An expert at the Caribbean Fertility Centre has revealed that half of the semen samples they receive from potential donors are not of good quality, due mainly to the negative effects that drinking, smoking and the popular fashion of wearing tight pants are having on men’s sperm count.

Dr Sharifa Frederick, clinical director at the Caribbean Fertility Centre, shared that when the centre opened two years ago it sought to help fill the demand for sperm donors in Jamaica because the male reproductive cell was being imported from the United States to help Jamaican women conceive.

“We saw that it was necessary to provide a localised setting for women to choose from because a lot of them wanted Jamaican sperm. The donation drives were not as big as egg donation drives, but we had been seeing people coming in and donating,” Dr Frederick told the Jamaica Observer.

Sharing that the ideal donor is between the ages of 20 and 30, she said the process includes medical examinations and psychological testing to ensure the men know what they were signing up for and would not have regrets.

Donors receive compensation of $15,000 to $20,000.

Most importantly, the sperm sample is tested, but Dr Frederick said the tests often reveal that about half of the samples from Jamaican men are not suitable for use.

“Some of the factors are genetic, but I think the majority are environmental exposure to certain agents. If you are exposed to a lot of X-ray radiation and if you wear a lot of tight pants,” she said.

“The reason why the scrotum is outside is because it should be kept in a cool environment, but when you wear a lot of tight pants or you sit on a lot of warm surfaces then it can start affecting your sperm quality,” she explained.

Tights pants have become fashionable among many Jamaican men. The trend, popularised by the dancehall community, has seen many men embracing the fitted look, often pairing skinny jeans with a shirt.

The practice of wearing fitted pants has spread to schools, with many young boys adopting the trend. However, a large number of schools have been cracking down on students’ fashion choices, with policies that state pants must be loose-fitted.

Despite warnings from the medical professional, some Jamaican men are still not ready to let go of their fitted jeans, adamant that it does not affect their fertility.

“I don’t think so because a three youth mi get,” one man told the Sunday Observer in St Andrew last week when asked whether he thinks tight pants affect sperm quality.

Another man, pulling on his jeans, said that while they might appear tight, there is still room in his pants, and he does not believe it will affect his fertility.

“Mi good, man. You have to drink your spirulina, and the brand new thing on the market — the honey pack — to get things up and running,” he said, listing natural remedies Jamaicans believe build male stamina, sperm quality, and mobility.

While some discounted the medical expert’s claim, there were others who agreed, sharing that they do not subscribe to the fashion trend.

“If you wear it for over a period of time and you don’t free up yourself — every day you get up you’re in tight pants — maybe it can cause some erectile dysfunction or something of the sort,” one man said.

In addition to tight-fitted clothing, the chronic use of marijuana and alcohol are some other factors that can influence sperm quality, said Dr Frederick.

According to a University of the West Indies research article on the Associations between Marijuana Use and Sperm Quality in Jamaican Men: Implications for the Subfertile Male, “self-reported marijuana use had a negative association with sperm quality. Specifically, men who reported smoking several joints/spliffs per session or smoking several times a day demonstrated poorer motility”.

Marijuana is said to contain a compound that binds to receptors on the sperm’s structure, altering its shape and function, which ultimately reduces semen quality.

A peer-reviewed research article entitled Alcohol and Fertility: How Much Is Too Much also found that heavy alcohol use reduces gonadotropin release.

Gonadotropin is the hormone that triggers the creation of sperm. It also maintains testosterone levels, which are crucial for male fertility.

Dr Frederick said that in her practice she has also seen where one in 10 men who come in with their partners to seek help conceiving have azoospermia, a medical term which means there are no sperm in the ejaculate.

“A lot of men feel that because they ejaculate and fluid comes out the fluid must be sperm or must contain sperm. No,” she said.

“Some men have no sperm at all, so when they ejaculate, and when you look in the fluid, there is no sperm, it’s just fluid. Sometimes, there is a blockage in the pathway, just like a vasectomy that is done intentionally, that blocks the pathway. Some men have diseases that block the pathway so the sperm cannot come out; all that comes out is fluid with no sperm in it,” she explained.

The blockage can be caused by genetic conditions, exposure to radiation, use of drugs, or poor testicular development as a foetus.

Dr Frederick clarified that in those circumstances there might still be sperm, but it is stuck in the scrotum and would have to be physically removed.

“These men, what we do for them is we do a biopsy. We go to the scrotum and we pull testicular liquid from the source itself, and then we sometimes find sperm there,” she explained.

“The couple would have had to have done in vitro fertilisation (IVF), so we would have had to prepare the female, prepare her to produce a lot of eggs, take the eggs out of her body, and then use the eggs in a surgical procedure where we remove the sperm surgically from the testes and use the individual sperm to inject the egg,” she said.

In addition to low sperm count, where the semen contains fewer than 15 million sperm in each millilitre, another fertility issue found in Jamaican men is low sperm mobility, meaning that the sperm cannot swim efficiently enough to reach the egg.

FREDERICK… the reason why the scrotum is outside is because it should be kept in a cool environment, but when you wear a lot of tight pants or you sit on a lot of warm surfaces then it can start affecting your sperm quality

One in 10 men who experience fertility issues have Azoospermia, a medical term used to describe the absence of sperm.

Some men have no sperm at all, so when they ejaculate and when you look in the fluid, there is no sperm, it’s just fluid.