What type of underwear is best for men’s fertility: briefs or boxer shorts? New research settles the dispute once and for all.
Infertility affects 8–12 percent of couples all over the world. Of these cases, 40–50 percent are down to the male.
Several factors can affect a man’s fertility, such as smoking, their genes, a history of sexually transmitted infections, and heavy drinking.
There is also the popular belief that the kind of underwear that men wear can have an impact. Now, new research examines the effect of different types of underwear on the quality of men’s sperm.
The lead author of the research is Dr. Lidia Mínguez-Alarcón, who is also a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, MA.
Dr. Mínguez-Alarcón and colleagues examined 656 men aged 18–56 who did not have a history of vasectomies and were looking to be treated for infertility at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
The researchers publish their findings in the journal Human Reproduction.
Boxers may improve sperm quality
The men provided the researchers with semen and blood samples and answered a questionnaire on the type of underwear that they were in the habit of wearing.
The questionnaire included boxer shorts, briefs, bikinis, so-called jockeys, and other forms of tight underwear.
MedicalNewsToday, excerpt posted on SouthFloridaReporter.com, Aug. 12, 2018
