Sperm: all you need to know about producing ‘healthy swimmers’, and its other uses
- Eat and sleep well, drink and smoke less, keep them cool and ensure a regular turnover of stock – doctors’ tips for making the best sperm
- As well as making babies, they have uses in skincare and diet
Sperm is the cause of much boasting and jesting, but how much do we know about this life-bearing cell? Men brag about “healthy swimmers” – but what does that entail?
Sperm are produced and stored in the testicles and they have one main job, which is to impregnate a woman and pass on biological data to create a new human being. However, it would be a mistake to consider semen and sperm the same thing. Sperm make up just five to 10 per cent of an ejaculation.
This may seem a small proportion, but it equates to around 200 million sperm – and that many are needed because it is no mean feat for that one special sperm to reach and fertilise a woman’s egg. The egg and uterus do not help sperm navigate the minefield that is the vagina, and after that they must struggle against tiny hairs which line the Fallopian tubes, then fight through the thick layer that surrounds and protects the egg.
Experts believe this obstacle course offers the best chance of creating healthy offspring, since only the healthiest, strongest sperm will survive the journey. Many sperm aren’t up to the job. They are produced at such a rapid rate that Dr Andrew Yip Wai-chun, a Hong Kong-based urologist, says there are some with two heads and some with none and “all sort of alien looking”.
When it comes to sperm, size does not matter. A mature sperm cell is just 0.05 millimetres long, yet if all the sperm from one ejaculation were to line up, they would stretch over 10 kilometres.