by Leigh Ann Woodruff, May 24, 2012
Men, if you're a serious cyclist, you may want to downgrade your level of participation to recreational if you and your partner are trying to get pregnant. A new study out of the UCLA School of Nursing found that serious leisure male cyclists may experience hormonal imbalances that could affect their reproductive health.
"Although preliminary, these findings warrant further investigation to determine if specific types of exercise may be associated with altered sex hormone levels in men that could affect general health and reproductive well-being," says Leah Fitzgerald, Ph.D., FNP-BC, assistant professor at the School of Nursing and senior author of the study, which was published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology.
While many have theorized that cycling can affect male fertility because increased scrotal temperature can reduce sperm production, researchers at UCLA investigated the association between exercise intensity and circulating levels of the reproductive hormones, such estrogen and testosterone, in serious leisure male athletes (triathletes and cyclists) and recreational athletes. There were 107 healthy male athletes, ages 18 to 60, who participated and filled out the International Physical Assessment Questionnaire to obtain an objective estimate of time spent participating in different levels of physical activity and inactivity during the previous seven days. The researchers divided the participants into three groups — 1) triathletes, 2) cyclists and 3) recreational athletes.
