Sperm Cells
This picture, shot through a microscope, shows the cultivation of four cells inside one cell in the last stage of development, before growing into a human embryo following the injection of a human sperm cell into an egg cell. Reuters

Advocates of faithfulness in marriage must have a busy week on the first weekend of August with two papers out that push for extramarital affairs. On Thursday, a British think tank just supported decriminalisation of prostitution to provide intimacy to sex-starved males, while on the same day, an Ohio study found that males who slept with different partners "produce better sperm quality."

The Telegraph adds that being promiscuous helps men reach orgasm faster. The study, which had 21 male respondents from The College of Wooster in Ohio, aims to use the results in treatment of infertility.

Healthy and heterosexual men with no history of sexual dysfunction provided to the researchers seven semen samples over 15 days. To produce the samples, the men viewed porn in private rooms. The three-minute video clips were played repeatedly until the respondents ejaculated.

The study then recorded the time it took for the men to release their sperm and studied its quality.

Six of the seven video clips have the same male-female partners, while the seventh video had a different female partner with the same man in the six previous clips. The second woman had different facial features, hair colour and tattoos from the first woman.

The conclusion, published in the Evolutionary Psychological Science journal, was that exposure to novel instead of familiar women led to production of higher quality semen. “Additionally, men ejaculated more quickly when viewing a new woman after being exposed to the same woman repeatedly,” state the researchers.

It raised concern over the under-reporting of male fertillity in the medical community because the production of semen samples are done viewing materials of unfamiliar women instead of the men's partners. Another study by the Linda Loma University Medical Center links lower sperm count with vegetarian and vegan diets, reports RedOrbit.

But Dr Macin Stankiewicz, medical director of the City Fertility Clinic in Adelaide, Australia, said there is no scientific evidence to support that claim. However, he points to other studies that suggest substitution of soy for meat has an impact on human fertility because “Soy is a dietary source of isoflavones, an important class of phyto-estrogens, a chemical that might impact on the reproductive system.”

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