“My husband and I are preparing for IVF treatment. What can my husband do to increase our chances of success?” When couples come into my clinic they have generally had many checks and are well informed about procedures. However, quite often the man gets the shock of his life when sperm results come back and they are low. It’s a big knock to the ego for a guy, and unfortunately there’s is not a lot of education and help around to advise them. I advise different men in different ways.

In Chinese medicine when a patient walks in the room, we have already started to diagnose them. Questioning the patient is very important, but at the same time we observe the speech of the patient, their stature, the way they walk, if they sigh a lot; all these things give us a very complete picture of the persons overall health and will reinforce our final diagnosis.

If you are attempting IVF it is important to get at least a 3-4 month start on improving your situation, as it takes around 3 months on average for the sperm to mature so the good work you do now, will take a while to gain fruition. So what do we do to improve fertility? We have to first look at the background of the man; has he worked with chemicals, had serious groin trauma such as a stray kick playing footy? Then we look at digestion- lots of guys have IBS and digestive issues where the nutrients are passing straight through them, this must be addressed first with acupuncture, diet changes etc. Do they get hot during the day or at night? This is a big issue. As the testes function at a cooler temperature than the rest of the body, a guy that is too hot (no pun), will often have poor morphology.

This is where certain lifestyle changes will be effective, such as wearing loose boxers, less coffee & spicy food and more nourishing cooling food such as oysters. Oysters are actually a great food and I often get guys to eat lots of them because in Chinese medicine terms they are great to tonify the fertility related organs, cool the body, they increase libido and are really high in natural zinc- an essential nutrient to produce healthy sperm.

Finally, it is really important to reduce stress. Stress leads to a myriad of negative chemical, physical and psychological changes in the body, effecting fertility chances, not to mention putting pressure and stress on relationships which can unfortunately make the whole experience of creating a baby quite a strain. Counseling, meditation and gentle exercise such as Yoga or Qi-Gong can help focus your mind and deal with the situation better.