Tomatoes Make Mating Productive by Improving Sperm Quality

Antioxidant Effects of Tomatoes Improve Male Fertility Rates

Humanity is at a junction in life where we keep hearing the word ‘infertility’ more frequently than the word ‘fertility’. Couples suffer from the absence of a newborn in their life for years together before being blessed with a child adapting to artificial reproduction techniques or in rare cases, conceive naturally. The reason for infertility these days is also owned by the male gender almost 40-50% times. This is a great advancement in a society where men were branded as 100% fertile with the entire blame for infertility shouldered by the women during previous days.

Sperm count rates have steeped too low almost halved in the last 50 years or so in the Western countries. But even now, sperm count doesn’t hold top place in causing infertility problems but only hinders the conceiving time-it takes a longer time for couples to conceive. But if this continues, infertility rates are sure to increase and conceiving becomes a more problematic task. Many have tried to exploit the problems of infertility and make it a business by deceiving people with different humbug solutions that never workout. There are different diets and exercises too recommended as obesity/overweight has been recorded as one of the major causes of infertility in couples. Health experts prescribe lifestyle changes and dietary modifications as the primary means to fight off infertility problems. Get in touch with registered dietitian nutritionists at www.firsteatright.com to help you conceive naturally with dietary modifications and lifestyle changes.

A new study by researchers at the University of Sheffield shows that sperm quality can be improved with a simple diet supplement containing a compound found in cooked tomatoes. They conducted a double-blind randomized trial to find out the effects of giving men a dietary compound called LactoLycopene. Lycopene is a pigment that’s found in a variety of fruits and vegetables including tomatoes, watermelons, grapefruits, apricots and guavas responsible for giving them a red color. This compound is poorly absorbed by the body and hence, the study team used a commercially available formulation called Lactolycopene to enhance its availability to the human body. For instance, you would need to eat around 2 kilograms of cooked tomatoes every day to get the same dose of lycopene as absorbed from the supplement which is not practically possible.

The study period was 12 weeks involving 60 healthy volunteers aged between 19 and 30 years. Half of them received lycopene supplements and the other half received placebo (dummy supplements). Neither the participants nor the researchers were aware who received the supplement and who received the placebo. All the participants were collected sperm and blood samples at the beginning and end of trial.
​
Results showed that using the supplement helped improve the size and shape of the sperm dramatically. Measurements were taken using a computer system but again, the person entering data remained unaware of who’s taken what supplement. The researchers were surprised by the study results and as the second step, plan to recreate the same study on a group of men with fertility problems to witness whether it helps them conceive naturally without the need for IVF or IUI. Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant and this might prevent any damage caused by oxidation of sperm (main cause for male infertility). Also, the same antioxidant effect could be the primary reason behind improved sperm quality.