Every sperm is valuable

Sperm gets ejected from the penis, enters the vagina, and swims up the reproductive tract until they reach the egg to fertilize it. Barely years ago, it was considered a major scientific breakthrough when scientists came up with the idea that a fully formed, tiny human inhabited the head of each sperm — totally debunked and untrue. Fortunately, as the human body has evolved over thousands of years to maximize fertility potential, so has our scientific understanding about sperm. But many of us still believe some pretty unscientific, long-standing sperm myths. Here are twelve of the most common ones.

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But there is a lot you can do before that, to increase the chance of having a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby, when the time is right. It can also affect his sex drive libido. Testes need to be a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body to make good quality sperm. If it gets too hot around the testes, they can have problems making sperm. Testes will start producing sperm again once the temperature of the scrotum stays at its normal lower level, which might take a few months.

Illustration by Brandon Bird. That cost only covers the sperm itself, whereas the browsing, freezing, storing, reheating, inserting, and inseminating all have their own steep costs. While some elements of the process are covered by insurance, the cost of actual sperm always comes out of pocket.