Men who want to improve the quality of their sperm should eat a couple of handfuls of tree nuts before sex, as an acid found in nuts apparently improves sperm quality, UCLA researchers reported Saturday.
"Women are not the only ones who should be paying attention to what they eat when they are trying to get pregnant,'' said Wendie Robbins, a UCLA nursing professor and lead author of the paper.
A School of Nursing research paper, published in the journal "Biology of Reproduction,'' reported on a UCLA study of the effect of walnuts on men consuming traditional western-style diets.
Over 12 weeks, 117 men were divided into two groups, and 75 grams of walnuts was eaten by half the men. The others avoided nuts.
"We found a significant improvement in sperm parameters in the group that consumed the walnuts,'' Robbins said. "The men who ate no tree nuts saw no change.''
The robust sperm are the apparent result of a-linolenic acid, also called Omega-3, a compound that is found in tree nuts. UCLA is now going to measure conception rates for couples at fertility clinics, and feed walnuts to some of the potential fathers, the school said.
