Many men now around the world endures the frustrating experience of a decrease in their ability to experience full erections, suffer from premature ejaculation, or weak ejaculation with ineffective orgasms. All of these sexual disorders can prohibit from having a low sperm count and decrease of sperm activity.

How Does a Man Find Out If He is Infertile?

Approximately 80% of couples seeking an infertility evaluation will get an answer as to why they can't get pregnant or achieve a successful pregnancy. In about 50% of those cases, the problem involves the man. Sperm problems may be the sole cause of a couple's infertility problem or may add to existing infertility problems of the female partner. This is why it's always important to evaluate both the man and the woman from the very start of any infertility workup.

When evaluating a man for male factor infertility, semen analysis is done to look for problems with his sperm. These problems may include a low total sperm count. You may also hear terms such as morphology (the shape or size of sperm), motility (the movement of sperm) and agglutination (the clumping of sperm).

To achieve its goal, sperm must have three things going for it: quantity, quality and motility.

Quantity. You're most likely to be fertile if you have more than 20 million sperm per milliliter of semen. However, researchers are finding that having healthy sperm (the quality) may be just as important as the total amount of sperm you produce. Of the millions of sperm in the ejaculated semen, only about 200 actually reach the egg in a woman's fallopian tube. But, just one is needed to fertilize the egg.

Quality. It's not enough just to have enough. Sperm shape and structure (morphology) are equally important. Youare most likely to be fertile if more than one third of your sperm are of normal shape and structure. A normal sperm has an oval head and a long tail that propel it forward. Sperm with large, small, tapered or crooked heads or kinky, curled or double tails are less likely to fertilize an egg.

Motility. To reach the target, your sperm have to move.Riding the semen wave will only take the sperm so far. To reach the egg, sperm have to move on their own wriggling and swimming the last few inches to reach and penetrate the egg. Sperm movement (motility) is an important characteristic of healthy sperm. You're most likely to be fertile if at least half of your sperm are moving.