Fertility warning: Experts warn doing too much of this in the gym may harm male fertility
Video Transcription
Good morning. This is Jeff from Arcanum Wholistic Clinic. And I just have a few minutes for you this morning. But I thought, it’s just enough time to look at this article I have in my newsfeed. And let me just switch here to the right screen. And it’s an article that just came out a few days ago, maybe about three days ago, March the 30th. And the central point of this article is about fertility. And particularly, male fertility. And how doing too much cardio is actually shown to reduce male fertility.
And I’ll just look through. There are some statistics in this article. I’ll just quickly highlight those. The overall, the thesis in the article says, “Overdoing it on cardio at the gym could harm fertility in men, as being too lean was actually shown to be worse for sperm count than being overweight.”And there are some statistics here. Let’s see. Particular statistics about body mass index. But there was something down here. Where did that go? Here. They’re just basically relating the sperm concentration and its relationship to the body mass index and people in the underweight category. And it talks about “Around 70 per cent of men in the UK are classed as being overweight, which is why the dangers of a very low BMI can often be under-represented.”
Anyways, the article is fairly short and to the point. And that’s fine. And I do want to, well, anyone who’s already in our natural fertility program will know that we have a very specific recommendation about exercise and about cardio in particular. And we do talk about, well, there’s different names for it. But it can be called ‘PACE’, it can be called ‘interval training’. There’s another word that’s escaping me at the moment.
But the basic idea in cardio is not to overdo it. But pretty much just like anything in life and in health, in medicine, in diet and lifestyle, in exercise, it’s always a question of the right dose for any thing or any activity. And in the case of the interval training for cardio, which we’re talking about, it’s a very specific format of doing basically alternating between doing bursts of intense cardio, followed by a more restful pace. So more specifically, we talk about doing basically eight rounds (or eight ‘reps’, I guess you would call it) of cardio. And it could be any cardio that you enjoy—whether that’s running, or biking, or swimming, or aerobic exercise—different forms, whatever you like the most.
And the idea being to do eight repetitions or eight intervals where in each of those eight, you’re doing 30 seconds of the absolute most intense form of that cardio that you can do. As hard and as fast as you can go for 30 seconds. And then 90 seconds of doing a much more restful or moderate pace. Where you’re taking it right down to give your body a break. So between those 30 seconds plus 90 seconds, which adds up to two minutes, and you multiply that by eight, you really get 16 focused minutes of exercise. You do a few minutes of warm up at the beginning and cool down at the end, you’re well under 30 minutes. And doing this maybe even two or three times a week. You’re getting the really optimal dose of cardio. Right.
Now, I know this article was specifically measuring the relationship between the body mass index and the sperm health. But I’m kind of taking a little bit of a side point here around that. And understanding that there are many other health benefits and/or detriments, depending on how you do cardio for your fertility health. Now, this will also apply to women. But this article, of course, is all focused on men and sperm health. So that’s where we started. So if you’re not already in our natural fertility program, you can download our book for free. That’s at www.NaturalFertilityBook.com. And you can find out more about this, the other form of exercise as well. We go into strength training. And we go into all the components of a healthy fertility plan—from food and exercise, other issues of detox, emotions and stress, sleep and sex. I’ve talked about that in some other videos. But anyways, you can get all that at www.NaturalFertilityBook.com. It’s a free download.
And thank you for joining me this morning. I just had a very short time but I wanted to get this video in. And I will see you the next time.
- 6 Ways to Boost Women’s Fertility
- This Is Why You Need to Get an STD Test If You’re Trying to Conceive