No news is good news, and today we are bombarded with bad news - especially about what we choose to eat and drink. And now men have something else to consider, fizzy drinks may be bad for their sperm count. Well that's probably not new news to many men out there but it will be to some.
Men who drink a litre of coke/cola or more every day have lower sperm counts than men who do not drink coke, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Copenhagen University Hospital in Denmark and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology. (oh and just for the record, we in the UK call this type of fizzy drink 'coke' but I believe in the US it's called 'cola' - for obvious reasons I would imagine!) The effect did not appear to come from caffeine. Researchers have previously speculated that high consumption of caffeine may produce lower sperm counts. Most studies into the connection have been conducted in specific groups, such as infertile men, rather than the general population, however, and no scientific consensus has emerged.
In the current study, researchers took sperm samples from 2,554 men aged approximately 18. All the men were undergoing physical exams to determine their fitness for military duty between the years of 2001 and 2005. They also collected beverage intake data on all participants.
The researchers found that men who never drank coke or cola had an average sperm count of 50 million sperm per milliliter of semen. Men who drank a litre or more a day, in contrast, had only 35 million sperm per millilitre. While this difference is not drastic enough to qualify as a problem by World Health Organization standards, lower sperm counts have been well established to correlate with lower fertility.
A much smaller effect on sperm levels was seen in men who drank large amounts of tea or coffee, ruling out caffeine as a likely cause. The researchers are unsure whether the lower sperm counts were caused by the cola itself, or by other unhealthy lifestyle habits associated with soda consumption.
"It's important to note that the men who drank a lot of coke/cola were also different in many other ways," researcher Tina Kold Jensen said.
Men who drank large amounts of coke/cola also tended to eat more fast food and less fruits and vegetables.
"I imagine it's the lifestyle," said Fabio Pasqualotto, of the University of Caxias do Sul in Brazil, who was not involved in the study.
Sources for this story include: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/h...
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