The passing of the Viagra bill now means men who wish to take the drug will first have to undergo a psychological examination. The results of which will need to prove he is suffering in some way from the effects of erectile dysfunction – which are often as psychological as they are physical. The men will also have to visit their doctors, who will need to provide a letter confirming any associated risks with taking Viagra. Once a man gets to this stage he will than have a variety of medical examinations including heart tests. These are too insuring he is healthy enough to take the medication. A number of critics are outraged at the bill and believe it to be as unfair as Ohio’s other controversial bill, The Heartbeat bill. This particular bill makes abortion illegal once a fetus has a detectable heartbeat. However, in some cases this will happen at as little as five weeks after conception, before the woman may even realize she is expecting. Critics believe this bill takes away a woman’s right to have a choice and they believe the Viagra bill does virtually the same thing to a man. One major worry about the bill is that many men, worried about passing the standards, will turn to the black market for their pills instead.

Nina Turner denies the critics claims and even goes as far as saying that the bill is an answer to those who passed the Heartbeat bill through. She is also less than impressed by the mainly-male decision to pass bills that have, in her opinion, an adverse effect on a woman’s right to access reliable contraception. For example, a recent bill proposed tried to ban physician’s assistants from removing or fitting an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD). Turner believes this leads to more unwanted pregnancies that lead to, thanks to the Heartbeat bill, more unwanted babies. Therefore, what looks like a pro-life bill born from good intentions, is actually encouraging a financial strain on families, as well as the Government. Turner believes every woman should have the right to choose what contraception she can have, where she has it from and how long she is on it.

Nina Turner admits she feels proud of other female state legislators who are, effectively, using the passing of bills to give their male colleagues a taste of their own medicine. One such legislator from Oklahoma, tried to get an amendment passed that would make wasting sperm a criminal offence. This was a direct point to several anti-abortion bills that were being proposed or passed around about the same time. A staunch Democrat, Turner insists she is absolutely serious about the bill and will continue to lobby for it in the hope it will be passed. She doesn’t hold too much hope though and believes men see sex as being something only a man enjoys because women only engage in sexual intercourse to create babies. She believes it is this antiquated thinking that is leading to increases in teen pregnancies.

Unfortunately, despite Turner’s obvious seriousness regarding the bill, it is not shared by the rest of the senate who actually believe the bill is more about making a point than actually passing any bone fide bills. One state legislator in Virginia has already tried to pass a Viagra bill in the past and failed. Janet Howell wanted it made mandatory that every male asking for drugs to treat erectile dysfunction be given a digital examination of the rectum. This was in response to amendments that required a woman to have a full internal examination before being prescribed contraception. This bill was forgotten and it is likely that the Viagra bill will also follow suit. However, whatever Nina Turner’s true intentions were, she certainly gave the senate food for thought regarding sexual equality.

According to a new study that was just published in the journal named Human Reproduction on March 14, 2012, a high fat diet has been found to possibly reduce the sperm count of the average man. A high fat diet can lead to obesity, too. According to the study, the participants in said study who had the greatest intake of fat were found to have a 43 percent lower total sperm count, when compared to those in the study who had the least intake of fat. This association between more fat and a lower count of sperm was based on consuming saturated fats. In fact, the men who ate the most saturated fats experienced a 35 percent lower total count of sperm than the men who ate the least. There were 100 men from the U.S. who were involved in this study; they then responded to queries about their diet and provided sperm samples.

It must be noted that this new study is not one that establishes causation. All it does is establish a link between more fat and reduced total count of sperm.

According to the study researcher, Jill Attaman, “In the meantime, if men make changes to their diets so as to reduce the amount of saturated fat they eat and increase their omega-3 intake, then this may not only improve their general health, but could improve their reproductive health too.” Jill Attaman is both a gynecologist and an obstetrician at Massachusetts General Hospital when the study was being performed.

Another study establishes a link between heavier (read: obese) men and a reduced count of sperm. According to a Reuters article from March 15, 2012, researchers are increasingly using the benchmark of how much sperm a man makes to calculate his fertility. Dr. Jorge Chavarro said, “In general you expect that men with lower sperm counts will have a greater frequency of difficulty conceiving than men with higher sperm counts, but it’s not completely straightforward.” Dr. Chavarro works at the Harvard School of Public Health, which belongs to the collaborative group that released this research study.

Approximately 25 percent of the 10,000 men who were part of the 14-study research effort endured a low sperm count. Based on another analysis that was part of this 14-study research effort, a little more than 250 out of 7000 study participants were found to have no sperm present in their ejaculate at all.

As part of this same research effort, Dr. Sebastien Czernichow, working out of the Ambroise Pare Hospital, Boulogne-Billancourt, and his associates found out that men who were overweight were more than 10 percent more likely to suffer from a low sperm count, when compared to men who were of a normal weight. The study results actually only get much worse for men who are not just overweight, but also obese. Men who were obese were discovered to be as much as 42 percent more likely to suffer from a low sperm count than men who weighed a normal amount of money.

“This appears to be yet another health outcome for which maintaining a healthy weight appears to be important,” Dr. Chavarro informed Reuters news service. “It’s not only about your cardiovascular disease risk, it’s not only about diabetes and some forms of cancer. Obesity also seems to affect outcomes that may be manifested in younger men.”

