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Fellas, you might want to pencil in a little “me” time.
A new study found that masturbation comes with more perks than just the rush of feel-good endorphins after an orgasm.
This time, it’s all about what’s going on behind the scenes with your swimmers.
But before we dive in, a quick anatomy refresher.
Unlike women, who are born with most of the eggs they’ll ever have, men produce sperm continuously from puberty onward, storing it in the reproductive tract until it’s ready for release.
When men need to provide a semen sample for fertility testing or treatments like IVF, the World Health Organization recommends taking a break from ejaculation for two to seven days so their sperm has time to build up.
But the latest research suggests that letting sperm sit idle for too long might actually backfire.
A team of researchers from the University of Oxford looked at 115 human studies involving 54,889 men, along with 56 studies across 30 animal species, to see what happens to sperm when it’s stored inside the body.
In humans, the researchers found that skipping ejaculation took a serious toll on sperm quality. They swam more slowly, fewer were healthy and alive, and their DNA showed more damage.
“Our study highlights how regular ejaculation can provide a small but meaningful boost to male fertility,” Dr. Rebecca Dean, a research fellow at Oxford’s biology department and co-author of the study, said in a press release.
So why does “holding it in” hurt sperm? The researchers have two main theories.
First, oxidative stress. This happens when the body produces more harmful molecules than it can neutralize, which can weaken sperm, slow them down and make their DNA more prone to damage.
Second, energy depletion. Sperm are highly mobile and contain very little cytoplasm — the fluid inside the cell that surrounds their internal structures — so they quickly burn through their stored energy and have almost no ability to repair themselves.
“This makes storage particularly damaging compared to other types of cells,” Dean explained.
The animal studies told a similar story, with frequent ejaculation from masturbation improving sperm quality in mammals like primates.
“Combined with our results, this suggests that male masturbation may have an adaptive benefit: it flushes out damaged, stored sperm,” Dean and two colleagues wrote in The Conversation.
Curious how sperm fare in a female-friendly environment, the team also looked at storage after sex. Sperm can last several days inside humans, and in some animals, even months or years.
While quality still declined over time, the researchers found that females were generally better at keeping sperm healthy long-term.
“This likely reflects the evolution of female-specific adaptations, such as specialized storage organs that provide antioxidants to extend sperm viability,” said Dr. Irem Sepil, a lecturer in evolutionary biology at Oxford and senior author of the study.
“These organs often secrete reproductive fluids to nourish sperm and could provide unexplored avenues for biomimicking technology to improve artificial sperm storage in the future.”
The findings have potentially significant implications for fertility clinics. If doctors want the best-quality sperm, the researchers suggested men may not need to follow the typical recommendation of abstaining from sex or masturbation for several days.
This lines up with past research suggesting that ejaculating within 48 hours of providing a sample can significantly improve IVF outcomes.
That’s important because, as Dean and her colleagues note in The Conversation, many fertility issues are caused by factors beyond our control, like environmental toxins, stress or genetics.
The length of sperm storage, however, is something that can be easily adjusted.
“Using freshly ejaculated sperm for fertilization could therefore provide a meaningful boost to fertility outcomes by improving sperm quality,” they wrote.
And let’s be honest — any boost to fertility is welcome news.
Across the country, birth rates have been falling for nearly two decades, with the fertility rate dropping to a record low of 1.6 children per woman in 2024.
Several factors are thought to play a role, including people marrying later, women waiting longer to have children and economic pressures.
Whether male fertility is part of the problem, however, isn’t entirely clear. Some studies suggest sperm counts in Western countries have declined over the past 50 years, while others report they’ve stayed steady.
On the ground, though, some doctors say they are seeing more couples where male fertility is a factor.
“At least one-third of couples we evaluate have some male component,” Dr. Alex Robles of the Columbia University Fertility Center in New York told Fox News Digital earlier this month.
