Fertility among men under the age of 25 could be on the decline, according to statistics released on Friday by a Taoyuan hospital.
For five years, the Reproductive Medicine Center at Hungchi Women and Children’s Hospital has been offering an NT$8,000 cash reward to prospective sperm donors, but only about 30 percent of men under the age of 25 have been able to pass sperm motility and quantity tests to claim the reward, the center said.
About half of the 400 or so sperm donors each year are university students based in Taoyuan’s Jhongli District (中壢), many of whom sign up with friends, it said.
Under the Artificial Reproduction Act (人工生殖法), men aged 20 to 50 who have passed the required health and laboratory screenings can be sperm donors.
However, donors who have fathered a child or whose sperm was already frozen and stored less than 10 years ago are not allowed to make new donations.
About 40 percent of infertile men work under high temperatures or immense stress, or are obese with a BMI of more than 35, center director Tang Yun-lung (唐雲龍) said.
About 40 percent of these men are engineers, followed by about 10 percent who work in bakeries or kitchens.
Men wanting to produce healthy semen should adopt a healthy lifestyle — going to bed early, cutting out tobacco and alcohol, reducing stress and any sense of unease, decreasing their sugar intake, spending time outdoors and exercising regularly, preferably swimming and jogging, Tang said.
Other tips include spending time out in the sun, which helps the body produce vitamin D, as well as refraining from long periods of sitting, which causes toxins to pile up inside the body and decreases blood circulation, Tang said.
Men who plan to have children after 30 should consider having their sperm frozen, because sperm motility deteriorates with age, he added.
Research indicates that the contributing factors behind low motility and quantity in semen include eating out frequently, deep-fried foods, a diet high in sugar, a lack of exercise, staying up late and environmental hormones, which are hormone-like toxins that disrupt the human endocrine system, hospital president Chang Hung-chi (張紅淇) said.
If young people have developed one or more of these habits, it could present a bleak outlook for the nation’s birthrate, Chang said.
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