Wow, interesting, had never even thought about that. I suppose the vast majority of our clients are actively trying to (or planning on someday trying to) have children.
But yes heat-based contraception would be a good bet. Saunas, hot tubs, tight underwear and your laptop on your lap 24/7!
You always want to be using 2.5-3 months to be on the safe side. There's no guarantee anything you do will take effect before then. Happy to connect you to our urologist if you have more specific questions!
Yep! We wrote a post about it a while back (https://www.givelegacy.com/resources/will-covid-19-affect-ma...). I was proud that we have developed enough domain authority to be the #1 Google result for a couple of months for 'COVID19 and male fertility'.
In brief:
1. Theoretically, yes. The testes have the second-highest number of ACE2 receptors, after the lungs. This could explain why men are more likely to get COVID-19 than men.
2. In the short-term COVID-19 is likely to decrease sperm quality, similar to the flu. this we can say with reasonable confidence, but it's nothing particularly scary.
3. We don't know if there are longer-term effects. We've already heard about potential scarring in the lungs, for example. What is the same was true in the testes? After all, some viruses like Zika CAN have longer-term effects.
The fact is, there has been no conclusive research yet, so we are running a study ourselves to try to identify some preliminary evidence.
Yep - this is a great question and I have tons of thoughts here.
First and foremost: sperm quality is an indicator of overall health, and the two are closely correlated. This is both good and bad.
Good because living a healthier lifestyle improves sperm quality. Bad because there is no easy fix to improve sperm quality. Supplements are fine, and there is some limited research to support them, but they are not a panacea.
We brought on a sperm expert from Harvard - Dr. Mariel Arvizu - to create a protocol to assess and evaluate the lifestyle of our clients and create personalized recommendations based on what we believe is highest impact.
We bucket our recommendations into categories like nutrition, sleep habits, etc. and reference WHO or other trusted resources when possible.
We also get you in touch with a urologist (we have one on-staff) to do a consult if needed. He can discuss your specific case and provide insight.
Lastly, it depends on the results of your analysis. For example, morphology (how "normal" your sperm is) can be significantly impacted by things like using saunas, hot tubs, etc. or even from having the flu. There are simple and easy changes you can make to address things like that.
Sperm takes about 2.5-3 months to regenerate, so any changes you make today will be reflected in your sperm analysis after that time period.
Is there a good resource to learn more? I went to a fertility clinic and was told nothing really could be done lifestylewise to improve motility. They seemed to think IVF and IUI are the only way, which they offered for a fair chunk of change.
Of course they're incentivized to tell you that... we have a fair amount of resources here: https://www.givelegacy.com/resources/ and are working on making them more user-friendly.
In brief, you want to focus on improving your overall health as that's closely correlated with sperm quality. If you have more specific, medical questions, I'd be happy to connect you to our urologist for a short (free) consult.
Haha! You and me both! The worst part, to me, was it being referred to as "the specimen". I don't know why that always weirded me out.
Sperm can actually survive fine for 1-2 hours hours when kept near body temperature, so a 1-hour courier service is sufficient (and it usually takes less than 60 minutes). If there were any issues, we'd know when it arrived at the clinic.
For anyone outside of major cities, we do overnight shipping with Fedex's biohazardous materials division. We use a transport medium that keeps sperm alive for up to 48 hours during transit. You add it to the sperm, it protects it during that period, and it gets washed out (via centrifuge) when it arrives at our clinic. It's not perfect - you can expect to lose approx. 10-15% motility during that time, but is particularly useful for folks in rural areas or far from fertility clinics.
PS Always love hearing other folks' clinic stories... my favourite is hearing how clinics have their pornography stolen ALL the time and have to frequently re-stock.
Haha! You joke, but there are concerns that COVID-19 might affect male fertility (we are running a study to test this). So it's not the craziest idea to think about preserving your fertility during a global pandemic...
Yes! Well first and foremost, Alyssa is an amazing entrepreneur, someone I really enjoy speaking with, and is Canadian, so not much more to ask for there.
We catch up from time to time and I can imagine us partnering down the line. Notably, we do already partner with major female fertility companies in this space to offer packages for couples (like with Ava Fertility, a very rigorous and data-driven company that helps women track their ovulation periods)
I'll just add that we actually do testing & freezing as two linked but independent offerings. So Lilia matches the freezing component of what we do. A company like Modern Fertility (also YC) is closer to the testing component of what we do.
One more thing I'll add to Sarah's answer: in our case, the company was founded by - and run by - healthcare and fertility specialists. We are a healthcare company first, and a consumer company second, not the other way round.
This sounds minor but actually affects a lot of the way we do our work e.g. we ensure rigorous analysis, we take extra de-risking steps around cryostorage, we call clients to share bad results because it's more humane to do, we connect them to our urologist on staff, etc. etc.
I thought it was extremely well written, pointed, and clearly written as constructive criticism. I don't even view this as about being politically correct, but about being inclusive, and creating an inclusive space, for everyone who is thinking about using our service.
I'm sorry to hear about your fertility clinic experience - it feels like they are still living in the stone ages.
But yes heat-based contraception would be a good bet. Saunas, hot tubs, tight underwear and your laptop on your lap 24/7!
You always want to be using 2.5-3 months to be on the safe side. There's no guarantee anything you do will take effect before then. Happy to connect you to our urologist if you have more specific questions!