Dear Emily,
One of my fraternity brothers told me that wearing briefs can make me sterile. Is my choice of underwear putting my manhood in jeopardy?
Ah, the age-old boxers-versus-briefs debate. Although previously a matter of personal preference, recently researchers with copious spare time and misdirected funding have made it their business to see what effects men's underwear preferences may have down the road.
First, a note on fertility. When conceiving is a challenge, the cause is just as frequently traced to men as to women. Schoolyard rumors would have men believing that anything from drinking Mountain Dew to habitual masturbation can sabotage their ability to procreate. Luckily for just about every guy out there, neither rumor carries any weight. What we do know is that among other factors, drugs, alcohol abuse, diabetes and infections such as HIV have been found to affect sperm development and motility negatively. As for what you wear down there, the matter is still a matter of hot debate ... literally.
As it turns out, sperm are happiest at a temperature of about 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Your oh-so-clever body has various built-in mechanisms to keep them at this temperature, such as involuntarily contracting muscles in cold conditions in order to bring the family jewels closer to your warm abdomen (thus the science behind the ever-embarrassing problem of shrinkage). Tighter-fitting underwear keep the scrotum closer to the body, and therefore at a higher temperature than if they were hanging out in the breeze. These hotter temperatures can actually impair spermatogenesis (development of mature sperm) and, in theory, may compromise fertility. Along those lines, scientists are now questioning whether the heat from laptops can decrease sperm count. But I digress...
So far, many of the studies conducted on the subject have been too small to be reliable, but a few groups of researchers have found a positive correlation between tighter underwear and poor sperm quality. A 1996 Dutch study of nine men found a 50-percent decrease in sperm production and a 67-percent decrease in sperm motility among those who favored briefs. Of note, this was years before Michael Jordan started singing the praises of the ever-popular hybrid boxer-briefs, which were glaringly absent from the study. Eight years later, a larger (and undoubtedly more awkward) study found that after 45 minutes of walking on a treadmill, men who wore jockey briefs had the highest scrotal temperatures, while boxers came in second and those who weren't wearing underwear had the lowest scrotal temperatures. Go commando, the research seems to suggest, although it failed to indicate whether the hotter temperatures were hot enough to affect fertility.
All of the above aside, several high-powered studies have found no effect of underwear style or other lifestyle choices (such as hot tub use) on fertility, and no study to date has found the tighty-whitey effect on fertility to be long-lasting. Like most scientific debates (e.g. Red Sox vs. Yankees, Coke vs. Pepsi), it is unlikely that researchers will ever reach a unanimous conclusion on the matter. The bottom line? Unless fertility is a problem you're currently dealing with, you can hang on to your beloved Superman briefs for a little while longer. While they certainly won't help your social life, you can rest assured that your future fertility is in no serious danger.
Emily is a University Medical student. She can be reached at egraham@cavalierdaily.com.
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