Daily Sex Yields Optimal Sperm Quality, Say Researchers

I've often surmised that when you really, really want to be pregnant it becomes really easy to overthink everything. I know it was true for me. After my miscarriages when I was suddenly so fixated on getting pregnant again, I would do everything that could be done to track ovulation and to test as early as possible.

One of the areas in which couples try to plan and strategize is in the timing of sexual intercourse for the highest pregnancy odds. And in the past, one recommended strategy had been to abstain for a few days to build up a high quantity of sperm. According to an article in USA Today, however, researchers have found that the best sperm quality actually comes from daily sex for about a week prior to ovulation. When couples had daily intercourse the sperm had less frequent genetic mutations, which the researchers surmised could be due to less exposure to oxygen.

I thought the finding was interesting. Given that genetic mutations are believed to be a key cause of miscarriages, it would be interesting if a future study would look at whether frequency of sex affects risk of miscarriage. The article did note that this particular study did not compare the frequency of sex to actual pregnancy rates, but rather to simply improving the quality of the sperm (but other studies have shown correlations between sperm quality and pregnancy rates).