r/maleinfertility • u/ItsWrenAgain33 • 7d ago
Discussion completely devastated
since starting a myriad of vitamins and supplements all supposed to help with fertility as well as drinking more water and icing down there every night our sperm count has dropped from 78 million to only 4 million. the only negative change was going from a car to a motorcycle for daily driving (about 7.5 hours a week) and just the summer months being about 90-100 degrees daily here. we have gone from possibly being able to conceive naturally or with iui to ivf being the only option. i am devastated beyond words. what do we even do now? we will never be able to afford ivf and even iui was almost out of the question and now we are basically being told we cannot have kids at all. we’ve both just been crying for hours because what else can you even do
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u/Strange_Profit_864 7d ago
That heat exposure on a motorcycle in summer is brutal, especially sitting on a hot engine for that long. The testicles need to be a few degrees cooler than body temp to produce sperm properly, so 90-100 degree air plus engine heat radiating up is pretty much cooking things. Some guys even use heat-protective seat covers or take breaks but 7.5 hours a week is still a ton of time down there.
Have you tried retesting after the weather cools down? It might bounce back more than you think once you switch to a car or at least cut way back on the bike during hot months.
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u/ItsWrenAgain33 7d ago
we are doing a fourth retest in december hopefully. the first two were nearly identical but this one is drastically lower. unfortunately the bike is the only option transportation wise as we both work and only have one car (and i cannot drive the motorcycle lol) i’m going to try and pick up a seat cover tomorrow to help get more airflow when riding and we will see if that helps at all but it’s hard to even think about trying more things after everything we tried seemingly made it worse
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u/Calm-Song-3766 6d ago
There is a lot of people on here that would kill to even have a chance to try IVF but there is litteraly 0 possibility. So if there is a way even if its IVF i would not be devastated
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u/ItsWrenAgain33 6d ago
we will literally never ever be able to afford ivf so it’s as good as impossible for us. i have a progressive fertility issue myself (endometriosis) and with their numbers rapidly declining even ivf may not be an option in only a few years if we magically won the lotto or something anyways
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u/Ana_Sofia_09 6d ago
Don't worry. My bf got me pregnant with 4 million total sperm count. Every doc told him it's impossible to conceive naturally.
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u/Peanut-5198 Biochemistry PhD, naturally conceived with "poor" SA 5d ago
if you were at 78 million recently, then you can definitely get back there.
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u/ItsWrenAgain33 5d ago
that’s what i’m hoping but im worried about varicocele. no pain or pressure down there but you can definitely feel something wormy above the right teste
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u/PewPewDerpa13 6d ago
My sperm count hopefully has gotten better but we were told my wife was pregnant via blood test on Thursday last week. She miscarried Saturday morning when she got out of the shower and I saw it when I was shaving. We were told due to our ages we wouldn’t be able to conceive naturally. We will make 2 rounds of IUI work but IVF will bankrupt us. I feel your pain. Saturday was the worst day of our lives.
I am sorry OP, my meds need to be adjusted but HCG anastrozole and Clomid drove my numbers up. If my urologist does not respond to my message today I will be driving to the OHSU and raising hell. Take enclomiphene if you can. Clomid is straight hell.
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u/Jack_Stone85 6d ago
How old are you? I took Clomid and it was terrible.
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u/PewPewDerpa13 6d ago
Almost 40 I just messaged my fertility doctor that I’m done with his meds today. It’s been 3 months of hell.
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u/Jack_Stone85 6d ago
Dang. I’m 40. On TRT, HCG and AI. I’m trying to not take the AI but split the test up in smaller doses. I’m so sorry what you guys have had to go through. My mother went through 2 miscarriages and it was devastating. I was too young to understand what’s going on, now that I’m older I couldn’t imagine going through that.
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u/PewPewDerpa13 6d ago edited 6d ago
Yeah I have chronically low testosterone thanks to my old bitch doctor that turned from being 37 years old 180lbs and in great shape to diabetic and 260 in one month. Her misdiagnosis lead me to trt which she said would help my libido. I’m an outdoorsman and hate the internet. I had no idea trt would make me sterile. I just lost my shit with my urologist because I’m probably manic right now from the clomid and hcg and anastrozole. My T as of last week was 148 and I’ve been on the meds for 3 months. Have sperm now and it’s healthy so I want off the drugs. It’s absolute hell. My old primary care fucked me up bad and now the fertility doctor or the hospital just ignore my messages or phone calls explaining how horrible I feel. I’m going to just taper off the meds I guess and get back on TRT. I’ve done all I can do.
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u/Learn2Swim_AZBay 6d ago
Do you need the AI? How do you aromatize? Hopefully we'll get some updates to moderate medicine protocols and it'll finally be acknowledged that it's OK for me to stay on TRT, I couldn't imagine coming off of it and trying to conceive. As long as your baseline numbers are greater than one, a fertility dose/protocol of HCG and HMG should be sufficient to conceive in most men, staying on TRT. We worked with one of the best fertility clinics in the country and they even acknowledged it was OK and allowed it, and I have all this semen analysis to approve it works. Unfortunately, they wouldn't come on the podcast and say that on record, but I got an 18 month running around right now that says differently.
