If you’re partial to guzzling a bottle of cola with a pizza every night, research published in the American Journal of Epidemiology has some bad news.
According to researchers at Copenhagen University Hospital, Denmark, men who drink a litre or more of cola a day could be reducing their sperm counts by up to thirty percent.
The Danish fertility study, which involved 2500 men, noted that those who refrained from the fizzy stuff averaged sperm counts of around 50 million sperm per millilitre of semen. But those who consumed a litre or more of cola a day averaged just 35 million sperm per millilitre.
But surprisingly, the researchers noted that the reduced sperm count was unlikely to be the result of higher caffeine intake. Those who drank coffee, which has a higher caffeine level than cola, didn’t show significant reductions in sperm count.
According to Dr Tina Kold Jensen who headed the research, “It’s important to note that the men who drank a lot of cola were also different in many other ways.”
She noted that the 93 participants whose daily cola consumption averaged more than a litre also had significantly poorer lifestyles – they tended to consume more fast foods and fewer vegetables and fruit. As such, it remains unclear as to whether the link with low sperm count was exclusively caused by an as yet unidentified ingredient within cola, or whether the cause was simply due to an unhealthy lifestyle.
Statistics provided by the World Health Organisation report that a sperm count of around 35 million sperm per millilitre of semen still falls within normal ranges – but warns that such a reduction may still significantly reduce male fertility.
Source: Daily Telegraph
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