As it tends to be the case with medical marijuana, new studies keep popping up and contradicting our previous beliefs.
Despite the fact that marijuana has been linked and associated with low sperm counts, a study published on the journal Human Reproduction found higher sperm counts on current and former marijuana users than on men who’d never smoked marijuana.
Researchers worked with 662 men in the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center, gathering over a thousand samples of sperm between the years 2000 and 2017. The men complemented the study with questionnaires that reported on their marijuana usage.
RELATED: Does Marijuana Affect Sperm Count In Healthy Males?
Jorge Chavarro, lead author of the study and researcher of Harvard university, spoke with the Daily Beast and explained his team’s findings. He warned that the results are preliminary, and that men shouldn’t turn to marijuana if they were looking for a higher sperm count.
“The most important message of this study is highlighting how little we know about how marijuana use impacts the health in general,” he says.
Chavarro hypothesized that moderate amounts of marijuana could help men enhance their quality of sperm, explaining that the active compounds in marijuana could bind themselves to the cannabinoid receptors in men’s bodies and support their sperm production. Other researchers were less hopeful, claiming that with our current knowledge of the drug, it’s really hard to know whether or not marijuana has a definitive impact on men’s sperm.
RELATED: How Marijuana Affects Men And Women Differently
Marijuana remains mysterious but it’s good that new studies contradict previous findings on the drug and remove some of the mysticism that surrounds it. Maybe marijuana is not the answer to male infertility but hopefully these studies will help researchers stumble upon something that could.
