm, they found that the same men who boasted the most brawn—and were wooing the most women through their photos—also had, on average, lower sperm counts. Though there wasn’t a big change in sperm motility or morphology, a numerical decrease seems to denote lower quality sperm.
Scientists have now just about proven that guys who put in the most time in the gym working on their bodies are also most likely to have weak and diminished sperm counts. I always had this feeling that despite the constant level of disappointment I’m overcome with upon seeing myself in the mirror, the time I could be spending in the gym was better spent getting stoned and eating cookies or even just sleeping. I could never put a finger on it, but now I have my proof.
I’d like to be on record that I bet I have an unbelievable sperm count. I bet if you took a microscope to some of my seed it’d be so overcrowded with swimmers you’d think you’re looking at a public pool in the heat of a brutal New York City summer. Get it? I haven’t been to the gym with any consistency in months! I care too much about my ability to breed and continue my family line to take risks like that.
As for the rest of you, you should probably take this news with a grain of salt. If you’re someone blessed with a muscular physique and a sharp jaw line simply through genetics, you might be better off taking it easy in the gym because you’re already ahead of the pack. If you’re one of those guys who drinks creatine for breakfast and hits the gym twice a day because you’re high school girlfriend once told you she was more attracted to guys on the football team, and you’ve spent the last 8 years doing hammer curls and hip thrusts, you should definitely reconsider the way you live your life.
If we’re being honest, the damage is probably already done and you’re sperm count is probably already lower than your dead lift max, but that doesn’t mean it’s not too late to try and turn things around. That being said, if someone told me I’d already done irreparable damage to my seed, I’d probably just end things right here and now, but that’s just me. To each their own.
