The short answer is yes, absolutely. Men should go on the fertility diet right along with their female partners, even if they don’t appear to have fertility issues themselves, and especially if they do.
Here’s why: not only can diet affect such factors as sperm count, motility and morphology, but there is also the fact that 10 to 15 percent of couples have unexplained infertility, meaning the cause is unknown. Since you can never be absolutely sure of all the factors that are causing your infertility, you should do the diet together.
Conception ultimately is a mystery, which is why I also believe in a “third” fertility factor (in addition to female and the male fertility), and that is the combined fertility of the couple as a unit. Who knows what that is, but I have many stories to show it exists. Here’s one:
A friend wanted to get pregnant for a couple of years, but it just wasn’t happening. She and her boyfriend checked out fine. For reasons that had nothing to do with fertility, the couple split up. She then fell in love with another man, decided to marry him and got pregnant almost immediately. She had her baby and is now pregnant with a second one. What happened the second time around? Who knows? But I believe it’s the “third” fertility factor at work.
Another story involves a friend who conceived at 43 after years of trying after her new husband did acupuncture and herbs – and there was nothing “wrong” with either of them aside from the mother’s age.
There is also another good reason for male partners to do the diet too, and that’s to provide the added support of working as a couple toward parenthood. Battling fertility issues is hard work, and harder still if you’re doing it alone. Having your partner on board with you, even if he’s not following the diet as closely, is really helpful.
In the meantime, make sure he gets plenty of vitamin C (drink that orange juice!) and zinc (found in nuts and whole grains). Both are helpful to male fertility.
