BO­BIE-LEE DIXON

(bo­bie-lee.dixon@guardianl.co.tt)

“It's prob­a­bly you be­cause this nev­er hap­pens to the women in my fam­i­ly.”

“Me? It can't be me, I'm just fine.”

“Look, babe, in­stead of us blam­ing each oth­er, why don't we just find out why we can't get preg­nant af­ter try­ing for so long?”

Is that the di­a­logue you are hav­ing right now with your part­ner? Per­haps it would help to know that in this in­stance, your wife/girl­friend might not ac­tu­al­ly be wrong when she tells you, you might be the prob­lem.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar be­lief that in­fer­til­i­ty was most­ly a “women's is­sue”, a re­cent study sug­gests, it's quite the op­po­site, at least when it comes to T&T men.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Cather­ine Minto-Bain, med­ical di­rec­tor and con­sul­tant gy­nae­col­o­gist at T&T In Vit­ro Clin­ic and Fer­til­i­ty Cen­tre (T&T IVF), the re­search, which ex­am­ined da­ta for 366 peo­ple di­ag­nosed with in­fer­til­i­ty, re­vealed a 60 per cent in­ci­dence of sperm prob­lems in the men sur­veyed. Of the women ob­served, it was dis­cov­ered, the sec­ond high­est cause of in­fer­til­i­ty was due to ab­nor­mal fal­lop­i­an tubes (found in 27 per cent of the women). The third rea­son for in­fer­til­i­ty was at­trib­uted to ovu­la­to­ry dys­func­tion, which Minto-Bain ex­plained, is the chal­lenge of grow­ing and re­leas­ing eggs, with 87 per cent of these prob­lems be­ing caused by poly­cys­tic ovar­i­an syn­drome (PCOS).

(PCOS is a con­di­tion that af­fects a woman's hor­mone lev­els. Women with PCOS pro­duce high­er-than-nor­mal amounts of male hor­mones. This hor­mone im­bal­ance caus­es them to skip men­stru­al pe­ri­ods and makes it hard­er for them to get preg­nant. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ac­cord­ing to www.health­line.com, PCOS af­fects women dur­ing their child­bear­ing years—ages 15 to 44. It said be­tween 2.2 and 26.7 per cent of women in this age group have PCOS).

Speak­ing about the first-of-its-kind sol­id re­search on rates and caus­es of in­fer­til­i­ty in T&T, Minto-Bain said what it es­sen­tial­ly un­veiled was that T&T is in line with oth­er re­search done else­where in the re­gion, which in­di­cat­ed that male in­fer­til­i­ty was more com­mon in the Caribbean than in first-world coun­tries.

Asked what was the cause for the in­crease in male in­fer­til­i­ty in T&T, Minto-Bain said, “No one re­al­ly knows. It is like look­ing for a nee­dle in a haystack.”

She was quick to add, how­ev­er, stud­ies have in­di­cat­ed, hor­mon­al prob­lems, ge­net­ics, in­fec­tions, in­jury, abuse of al­co­hol, and poor di­et were all linked to male in­fer­til­i­ty.

The study al­so showed T&T was sim­i­lar to oth­er de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, hav­ing high­er rates of cou­ples ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­fer­til­i­ty.

Minto-Bain found this rev­e­la­tion to be shock­ing and dis­closed that one-third of cou­ples—37 per cent, had a fe­male-on­ly cause for their in­fer­til­i­ty, while a fifth—19 per cent, had a male-on­ly cause. The ma­jor­i­ty—40 per cent, she said, both males and fe­males had is­sues con­tribut­ing to in­fer­til­i­ty.

This con­firmed pre­vi­ous sta­tis­tics re­vealed to the Sun­day Guardian from an­oth­er lo­cal fer­til­i­ty cen­tre which had not­ed that among cou­ples where a cause for in­fer­til­i­ty can be iden­ti­fied, fe­male fac­tors ac­count for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 40 per cent of all in­fer­til­i­ty cas­es; male fac­tors ac­count for a fur­ther 40 per cent; and in the re­main­ing 20 per cent of cas­es, there is a com­bi­na­tion of fe­male and male fac­tors.

In an in­ter­view last Tues­day with Hema Ramkissoon on CNC3's Morn­ing Brew, Minto-Bain said in the US, in­fer­til­i­ty ex­ist­ed one in every ten cou­ples; in Africa, one in every three cou­ples; and in T&T, the cur­rent rate stands at one in every six cou­ples.

The doc­tor said this se­ri­ous­ly high­lights the need for cou­ples to be seen in a spe­cial­ist fer­til­i­ty clin­ic as soon as pos­si­ble and to treat with in­fer­til­i­ty as a “cou­ple's is­sue”.

“Both the male and fe­male part­ner must be prop­er­ly as­sessed be­fore any treat­ment is start­ed, oth­er­wise a large num­ber of cou­ples will be un­der­go­ing treat­ments that can­not get them preg­nant,” she added.

Sev­en tips to healthy sperm:

*Stop smok­ing. Smok­ing low­ers sperm count and re­duces its mo­bil­i­ty.

*Do not take testos­terone. If you are want to start a fam­i­ly, do not use it.

*Eat well. Try to avoid junk food that is loaded with fat, sug­ar, and preser­v­a­tives.

*Ex­er­cise is key.

*Lim­it al­co­hol and caf­feine.

*Keep tem­per­a­tures cool.

*Low­er your stress lev­el.

Cour­tesy: www.as­pirefer­til­i­ty.com