Research

Hormonal

Psychological stress negatively impacts male fertility by reducing luteinizing hormone and testosterone pulsing, which in turn impairs spermatogenesis and sperm quality.

If you are trying to conceive, high levels of psychological stress can physically lower your sperm count and motility by disrupting hormonal signals. Managing stress through counseling or lifestyle changes may help improve semen quality, as stress is a modifiable factor.

ModerateRefutesMEDIUM confidence
Semen parameters may be potentially linked to stress, whose presence may reduce luteinizing hormone (LH) and testosterone pulsing, thus reducing in turn spermatogenesis and sperm quality [12, 13].
Alessandro Ilacqua et al. · Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology · 2018

Why this rating

The paper is a review citing multiple human observational studies and pre-clinical data, but notes difficulty in distinguishing cause vs. consequence and conflicting results in some general population studies.

Source

Lifestyle and fertility: the influence of stress and quality of life on male fertility

Alessandro Ilacqua et al. · Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology · 2018

DOI 10.1186/s12958-018-0436-9

narrative_reviewCited 308×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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