The Silent Shame of Male Infertility

Bradley Goldman has filled out a size large T-shirt his whole adult life. As a bodybuilder, he knew that a steady stream of lean, bland proteins, heavy weights and steroids would make his muscles pop. But over the past six months, Goldman, a fitness and nutrition consultant in Los Angeles, has watched his jacked physique soften and shrink. “I cracked a couple of weeks ago, and I had to buy a shirt a whole size smaller,” he says. He tried it on for his wife Brittany, and it hung loose on his frame. “I just kind of shook my head,” he says. He knew she saw the changes too. Goldman, now 30, began taking steroids at 18. He’d heard they could interfere with fertility–steroids can shut down the body’s natural production of testosterone–but like many young men, he was more concerned with not having babies than with having them. Now he and his wife are trying to get pregnant, and though he gave up steroids two years ago, it seems the damage is done. When he got a semen analysis last March, his sperm count came back a flat zero. “It was earth-shattering,” he says. He started taking fertility drugs to help his testicles recover. But three months later, he still had no sperm. He’d been injecting himself with testosterone because his body could no longer produce it naturally, but his doctor recommended he stop in order to make the fertility drugs more effective. Now his sperm count is slowly climbing, but his sex drive has...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized fertility Research Source Type: news