HEAT AND MALE FERTILITY

Are hot tubs bad for male fertility?

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1. Counselling Conundrum: a real question from a patient

2. Concise Conclusion: a straight-forward patient-friendly answer 

3. Quick Wrap-up 

Clearly, there are nuances that may not be captured in this format. The goal here is to provide you with helpful counselling tips which often draw from multiple sources or those which are not commonly accessed by busy healthcare providers serving the community.

Counselling Conundrum: "I do hot tubs fairly regularly, but I'm thinking of having kids soon. I have heard that hot tubs are bad for male fertility; is this true?"

Concise Conclusion: Testicles are very temperature-sensitive, and though there isn't a whole lot of research on this, there is good reason to think that if your testicles are subjected to hot water (hot tub, hot bath), sperm motility can decrease. Fortunately, this does not appear permanent, and after 3-6 months of NOT submerging in hot water, your sperm motility likely recovers significantly.

Quick Wrap-up: Of note, this probably does not apply to saunas and other heat exposure therapies that don't involve water submersion. The dose and frequency very likely affect this as well; 20 mins at 104 F thrice weekly is likely enough to significantly impact sperm motility.

Dive Deeper

1) Wet heat exposure: a potentially reversible cause of low semen quality in infertile men - PubMed

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