You know all about summer penis, the grand swell of your member during warmer months. Its inverse is winter penis, the shrinking effect of the colder months that leaves your little guy a tad shy. But whither my spring and autumn dick, you asked (silently, in your head)?
Ponder no more, because it has arrived. Or, at least, the spring and autumn testicles. New research has found that your sperm quality is seasonal, too, the Telegraph reports. And the best seasons to bust a nut for procreative purposes are fall and spring. That’s right, you’re in Peak Sperm Quality Season right now, baby. To everything, turn, turn, turn.
So how do we know that sperm lights up so well in the offseasons, and why should we care?
First, the why: The retrospective research (conducted by OB-GYN Taraneh Nazem, from Icahn School of Medicine in Mt. Sinai, New York, and just presented in Denver at a medical conference) looked at the sperm quality of 29,000 dudes over 17 long years.
Specifically, she looked at the sperm’s movement (motility) and shape. Nazem found that men have the most normal-shaped sperm in the fall, and the most motile sperm in the spring — you’ve got 117 million good sperm per milliliter in spring, compared with 112 million in summer.
As for reasons why your juice is faster and better-looking at these times, well, that’s a bit more complex.
Possible explanations include:
- Milder temperatures
- Longer daylight hours
- Less indulgent eating
- More exercise due to more daylight and better weather outdoors
- Less boozing it up in the offseason than during summer and winter holiday months
- Lower likelihood of overheated balls
But this doesn’t completely explain the phenomenon. As the Telegraph notes, it takes a man’s body three months to manufacture the sperm. So does it really mean you’re more fertile in spring and fall if there is an effective three-month lag?
Nazem theorizes that healthier eating from the summer could still explain the better sperm quality a season later. And generally speaking, there’s “something about these in-between seasons when people are preparing or recovering from the two extremes of winter and summer,” like the milder weather and greater amount of exercise, reports the Telegraph.
As to why we should care, well, that’s pretty simple. We should want to know when our sperm is working for us and not against us, if we’re looking to keep our ancestry going. To that end, Nazem suggests that men look at their habits during spring and fall and try to recreate them year-round.
She notes that more in-depth analysis is needed. “It is possible that male fertility is better in these seasons, but further research is needed to know how these findings affect pregnancy-success rates,” Nazem said. “However, it is something to take into consideration, and doctors could discuss these seasonal changes with men.”
It’s not a new idea that sperm quality is seasonal. Summer has long been considered the absolute worst time to make a baby because sperm counts are lower in the hot months. Researchers have also found that winter is better for sperm health, which correlates nicely with the fact that most babies are born in early fall. (If September 16 is the most common birthday the world over, that means December 11 is the most common conception day.)
Generally speaking, though, most babies are born in the summer and early fall as it is, which means they had to be “made” in the fall and winter.
So, hey, maybe we should be getting it on more in the spring. This would mean having a baby during the winter, but given the hormonal rage and sweating that is pregnancy, I’d argue that cold weather is a far better time to be preggo.
To the average penis-haver, this may seem confusing or cruel, at least when compared with peak penis times. Many questions remain. Why do you get a bangin’ summer penis if it’s not good for doing penis stuff? Why would nature make it harder to bone in the winter if it’s such a good time to do so?
Maybe it’s actually a gift from nature: Summer may be a terrible time to make a baby, but maybe it’s still the best time to hook up when a baby is the last thing on your mind. Spring is when love is in the air, so maybe it’s nature’s encouragement to plant that seed. Fall? Maybe it’s the least likely time you’d think of to start scheduling sex to make a baby, but it gets you ready to cozy up and settle down come winter with the potential long-term mate you just knocked up.
Of course, this is not how relationships work, so take Nazem’s advice and just try to be healthy all the time. And unless you’re specifically trying to tweak fertility challenges — in which case, ask a doctor to figure this headache out — you can just keep doing the same thing you always have. Which is try to have as much sex as possible all the time, no matter the weather.
Tracy Moore
Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.