The aforementioned study that was covered by Reuters in their March 15, 2012, article came from the Archives of Internal Medicine, which was available on the Internet. The information from this study from the Archives of Internal Medicine was available online on March 12, 2012.

Based on a few, key research studies that were released at around the same time, the conclusion that researchers have drawn is that there is a link (correlation) between obesity and a low sperm count. This does not mean that the above studies found a straightforward causation between obesity and a low sperm count. Men who are overweight or even obese should nonetheless look over the results of this cluster of studies very carefully, especially if they have plans to father some children later on in their lives. A low sperm count is not conducive to the intention of any man to father children of his own.

The findings were reported in the March edition of the  Journal of Nature.

The research, conducted by Takehiko Ogawa of Yokohama City University, not only produced healthy mouse sperm in a laboratory dish, with that sperm, it was able to produce healthy (and fertile) offspring.

The sperm was created from cells taken from the testicles of newborn mice. The sperm was then injected into eggs, resulting in twelve healthy babies. All twelve babies were fertile and fully able to produce their own offspring upon reaching adulthood.

Martin Dym, a professor of biochemistry and molecular and cellular biology at Georgetown University called the success “a significant breakthrough” in the field of male fertility. He did comment, however, that “you have to show that it can work in humans.” Dym participated in research that attempted similar sperm production ten years ago. Their research was not successful.

Mary Ann Handel, a reproductive genetics research scientist at the Jackson Laboratory in Maine, is also positive about the potential of this project, commenting that “[Ogawa] really achieved a goal that a lot of people have tried over the years.”

Approximately eight to ten percent of the male population faces infertility. This research holds out a potential solution for many of those men.

Cancer patients who have undergone chemotherapy make up a large number of those facing infertility. Adult males do have the option of freezing their sperm before undergoing cancer radiation treatment, and many have been successful in having children after cancer.

Prepubescent cancer patients, however, do not have this option available to them. This research potentially will provide the means to produce healthy sperm from young patients’ prepubescent testicular tissue.

Another potential use of this genetic research is the propagation of endangered species. This technology could be used to protect reproductive cells of endangered animals that may die before successfully reproducing.

Researchers at Muenster University in Germany and at Ben-Gurion University in Israel have also conducted similarly successful research. Researchers are working quickly in the hopes of reproducing the same results in humans.

“We are confident that if it can be done in a mammal such as a mouse it can be done in humans,” Professor Huleihel of Ben-Gurion University said.

What is Omega 3?

Omega 3 is a fatty acid that is present in salmon, tuna, and other marine fish. Omega 3 has long been considered an excellent antioxidant that improves overall health, but a recent study conducted in Illinois has linked the fatty acid tosperm health and male fertility. This means that a lot more of the spotlight is soon to be placed on the already popular nutrient.

The study conducted by the University of Illinois found that the DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) known as Omega 3 is required by the body to produce sperm in their proper shape. DHA is needed to create the tailed swimming champion from an immature round sperm cell. One of the University of Illinois professors , Manabu Nakamura, stated, “Normal sperm cells contain an arc-like structure called the acrosome that is critical in fertilization because it houses, organizes, and concentrates a variety of enzymes that sperm use to penetrate an egg.”

How does Omega 3 Boost Sperm Health

Omega 3 has a number of benefits to the reproductive organs, including:

• Improving circulation to the genitals, thus keeping the reproductive organs healthy and functioning properly.
• Lowering blood pressure, thus reducing the risk of erectile dysfunction and other reproductive organ-related health issues.

However, aside from these benefits, Omega 3 is also essential for helping improve sperm health. Without the DHA ensuring that the sperm are produced in the correct shape, there is a much lower sperm motility. Lower sperm motility means less chances of getting pregnant, as the sperm have to swim “upstream” in order to fertilize the egg.

Insufficient DHA can actually cause the sperm health to decrease. Cholesterol replaces insufficient fatty acids in the body, thus filling the sperm membrane with this unhealthy substance. Sperm are thus unable to mature properly, and they are much more likely to be damaged. Without sufficient levels of DHA in the body, sperm are unable to form properly.

The U of I study was performed on mice, and the test was focused on DHA’s role in the production of healthy sperm by the body. The doctoral student who was the co-author of this particular study, Timothy Abbott, stated, “Without DHA, this vital structure doesn’t form and sperm cells don’t work.”

When the mice had insufficient levels of DHA in their body, they were basically infertile. However, once DHA levels were restored to normal, sperm motility, count, and shape all returned to normal and regular fertility was regained.

A study in Iran also linked fertility and sperm health with Omega 3 fatty acids. Mohammed Reza Safarinejad, lead researcher at Tehran’s Shahid Beheshti University, stated, “The results (of the test) suggest that further research should be performed to assess the potential benefits of Omega-3 supplementation as a therapeutic approach in infertile men.”(source: http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Omega-3-DHA-may-boost-male-fertility-For-mice-at-least)

Further studies have yet to reveal just how important Omega-3 is to the rest of the body, but these studies are conclusive and reveal that Omega 3 is closely linked to sperm health and fertility. Men looking to increase their fertility should consider Omega 3 supplementation as a means of naturally improving the reproductive health.