You can’t know how healthy your sperm are without having your semen analysed in a laboratory. But there are a few signs in semen that you should see a doctor.
What are the signs your sperm are healthy?
Sperm are the smallest cells in the (male) human body. They’re way too small to see with the naked eye. Semen samples need to be magnified about 400 times (using a microscope in a laboratory) to examine things that indicate how healthy they are, like their shape and how they move. The concentration of sperm in semen (the number of sperm per ml of semen) is also measured this way. Sperm concentration (number of sperm per ml) is then multiplied by total semen volume (usually between 1.25 and 5 ml) to calculate total sperm count. Of all these measurements, semen volume is the only one you could measure at home.
The only other thing to look at that might help you know if your sperm are healthy is the colour of your semen, or how thick or watery it is. Normal colours for semen are white, off white, pale yellow or pale grey.
Blood in semen can occur occasionally but if you notice it a lot, or it’s there for more than a couple of days, you should see your doctor.
Freshly ejaculated semen should be gelatinous and gradually becomes more fluid. Watery semen, or semen that takes a long time to liquefy, could be caused by problems with either sperm production or prostate function, so should be discussed with a doctor.
What about at-home male fertility tests?
There are some at-home test kits that estimate sperm count (and at least one that claims to measure movement) but these aren’t as accurate as measurements made in certified laboratories and shouldn’t be relied upon for making decisions about your health and fertility.
Healthy sperm are necessary for normal fertility, and the best way to have healthy sperm is to have a healthy body. So, although there is no absolute guarantee, you have the best chance of having healthy sperm if you look after your health.
Tim Moss
Healthy Male Health Content Manager
Associate Professor Tim Moss has PhD in physiology and more than 20 years’ experience as a biomedical research scientist. Tim stepped away from his successful academic career at the end of 2019, to apply his skills in turning complicated scientific and medical knowledge into information that all people can use to improve their health and wellbeing. Tim has written for crikey.com and Scientific American’s Observations blog, which is far more interesting than his authorship of over 150 academic publications. He has studied science communication at the Alan Alda Centre for Communicating Science in New York, and at the Department of Biological Engineering Communication Lab at MIT in Boston.
