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16.06.2022

More physical activity, more fertility

We, the arrogant compilers of this free web magazine, had written about the positive effects of exercise so many times that we seriously thought we knew them all. Not so. We came across a meta-study in the Journal of Translational Medicine in which a lifestyle with a lot of exercise reduces the risk of infertility.

Study
Researchers at the University of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Shanghai traced 10 previously published epidemiological studies of the association between exercise and infertility. Using statistic tools, the authors of these studies had smoothed out the effect of other lifestyle factors, such as overweight, smoking, drug and alcohol use as much as possible.

The Chinese aggregated the results of the studies and re-analyzed them.

Results
Study participants whose lifestyle included more than 150 minutes of physical activity per week had a 41 percent lower risk of infertility than the study participants who exercised less than 30 minutes per week. You can see this below.

The researchers don't think studies have been left in a drawer somewhere, and have never been published. They found no evidence of bias.

When the researchers compared the effect of a moderate-exercise lifestyle [30 to 150 minutes per week] with that of a low-exercise lifestyle [0-30 minutes per week], they found that a moderate amount of physical activity reduced the risk of reduced infertility by 46 percent.

Click on the figure below for a larger version.

Finally, the Chinese also looked at the effect of a lifestyle in which people get exactly the amount of exercise that the health educators recommend: 30 minutes of exercise a day, for 5 days a week. As you would expect, this lifestyle also reduced the risk of infertility.

Source:
J Transl Med. 2022 May 23;20(1):237.

More:
Phaleria macrocarpa: more testosterone, more fertile 11.12.2018
Animal study: pomegranate boosts fertility and testosterone levels in men 28.11.2013
Cola slecht voor testes 04.04.2010

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