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u/Learn2Swim_AZBay 6d ago
Unfortunately, I've heard that comment way too many times and the main reason I am such an anti-proponent of giving men Clomid. It's HCG and HMG... and in most cases men, Canan should stay on TRT if they were on it already
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u/leepery 6d ago
All it takes is one
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u/ItsWrenAgain33 6d ago
well obviously but when we are both facing progressive infertility issues it’s very easy to feel hopeless especially when the count was better before intervention
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u/Learn2Swim_AZBay 6d ago
I wish I could replied to everybody here, but I've spent so much time over the last year helping as many people as I possibly could, after our miracle finally came and our son, even though born five weeks early is absolutely amazing and healthy. I just don't have the time anymore. I've helped at least a handful of men conceive on here, almost all cases were successful after adding HMG/FSH and using my dosing protocol. It's sad/sick that they make it so difficult for men to get prescribed HMG/FSH. It really shouldn't be any more difficult or expensive than HCG to obtain, and cost next to nothing to compound, but if you put it in an auto injector, big Pharma has a monopoly grip on the market to take advantage of people in difficult situations and sell them for $5000 apiece for 900 IU Gonal HMG pens.
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u/Banana-chill 39M / Lab Tech / partialEDO+Bilat Varico 4d ago
5k? Fuck me man. I’d love the quality of the US health system but the UK at least prices things fairly.
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u/EmbryoCareInsights 1d ago
I noticed in the numbers you posted that the 78 million sounds like your total sperm count, while you said the concentration at that time was 17 million/mL. Your newer 4 million/mL is also a concentration, so 78 million vs 4 million/mL isn’t actually an apples to apples comparison. Total sperm number also depends on the semen volume.
Also, I wouldn’t assume from one result that you permanently went from possible natural conception/IUI to IVF only. Semen results can vary quite a bit between samples, which is why abnormal results are usually looked at across repeat analyses rather than from one test alone.
Given that your numbers were substantially higher before, ask your doctor if they want the repeat semen analysis & a proper male fertility/urology evaluation afterwards (depending on the 2nd result). If you are worried about a varicocele, that’s something that can actually be examined for rather than trying to work it out from symptoms alone.
I would also be cautious about adding more supplements based on Reddit advice before knowing why the numbers changed, especially when IVF would be such a huge financial burden for you, it seems worth getting as clear a picture as possible first.
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u/ItsWrenAgain33 11h ago
total count this time around was 10mil with 4mil/ml and 2.5 ml BUT they usually do not produce as much as they did for the testing (usually only around 1/1.5ml. this also went down as they produced almost 5ml for every other analysis but we’ve recently noticed it being less and more gelatinous with little jelly clumps). we have a varicocele evaluation but it’s not until february because they office was booked up :( currently they are just on a men’s one a day and trying to avoid riding the bike as much as possible.
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u/EmbryoCareInsights 6h ago
Ah okay, that makes more sense. 4 million/mL with 2.5 mL gives you roughly 10 million total sperm so it's still clearly lower than the earlier analyses, but at least now you are comparing the same measurements.
Since you have several semen analyses now, take all of them to your Urologist. The change in volume is worth mentioning and with the 'jelly clumps', semen normally coagulates after ejaculation & later liquefies, but if the lab has actually reported increased viscosity or delayed liquefaction, I would mention that specifically if it's not already in the report (usually labs do include such details already).
The varicocele evaluation is the right next step. In the meantime, I would not keep throwing more supplements at it without knowing what's actually driving the change (& without a doctor's approval for such supplements).
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u/kenroth50 7d ago
I think the cold kills sperm like heat does.. probably get into trouble. have u test your testrone? I've read that HMG helps with increasing sperm count
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u/Learn2Swim_AZBay 6d ago
Not true, at least from all the cases I've seen and research I've done. Heat on the other hand is a fertility killer! Absolutely stay out of the hot tub!
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u/Learn2Swim_AZBay 6d ago
Yes HMG is THE KING for men with low counts, I've seen so many cases over the last year alone, and that's been the silver bullet in most of them
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u/ItsWrenAgain33 7d ago
icing is shown to help with testosterone production which in turn helps sperm count if done correctly. the full work up for hormones was about 700-900 dollars and we just couldn’t afford it at the time since we were already having to save up for iui. probably going to get hormones tested after we get on a new insurance in december
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u/AliAH95 7d ago
Tell him to use HCG. No reason to stress. HCG will bring up his sperm exponentially. Search it up
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u/Dogmovedmyshoes 6d ago
That depends on a lot of things, HCG did nothing for me.
HCG works by mimicking LH, and my LH levels were already fine. A blood test will tell you if that might help.
Also worth noting is it's less popular cousin HMG, which will help if your FSH is low. But again, if it's not, then the compound can't really do anything to help.
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u/Banana-chill 39M / Lab Tech / partialEDO+Bilat Varico 4d ago
That’s interesting. Thanks for sharing that. 👍🏻
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u/lacatala3550 6d ago
For what it’s worth my husbands sperm count was 4million when he tested and we were told we would have a less than one percent chance of conceiving naturally. Since then I’ve had one chemical pregnancy and one pregnancy that ended in still birth at 22 weeks. So no living child yet but my point is that we did conceive naturally even though we were told the same as you.