Switch to Boxers for your Fertility? Why not says leading professor.

In the debate about looser fitting undies and the link to male fertility, we reached out to leading Professor of Andrology Rob McLachlan to explain the ins and outs of the issue. Here is a summary of what Rob we gleamed from our chat with Rob.

To put it simply Rob stated “Heat is bad. I say to my patients, it’s a bit like a coral reef….. it’s the same. Rather than bleaching we just don’t make sperm.”

“There are certain types of cells in the testes which are temperature sensitive and so its not good for them to be too warm………….they just don’t develop well and that’s well demonstrated. If you take a mouse or a rat & put him in a spa bath with hot water you’ll knock his sperm count out.” Its true for all mammalian species.

“The testicles are in the scrotum for a reason. It’s not decorative its functional. They are 2 degrees cooler than core body temperature………The scrotum – lt’s got lots of blood vessels in the skin & it sweats. It’s an evaporative air conditioning unit. That’s what they’re there for, that’s why they’re hanging down, that’s why they’re 2 degrees cooler.”

So you take all that together and “say to yourself well is it really sensible to push your testicles up higher than they would normally be, make it unable for them to ventilate, unable for them to sweat, and why would you do that?”

“The last Study I looked at which is some years ago…suggests there was an association between having very very tight undies and sperm. That it was better to be in boxers let them hang and ventilate….”

“It seems reasonable not to squish them up with tight jocks……. So that’s my health message – don’t do that you know? I think that it makes much more sense to use a little bit more fabric, give them a little bit more space & let them hang free and let them sweat and cool like they’re supposed to do. End of sermon I guess. ”