If you’re having trouble conceiving, consider how much rest you’re getting. Sleeping for less or more than seven hours a night could reduce men’s sperm quality, according to a new report.
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Researchers from universities in China recently conducted an experiment, published in the Journal of Sleep Research, to determine how shut-eye can affect the health of sperm.
To do so, they examined 2,020 semen samples from nearly 800 men from colleges in China from 2013 to 2015.
They used High DNA Stainability, an index that points out abnormal chromosomes in the sperm, to assess the health of the semen, and they analyzed their sleep duration with a questionnaire.
After analyzing the results, they found that participants who slept for more than nine hours or less than six and a half hours a night had a 30 to 41 percent lower High DNA Stainability.
Scientists noted that the sperm quality was at its best when men snoozed for seven to seven and a half hours a day.
"This is new information after our previous finding that sleep duration has an inverse U-shaped association with semen volume and total sperm count," co-author Jia Cao said in a statement. "In the previous study, we found that these two semen parameters were highest when sleep is 7.0 to 7.5 hours per day, and either longer or shorter sleep was associated with the decrease of the two semen parameters."
Want to learn more about the findings? Take a look at the full study here.
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