Chris D. Meletis, N.D., and Jason Barker, N.D.
Fertility, in one sense, is the barometer of a person’s overall health, all things being equal. In order to conceive, a person must have a certain level of fertility that requires a sufficiently healthy body to maintain, whether a person is male or female. Fertility can be fleeting as well; it has been estimated that nearly 6 million Americans are infertile at any given time. The standard definition of infertility is the inability of a couple of childbearing age to conceive a child after 1 year of regular intercourse without the use of contraceptives. Because the large majority of couples can conceive with this timeframe, it is recommended that those who do not should be assessed for fertility problems. This article focuses on infertility in men and natural ways to address it.
Prevalence
It is important to note that infertility can occur just as equally in men as in women, with 30 percent of infertility attributable to men and 30 percent to women, while another 30 percent is attributed to both partners and the remaining 10 percent is related to unknown factors. Other statistics indicate that the annual incidence of male infertility is at least 2 million cases, which equates to an incidence rate of approximately 1 in 136 men, or 0.74 percent of the men in the United States. 1 In addition, more than 4.5 million couples in the United States do not conceive at their first attempt and more than 1 in 2 (i.e., 50 percent) of the men involved have irreversible infertility and are not able to father children.
