Nutrition before cycles- male partner

[Skittles11]

Hi

I was interested to hear about whether male partners made many changes to their diets prior to IVF when the issue was NOT considered male factor (I.e. nothing shown up in tests with the male partner on basic sperm analysis). Did husbands/ partners / boyfriends change their diets / limit caffeine and alcohol/ limit takeaways and meals out etc? Did male partners take supplements and if so which ones? Have male partners had DNA fragmentation tests or other tests when pregnancies have been achieved but not resulted in births?

Am interested in this for any future cycles we may do.

Thanks in advance x

[Purpledoggy]

I asked my husband to decrease his alcohol intake significantly as I felt it was the least he could do relative to everything I gave up and all the meds etc! He was drinking too much anyway (2-5 units a day) so I asked him to cut back to a few times a week and only a few units a time. His meals are reasonably healthy - we'll have a takeaway curry once a week or every other week, but because I am a dietard (no gluten or dairy) his remaining meals tend to involve mainly meat and veggies in some variation +/- rice or pasta. His weakness is Dairy Milk, which he does eat every day, but I did not feel it was fair to make him give that up. He was taking N-acetylcysteine, green tea exract, alpha lipoic acid, CoQ10 (ubiquinone version), and the male bit of his n hers Pregnacare conception (I think it's the same as Wellman). We did not do a DNA frag test as we were getting good fertilisation and blasto rates, but I would definitely have pushed for it if we had another failed round or two. There is minimal evidence food makes any difference to IVF success unless it's deficient in important nutrients, so it wasn't something either of us got stressed over - I didn't change my diet other than making sure I had fish a couple of times a week and giving up alcohol. xx

[Chiefy]

We had minor male issues - gp said bit low and bit slow. He cut back on alcohol - our round started new year so had a couple over Christmas, and took male pregnacare vitamins for 6 months. At collection his count was in normal range and motility had improved. We got 5 blastos from 7 eggs collected, resulting in 1 baby to date.

I think its the alcohol that makes the biggest improvement from what I have read (and smoking but my husband doesn't smoke).

If nothing else they should be making some changes to help improve chances given what we go through!

[MammaMia86]

My husband has low motility and number.

When we started he was told to take vitamins and we did another test after 4 months of taking it. The numbers didn't change.

Before the cycle he didn't drink for 2 weeks, and the last year he is been taken vitamin D, C,K...and some other.

So far we have been lucky and I've got pregnant, but they didn't tell us if the numbers for his sperm were any better.

For what I read in both man and woman the worse thing is alcohol and smoking.

Hope this helps you 😉

[Millbanks]

My husband didn’t have any issues as such but I had him on the same stuff as me. So cut out booze/caffeine- healthy whole grain diet and supplements (male vitality) xx

[MrsOrangejuice]

My husband always had good results however when he gave up vaping around 6 months in to initial tests, his results improved. Nearer to our treatment, he gave up alcohol for around 6 months (more to do with drinking too much in lockdown than IVF!) and it improved further. But the day of our collection his results had fallen off a cliff and we had to have ICSI - had all be great until then and didn't know what had happened in a few months - we were told just a minor illness like a cold can affect it that much. We also got low-ish fertilization and blasts compared to the number of eggs retrieved (in comparison, next round we got all to blast). So for someone who's results are already good, lifestyle changes could make a difference but the shocker was how much difference a minor illness could make, so watch out for that in particular.