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A new study on male fertility has found that healthy nuts might try nuts for their nuts.
The quality of sperm depends on many factors, not only genetic, but environmental, lifestyle and, in particular, diet, which scientists are only now beginning to understand.
Now, nutrition researchers have shown for the first time in humans the effects of specific foods on sperm quality – in this case, nuts, namely almonds, hazelnuts and walnuts. They found that healthy people on a “Western-style diet,” which is generally high in red meat, processed foods, and sugars, who ate these nuts in particular had almost immediate benefits in the genetic profile of their seeds.
This new research builds on previous results indicating an overall improvement in sperm, including motility and count, for regular nut eaters. However, researchers at the University of Utah and Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain took this 2018 study one step further, to examine the molecular process behind how the consumption of walnuts alter the quality of semen in the relatively short term – a process called methylation.
Their randomized clinical trial involved a group of 72 young, healthy, non-smoking participants, 48 of whom were asked to incorporate 60 grams (just over 2 ounces) of nuts per day into their diet for 14 weeks, while the 24 others continued with their typical western lifestyle and diet.
At the end of the period, those who followed a diet high in nuts had 36 genomic regions of their sperm DNA that were “significantly differentially methylated” compared to the control group. Of these regions, 97.2% were considered “hypermethylated”.
In a nutshell, a handful of nuts a day could help keep the fertility doc at bay.
The researchers say their work, now published in the journal Andrology, is the first tangible evidence that snacking on nuts has immediate benefits for many men, especially those in the Americas.
“This work demonstrates that there are sensitive regions of the sperm epigenome that respond to diet, and which can lead to changes in sperm and in its ability to fertilize,” said lead author Albert Salas-Huetos in a college press release.
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