You can expect to live two to three years longer if your sperm hit this benchmark

Strong swimmers could help men outlive the competition. New research suggests that those with higher-quality sperm may enjoy nearly three extra years of life compared to their less agile counterparts. In a nutshell: “The lower the semen quality, the lower the life expectancy,” said Dr Lærke Priskorn, a senior researcher at Copenhagen University Hospital who helped lead the study.The study, published Wednesday in Human Reproduction, tracked nearly 80,000 men over the course of up to 50 years.During that time, 8,600 men died.

Researchers found that men who produced more than 120 million motile sperm — capable of moving or “swimming” — per ejaculate lived two to three years longer than those with fewer than 5 million.To put it in perspective, men with top-tier sperm quality lived an average of 80.3 years, while those with the weakest sperm clocked in at just 77.6 years.Researchers noted that the potential link between sperm quality and overall mortality couldn’t be explained by diseases diagnosed in the decade leading up to the tests.It also wasn’t influenced by education level, which can be an indicator of lifestyle factors like smoking, diet and exercise.The team speculated that poor sperm quality might signal underlying health problems affecting both fertility and overall well-being — potentially offering an early warning sign for future issues. “We need to better understand the association between semen quality and men’s general health,” said Dr Niels Jørgensen, chief andrologist at Copenhagen University Hospital and lead researcher on the study.

“However, this study suggests that we can identify subgroups of men with impaired semen quality who are apparently healthy when their semen quality is assessed, but who are at increased risk of developing certain diseases later in life.”The researchers now aim to explore whether poor sperm quality is linked to earlier deaths from specific causes like cancer or heart disease.They also wan...