Got a headache? Pain in that knee? Maybe a fever? Just grab some ibuprofen, right? Well, your testicles don’t seem to like it much because it is lowering sperm count and testosterone. And The Sex Docs are on a mission to help men optimize their testosterone and their sperm, so all you men out there and the women who love you should listen up.
There is a GLOBAL DECLINE OF TESTOSTERONE AND SPERM and we have discussed this in blog posts HERE and HERE, and Dr. Robinson has written about this in a technical paper and spoke about it in London, to VIEW GO HERE. There are many reasons for this decline from poor diet devoid of high quality animal fats, to environmental toxins, and even social and cultural influences. Now we can likely add ibuprofen to the list.
The research was published in the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Jan. 8th and included a small trial of 31 men aged 18 to 35 along with experiments on cell models. For the clinical trial, 14 men took two doses of 600 mg of ibuprofen twice daily (1200 mg total) with the other 17 receiving a placebo. After two weeks, those taking ibuprofen had lowered testicular production of testosterone. Specifically, the ibuprofen group had 23% more luteinizing hormone (LH) than the placebo group. LH is a hormone produced by the pituitary in the brain to signal the testicles to make more testosterone. Clinically, we know that elevated LH levels are associated with a lack of testosterone.
Cell cultures on testis cell tissue also confirmed that ibuprofen has a direct negative effect on the testicles including Sertoli cells that are responsible for producing sperm.
This was a very short term study and the subjects did not have permanent damage. The authors do not believe that short term and occasional use is likely to be detrimental, but long term chronic use may be an issue. The Sex Docs tend to agree.
Bottom Line: Why use ibuprofen if you don’t have to? Why risk it, especially if you are concerned about fertility? There are many natural alternatives such high dose fish oil, curcumin, hormone replacement therapy, peptide therapy, and many others.
To read the original research article about ibuprophen and lowering sperm, click HERE.
